REAL PIONEERING

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 150, 26 June 1937, Page 10

REAL PIONEERING

MR. SCHAEF'S PLANE

BEFORE THERE WAS AN

AIRPORT

It was a happy thought that led the Minister of Transport to call before the Kotare this morning Mr. A. W. Schaef, whose exploits in aviation go back so many years that only some people remember the strange doings among the sandhills of what is now the Rongotai aerodrome, 27. years ago. Mr. Schaef built his machine and, with Mr. D. P. Fisher, did more in that between them they worked miracles with their first engine, a 14 h.p. JAJ". It had insufficient power—obviously, after the first trials were made—and they endeavoured to pep it up by fitting larger cylinders. The crankshaft smashed and there was long delay while material for a new shaft was brought over from Sydney; a new shaft was made, but for all the fine hand workmanship and ingenuity the plane would not fly. ' It was a monoplane, of the Bleriot type, and it was a very remarkable plane indeed, in that it embodied an idea of Mr. Schaef's, to be forgotten and reintroduced as new in very recent years—the flap, or air brake. It is.not possible to say definitely without much research whether this was the first application of the air-brake principle, but it is probable that this was so. ... Mr. Schaef and Mr. Fisher dissolved partnership after a tune, and the Lyall Bay pioneer rebuilt his wings and open fuselage and fitted to them a 30-h.p. Anzani radial engine, three cylindered, in "V" pattern. Long trials and tribulations were suffered at Lyall Bay in 1912 and 1913, and the plane did fly, but never at any great height, nor for anything like the full length of the beach. More pioneering work was done with it, for floats were fitted—again very early in the day—and attempts were made at Shelly Bay, but there was trouble here on every trial, for the plane sat low on the water and each wavelet threatened disaster to the propeller, whose tips were badly knocked about. The Wanganui River offered smoother going, and the float plane was taken there and was the centre piece of a grand river carnival, but it refused to lift from the water. But it was a trier. Its end came in a burst of flames in the hangar. To its building and rebuilding much money had gone and Mr. Schaef unwillingly gave aviation best

Meanwhile Mr. Fisher had built a plane of his own to the original 14 h.p. J.A.P. (so engineered as to be original only hi name and reputation), and this machine flew at Pigeon Bush, but that is another story.

Ned Peko, aged 42, of 146 Sydney Street, Wellington, suffered a compound fracture of his right leg when he was knocked down by a motor-car at 10.45 last night at the corner of Moleswor.th and Pipitea Streets. The Free Ambulance took him to the hospital.