CHEAP FLYING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22137, 17 June 1935, Page 12

CHEAP FLYING

"MOTOR-CYCLE OF THE AIR" DEMONSTRATION BY AUSTRIAN A cross-country flight from London to Bristol in one and a-half hours does not appear to be an aerial achievement of outstanding importance. Yet a flight carried out last month by Mr. Robert Kronfeld, who started from Hanworth at two o'clock in the afternoon in his B.A.C. Drone aeroplane and arrived at Whitechurch Aerodrome, Bristol, an hour and a-half later marks an outstanding event in the progress of civil aviation. The significance of this flight is that for the first time an aeroplane powered by a 5 h.p. standard touring motorcycle engine has made a journey across countrv successfully. Mr. K ronfeld, the Austrian glider pilot, who holds all the principal world records for gliding and soaring flight, was demonstrating, with the special permission of the Air Ministry, a new type of machine which bridges the gap between the engineless glider and soaring aeroplane and the high-powered aeroplanes used in Britain. On his arrival at Bristol, Mr. Kronfeld stated: —-"Hitherto machines of this type have not been treated seriously. They have been regarded merely as toys, and it has been forbidden to fly them a greater distance than three miles from an aerodrome. My faith in the future of this 'motor-cycle of the air' was confirmed by its performance of the 120 miles test flight to Bristol. "I have piloted all kinds of aeroplanes and gliders, but never have I enjoyed the pleasures of flying moro than on this journey. For part of the way I was racing the "London-Bristol express, which left London at 1.45. I picked up the express at Reading, and flew a few hundred feet above it to Newbury and Hungerford, where it turned duo south, and I got well ahead. "People in the train seemed to enjoy the race. There were faces at all the windows looking up. I arrived in Bristol half an hour before the train was due, and the total cost to me in petrol and oil was less than 25."