WOMEN BEST IN THE AIR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3334, 16 August 1926, Page 2

WOMEN BEST IN THE AIR.

(By Peggy O’Neil, holder air pilot 1 s certificate.)

There is no sport to compare with flying, from a woman’s point of view. I have played golf, tennis, and most other women’s games, I can ride, drive and shoot, but where is there anything else that can approach the thrills and pleasures of flight? Moreover, I believe there is no drawback to women becoming aeronauts, and that, given capable training, they can actually make better pilots than men! Perhaps that sounds an exaggerated statement, but consider _ the facts. Women’s hands are admittedly more sensitive than men’s, and all the levers used in flying call essentially for a delicate touch, since aeroplanes answer very easily to them. The slightest pressure on the “joy-stick,” or any other control, makes the machine respond far more suddenly than any vehicle could on land. Consequently women’s delicate hands give them a distinct advantage over men in the air. For sport alone the aeroplane offers almost unlimited possibilities to girls. Tii these days of light ’plane clubs there is a chance for races, stunting and altitude-flying, all of which are intensely exciting and exhilarating. I know of no sensation so utterly joyous as that given by speed in the air. To glide along even at the quite moderate [ ace of eighty or a hundred miles an hour without the slightest, shake or jar, ami to watch .the doll’s country sailing by about a .mile below in a. slightly undulating panorama of flattened valleys and bills, all marked out into tiny square fields, and embroidered by the white ribbons of roads and the silver ribbons of rivers—all! that’s the life indeed ! There is another aspect of the question besides that of sport, and one which will soon make it a very valuable asset for any girl to know how to fly. In a few years now, with the inevitable increase of aeroplane traffic," both commercial and private, the ’plane will become as common a method of locomotion as the car is to-day, besides being an infinitely more pleasant one there being no dust, no smell, and no bumping. This may sound a rather wild prophecy, but what would have been said to anyone who forctld the same thing about motors in 1000? Progress moves forward taster ami faster every year, and in nothing is the march of science more marked than in the Improvements to heavier-tliiiii-an machines. Already these are perfectly sale in trained hands—-practically foolproof, in fact. Anyway, they are undoubtedly safer than the motor-ear in tivse days of congested roads! Before many months 1 am confident that the secret of the helicopter—the aeroplane which can remain stationary in tiie air as well as fly through it—wi(l have been solved, and after that, in a, year or two at most, all machine--will be built so that the aeronaut can be just as safe hovering over a gem of an Irish .Jake or the hustle of a football field as is a car drawn up at fluside of either to-day. I foresee the time when road traffic will be almost unbelievably reduced, like horse traffic is now. Then, the whole day through, from the air norts of all the big cities, every sort of fiver will be seen gliding up and down and soaring away or humming into view, while tiny private machines will flit 10 arid tr-i like dragon-flies around a stream in early summer. And every girl who can should learn to fly right now—it’s cheap enough ! for then, when tlie Imm of aeroplanes mates cmslant music everywhere, the majority of the pilots wilt l:e—-woim.-M.