A SIMPLE MATTER

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 184, 2 May 1929, Page 10

A SIMPLE MATTER

WRITING IN THE AIR The arm-chair ease stage to which flying is rapidly approaching in New Zealand was strikingly exemplified in the recent experience of the Minister of Defence (Hon. T. M. Wilford), who returned to Wellington yesterday from the Hawke’s Bay district, where he had several flights in Government aeroplanes. The Minister showed a “Dominion” representative a shorthand note written by his private secretary (Mr. G. F. Dixon) on a flight with Captain Chandler between Feilding and Dannevirke, perfect characters transcribing into the sentence: “The scudding clouds make one think of the great steam clouds of Rotorua drifting by on the left” Later, the same sentence was written in a motor-car travelling on a bitumen pavement, and also at an ordinary writing desk. Compared, the note taken “in the air” was in outline much'clearer than that written in the motor-car, and, taken generally, even more legible than that written at the desk. With the same facility, telegrams were written by the Minister and his secretary while their ’planes were passing over Feilding. These were placed in envelopes, to which red, white and blue streamers were attached, and dropped near the post office. The messages were retrieved and duly transmitted. The Minister, who had Captain Findlay as his pilot, said he had occupied the entire journey between Dannevirke and Hastings by reading a book. He recalled also that while flying just over Cook Strait with Captain Burrell recently, he had asked for a demonstration of the way the slots on the Moth worked. Mr. Wilford watched the automatic operation, and at its conclusion, inquired of the pilot through the telephone: “Well, what about it?” The pilot’s reply was that during the action the Minister had observed the ’plane had dropped 400 feet. Mr. Wilford had not felt the descent !