BENEATH THE WINDSOCK

Evening Star, Issue 21825, 14 September 1934, Page 3

BENEATH THE WINDSOCK

[_By Gypsy Moth.] PIONEER WOMEN ELLERS. Britain's two pioneer women fliers are now living in retirement, mostly away from ’planes and aerodromes (states the Tiuiaru ‘ Herald ’). Mrs Hilda Hewlett, wife of the late Mr Maurice Hewlett, novelist and poet, was the first woman of British nationality to obtain a pilot’s certificate. That was in 1910 when she flew her machine, a Earman /biplane, at Brook-lands. A good business woman, she later started an aircraft factory and also a flying school. Her son is Group-captain Francis Hewlett. Mrs Hewlett spends most of her time nowadays in travel. She is living at the present time in Taurangn. The first woman to take tho air as a passenger was Mrs Cody, widow of the famous flying pilot, Colonel S. F. Cody, who was killed in an air tragedy in 1913. Her initial air venture was in 1901 when she went up in her husband’s man-lifting kite for a period of fifteen minutes. Seven years later she had her first flight in an aeroplane designed and piloted by her husband. Mrs Cody, who is in her eightyfourth year, lives in Surrey. AEROPLANE REPLACES SHIP. An unofficial- air mail—tho first in New Zealand for a long while—was carried by Mr J. C. Mercer on the West Coast last week. Calling at Okuru in the Canterbury Aero Club’s Fox Moth on Wednesday afternoon, Mr Mercer found that the Gael, a small coastal vessel that trades up and down the coast, could not leave there that clay, because the bar had silted up after she entered the river. He was asked to take the mail north, and did so (states an exchange).

'flic mail, consisting of two bags, 110 loose letters, and a few parcels, was taken as far as Waiho, where Mr Mercer had arranged to stay the night on Wednesday, and on to Hokitika the following morning. Mr Mercer had two busy days on the Coast. Ho wont to Hokitika from Christchurch cm Tuesday afternoon, and with two passengers flew south on Wednesday morning, leaving one man at the Ha’nst and the other at Okuru. At Upper Okuru ho picked up three more passengers—two boys returning to school after holidays and a woman—whom he took to Hokitika. He left there again at lunch time and (low to Waiho, where he packed up a passenger for tho Hanst. There the two men he had taken down in the morning were waiting for him. He took them, and the mail, to Waiho, stopping at Mahitahi on the way that afternoon, and on Thursday morning wont on with them to Hokitika.

On Thursday afternoon lie returned to Christchurch, his passengers this time being a newly-married couple. The flight back from Hokitika took an hour and a-half. Settlers in South Westland are so enthusiastic about the way the aeroplane has removed some of the disadvantages of their isolation,- Mr Mercer says, that they arc working energetically at improving the landing grounds. Last week-end there were fourteen men at work on the ground at Mahitahi, where much scrub has been cleared, leaving a good runway 450 yards long. THE SIKORSKY CLIPPER SHIP. The latest addition to the fleet of Pan-American Airways is the giant new Sikorsky S-42 Clipper Ship, which, besides the crew, accommodates thirty-two passengers. With a ballast load in excess of capacity this great four-engined craft took off ■in the amazingly quick time of 18soc with only a ten-mile breeze to assist during recent regular tests. The Shell Oil Company advises that the piano’s payload, exclusive of fuel, crew, equipment, etc., totals nearly eight tons, and its four 700 h.p. Hornet engines will lift it to an altitude of 10,000 ft within forty-five minutes. An idea of the size and the performance of the machine may he gained from the fact that the newest of America’s high-speed land transports could he dismantled and carried—together with its full authorised load of passengers, mail, baggage, crew, and fuel—inside the Clipper Ship without overloading it.