FLYING SENSATIONS

Evening Star, Issue 20032, 24 November 1928, Page 11

FLYING SENSATIONS

“FEAR IS THE SAUCE" EXPERT AIRMAN’S REFLECTIONS The world, seen through a telescope from an aeroplane travelling at 100 miles an hour, ought in all reason to appear boring and monotonous. —‘ Morning Post.’ An occasional flight in an aeroplane in these days is the experience of many, but the feelings of a competent airman, as explained by Air Don, Brown, cannot fail to interest. • “ Tho roar of tho motor builds a grey wall of monotonous sound, deeper than silence. When it stops the sudden quiet strikes your oars like an explosion. Tho propeller,, a few toot ahead, bats the air viciously, and Bft polished wooden club whirling about 1,500 times a minute. The wind thrown back at you becomes almost solid and pounds at your face,” writes Mr Don. Brown, in tho ‘ Now Republic.’

‘ ‘ Seated deop in the cockpit of a light plane, only the top of your head rises above the fuselage, and, feet on the rudder bar, one hand on the control stick, you peer carefully through goggles across tho hose of your craft to keep it balanced by aligning it with the horizon. The ‘ sense of Balance seems to be a myth. Most flyers tell the position of their plane by its relation to the horizon or by instruments. “ Flying through a thick fog or cloud, without instruments, where you can see neither the horizon nor the earth below, you may com© out plunging downward at an angle of 45deg or steeper. You arc not so apt to fall in other directions because the terrific pressure of the wind against this or that side of your face warns that you are falling in tho direction from which this pressure comes, THE AIR AND IT CURRENTS. “The air is unstable. Unseen currents move up and down, back and forth incessantly. The plane, which from the ground appears to be floating evenly through quiet air, may be pitching and tossing about roughly, dropping 20ft, 50ft, or 100 ft in a second as it flies into a down current at ninety miles an hour, then regaining height with a lurch as it strikes ono going up. “ With the plane dropping under you your body becomes fearfully light. Only the safety strap across your middle holds you to your seat. When the plane catches itself on a cushion of air at tho end of a plunge you feel heavy, as though you had turned to lead and your weight might tear through the frail vibrating structure and go on' falling. One gets these sensations mildly in a fast elevator as it stops suddenly* while ascending or descending.

“Rhythm is life to an aeroplane. The hand at the controls must press quickly, but smoothly, even gently. The controls move lightly; little physical exertion is required. Playing a violin is good preparation for Hying. When rhythm and speed are lost the plane, which seemed almost a living thing, becomes lifeless, heavy, several thousand pounds of metal, wood, and fabric, falling through the screaming air, carrying you down, out of control. “In a case like this the stick must be held forward to make the plane divo nose first. When it gets into the diving position it responds to all the controls and can be gradually levelled out. If there is not room enough between you and the earth to do this, it is, in the argot of the hangars, ‘ just too bad.’ A plane cannot bo forced into a maumuvro which, if a fixed trail were left in tho sky, would not be a lino of curved heavy gracefulness. Where its smooth sweep is broken the plane falls. “Yon must think and feel in three dimensions at once properly to control the plane. With the control stick rising between your knees and mounted on a universal joint so that it may be swung in any direction, you move tho wing tips, or ailerons, with sideways movements, and control the up and down direction with backward and forward movements. With a rudder bar on which your feet rest you steer to the right or left. A throttle close at hand controls the motor. Manosnvres must always be made by working all these controlling elements in tho proper relation to each other. “ For instance, in making a turn to the left you use the wing tips to bank the plane over at the proper angle, just as a racing auto is tilted over by the incline of a curved race track. Then with the rudder you start the turn, shifting the elevator continually to keep the plane from diving on its nose or climbing into the air so steeply that you lose Hying speed. All these movements must be made more quickly than they can be told. At first it seems almost impossible to do this with the roaring, vibration, and dizzy motions of the plane, but given a strong | heart, quick eyesight, and sensitive muscular control you soon learn. That is, if nothing unfortunate happens. LOOPING THE LOOP. “In acrobatics one finds a strange ! thrill, vastness, and whirling heavens and earth, visioned before our time perhaps only by some Baudelaire lost in an opium dream. “ Here there is a curious example of human egotism.. Turning about and whirling over in the sky, I remain still the centre of the universe. The earth and tho sun swing about me swiftly with mighty, smooth sweeps. Sometimes for a moment I look up to see the earth and down on the sun. Then I know I am hanging head down, strapped in the cockpit, but it does not seem so. The earth has merely slipped from below me and nloved into the sky above. Below me there is nothing but space and clouds, magnificent land- , scapes of Clouds. . “Falling nose first in a spin, I have seen the earth whirl about stra., ahead until there were a dozen horizons, swiftly intersecting one another like an animated geometry problem. | But a geometry problem coloured beau- 1 tifully with great blue patches of cloud shadows, gilded areas of sunlight, > gleaming lakes and bright clouds before I a deep clear sky in which there was ( nothing between mo and infinity but i invisible stars—all these forms slip- j ping into one another like bright phan- 1 toms. It is hard to realise that the i earth could rise and, with increasing swiftness, crush you so cruelly. I “In a ■ straight dive down, coming out of a ‘ stall ’ where I have pulled tho plane up so steeply that it has lost flying speed and fallen out of control, , 1 have seen houses, factories, and. other ; objects on the earth below swell iq size with a smooth ominous swiftness which stopped only when I levelled off and began to fly straight. , WHEN YOU CAN MAKE ERRORS. “Fear is tho sauce for flying. keeps you from ever being bored. There have been times when all my will was concentrated on a quietly desperate effort to keep myself from panic and hold a delicate control of the plane when the slightest error might have meant what 1 dared not even imagine. I think that all flyers have been afraid at times. But the fascination outweighs the fear. A few quit because fear gets the best of them. I have heard them admit this, and no flyer with experience ever blamed them. Student aviators, temperamentally unsuited for flying, sometimes suddenly become paralysed with fright and ‘ freeze to the controls, killing themselves or even their instructors. , , .. , “ Flying at a considerable height : gives me the same comfortable feeling ■as having money in the bank. At B,oooft 1 can fly carelessly or make : errors which would bo serious lower, and still have the space below into which to dive to regain control of the j plane. Making the same error at luu or fiUO tect, i might hit the ground y going 100 piles an hour before I could even change the direction of my con- ; trols, much less straighten put the plane.’*