AN AVIATOR THWARTED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19807, 30 November 1927, Page 11

AN AVIATOR THWARTED.

TRANSTASMAN AMBITION. DEPARTURE PREVENTED. NEW AUSTRALIAN REGULATIONS. [FROM 01'b own correspondent. ] SYDNEY, Not. 23. A regulation which the Commonwealth Government put into operation immediately after the disasters of the Dole Prizo air race from San Francisco to Honolulu, ha 3 probably been the cause of an Australian airman failing to fulfil one of his life's ambitions—to fly from Australia to New Zealand. The pilot is Captain P. H. Moody, one of Australia's best-known civilian airmen. For several years he had been a pilot in the service of Australia's premier commercial aviation system, the Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service. He has flown more than 200,000 miles without a single mishap. Several months ago he resigned his position with the expressed intention of being the first man to spaa the Tasman Sea by air. Captain Moody and his financial backer Wr.lit to the United States, and were there shortly after Colonel Lindbergh achieved his New York to Paris flight. Captain Moody reasoned that if a Ryan monoplane with a Wright "Whirlwind'' engine could carry Colonel Lindbergh across the Atlantic, the same combination would more than suffice for the transtasman effort. Captain .Moody and his backer saw the machine they had in mind, tasted it, aud bought it. A 200 h,p. 'plane, it was an improvement, on Colonel Lindbergh's. It could carry two passengers on a non-stop flight, of 2000 miles With one aboard it could travel almost twice that distance without a stop. Captain Moody, his backer, and the plane left for Sydney. In New Zea« land they f-pent four days choosing a suitable landing ground, and a spot near New Plymouth was decided upon. Then the party came to Sydney, to learn that during their absence a regulation had been put into force prohibiting the use of % land machine for journeys further than 50 miles from the mainland of Australia. The Ryan monoplane is a land machine, and hence it is still lying on a Sydney wharf in the crate in which it left, America.