HEAD FIRST AIR DIVE

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2340, 9 January 1926, Page 14

HEAD FIRST AIR DIVE

1000 FEET TEST OP PARACHUTE. The first public "live” drop by parachute from an aeroplane—a drop in which a man takes the place of a durqmy-—was made by Captain H. Spencer, using a British “Autochute” parachute designed by Colonel H. S. Holt, Inventor of the Holt aeroplane and parachute flares. -a After the aeroplane had . ascended • from the Stag Lane Aerodrome at Edgware, Middlesex, to Iphout 1000 ,feet Captain Spencer jumped head first from the passenger’s seat, in a 40 mllcs-an-hour wind. In Colonel Holt’s invention there are three parachutes in one container. One, a tiny “pilot” parachute, springs out first and sets the whole apparatus working. Then a small edition of the : main parachute files open, to bo followed almost- instantly to the manIcarrying parachute, which is 17 feet in ulamojer. The effect was that Captain Spencer’s fall, instead of being arrested with a jerk, was checked smoothy and he drifted down on the wind and made a safe landing on a field.' (; Colonel Holt says it is possible to equip his parachute with a clockwork mechanism which can bo set so aa to open a parachute automatically immediately after the person using it has jumped from an aeroplane.