A NEW FLYING-MACHINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9229, 17 June 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

A NEW FLYING-MACHINE.

• « Successful experiments, it is claimed, have been recontly made with a flying machine constructed on a somewhat new principle. The trial took place on a track 628 feet in circumference near Harrow. The machine, driven by an aerial screw propoller, is worked by a steam engine, the total weight being 3301b. The carriage is 25 feet in length and 18 inches wide, and the fifty sustainers or slats 1J inches wide and 23 feet long, fitted 2 inches apart in a frame 22 feet in transverse direction, and 9J feet in height. These sustainers of the weight have a combined area of lifting surface of 136 square feet, and ib would take a wind of over 30 miles an hour bo lift the machine, to which a dead weight of 721b of iron and shot was also attached. The compound engine has a working pressure of some 1801b per square inch, and the propeller is 6 feet in diameter, with 8 feet pitch, and has a projected area of blade surface of 4 square feet. The revolutions are about 400 per minute, and the speed of the machine, according to the statement of the inventor, about 35 miles an hour. When the machine, held in position by wire, was started, ib at first ran rapidly round the track, and during the second lap, meeting a stiff wind while at full speed, rose 3 feet or 4 feet from the ground, and continued its flight half tho whole distance, completing the 628 feet in 15sec, travelling, therefore, at the rate of about 28 miles an hour. At present the machine bos no steering gear, and has been simply constructed to test the effect of the new kind of aoroplane. On a second trial, with the dead weight lessened to 161b, the results were still more successful, the machine flying round three-quarters of the track; bub on each occasion, soon after turning out of the opposing wind, it dropped, and continued its course on the wheels. .