DOMINION AVIATORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16593, 17 July 1917, Page 6

DOMINION AVIATORS.

SEVERE TESTS IN BRITAIN

Aviators trained at the Auckland Flying School are doing good work at the front. Mr. Edgar Garland, now flight-lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps, was one of the first Kohimarama pupils to pass the British tests. Writing of this in April last, he says: — Yesterday morning I went up to a great height, and did my altitude test of BCCOft. The weather was very foggy, and I could only see the earth directly below me. It was very cold, but the air was marvellously still, and my old engine was roaring away as good as ever. This is when you feel lonely, and can almost imagine that it is just a dream. After I had staved up there about a quarter of an hour, I switched off rnv engine, and commenced the long volplane back to the aerodome. There is nothing but the whistling of the air through the stays to keep one company on the way down. Unless a pilot shows he has no fear in the air, especially when he has been told to do a certain thing by his flight-commander, they will not have a very good- opinion of you. Captain Beatty, our flight-com-mander. is known as the " human bird." He told me to go up about 3000 ft and stall my engine, which is much more exciting to do than iooping-the-loop. On my descent after my altitude test, when at a, height of 5000 it* I pushed the control forward, and dived my machine about 200 ft, and then pulled it "right back. The nose shot up vertically, and instead of going right, over the loop my machine stopped just before it got. to the top. Everv sound stopped during that moment, and my speed-indicator registered nothing. Then she slid back tail first, but not very far, and flattened out for a few seconds, and still there was no sound. Then suddenly the nose dropped absolutely vertical, and I was looking straight down at the ground, and the faint sound of air whistling through the wires commenced, till in a few seconds it was a roar past my ears, and a screaming noise was audible. I dived like this for about 50Dft and then my controls began to act, and she came out of the dive in a glorious upward swoop. The wonderful sensation is the sudden drop at the commencement of the dive, and the great feeling of the cushion of air on the 'planes. When I had finished this I switched on my engine for about a minute, and did it again. To-day I flew in a very strong wind, but it was quit« nice up. Yesterday there was hardly any wind, but the machine bumped about terribly. It is the rising currents from the ground that are most annoying. A telegram was sent to my 0.C., asking*for two pilots for the famous aeroplanes. They are the celebrated French fighting machines, and it was on one of them that Warneford brought down the Zeppelin. They are armed with two machine-guns and are tremendously fast. I was lucky enough to be 0110 of the pilots chosen."