WONDER ’PLANE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume X, Issue 17, 3 January 1920, Page 3

WONDER ’PLANE.

PROPELLERS AS WINGS. INVENTOR’S STORY. Flight without wings is the problem which M- Louis Lacoin, the French engineer, claims to have solved with the aid of M. Louis Damblanc, writes the Paris correspondent of an English journal. “Three years ago I submitted the first plans of my invention,” he told me this afternoon in his study at Pussy, the western residential quarter, “to the hi ventions Committee of the French War Offipe. They laughed at the and said that no helicopter (a flying machine with horizontal propellers) could fly and that it was useless to make the experiment. When I insisted they gave me the two airplane engines which I needed to continue my experiments.

“Since then my friend an<l co-iuven-tor, M. Louis Damblanc, and I have shewn them the progress made and the experts were so struck with the plans and proofs brought forward that we were at once given a subsidy of £4OOO and promised further help if necessary. IVb had already spent £lO,OOO private money in experiments.

“The airplane or alerion, as we call it, is in reality a sinjple machine. The body is built exactly like that of an airplane with roar skid, landing wheels and rudder- The chief novelty is that the entire force of suspension is provided by the twin propellers, which are situated in a horizontal position on cither side of the body of the machine in th© axis of the centre of gravity. The propellers are four-bladed and resemble roughly a lucky clover with four leaves. Each blade is like the wings of an ordinary airplane with longitudinal strut and metal membranes covered with airplane linen.

“So I have calculated that our motors need never drive these propellers at any very high speed (roughly jne-third the speed of the ordinary flying machine propeller). Yet to ensure rigidity by steel stays which make them capable of over-coming a strain of more than 80001 b. Each blade has a surface of 45 square feet, which gives for the machine a total suspension surface of 360 square feet-” ’How do you start the machine from the ground?” I asked, “That is one improvement 1 contend the alerion will introduce,” he replied. “Our machine does not need to start at any great speed, and, indeed, when we put the full-size machine to its full test next spring I intend to start at the lowest speed possible. “It is only when the ‘joy stick’ I put the blades at the proper angle that gradually the machine will rise horizontally. When I want to move forward I manoeuvre the tail and push the ’joy stick’ over a little farther.

“Flying in a helicopter has been delayed by the absence of motors. The irdinary airplane has exacted the motors we require.” “If your motors fail in the air, what would you do?” “If only one of them stopped, the ipparatus Inking them up, so that they both work the propellers at the same speed, would ensure a slow flight with the remaining motor. If both failed at once, the pilot would put them out of gear and toe machine would plane down supported by the 360 square feet propeller surface 'and the propellers would revolve independently by wind pressure. “I have had plenty of offers from pilots anxious to test it,” M. Lacoin concluded, “but I think that the first time the alerion leaves the ground I shall be in charge.”