AVIATION NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19347, 6 December 1924, Page 15

AVIATION NOTES.

INTERNATIONAL AIR COMMISSION. AERIAL BOY SCOUTS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, October 21. An air-scout branch of the Boy Scout movement is to bo developed side-by-sido with the light aeroplane clubs which axe to spring up throughout the country. The boys of to-day will be the airmen and aeronautical engineers of to-morrow. In Germany, France, and other countries, ©very effort is being made to give boys a practical interest in flying, and to make them wish to take to the air in the same way as boys of previous generations have yearned for a. life on the sea, Light-’plano clubs, with flying-fields, sheds, repair shops, and fleets of small aeroplanes, will, it is realised, provide admirable scope for air-scout work .the boys being brought into a direct touch with aviation. They will bo able to make themselves useful in all sorts of ways on the aerodromes, moving machines in and out of sheds, handling them when on the ground, and mounting guard when required. Chances will, come their way, also, of being taken up as passengers in two-seater craft, and of thus gaining an early “baptism of the air.” The building of model aeroplanes and gliders will also be encouraged, and the boys will hear lectures by air experts A juvenile handbook, prepared already by the Air League of the British Empire, will form a capital nir-scout guide, dealing as it does in clear, simple language with the primary facts about flying. In order that this air-scout scheme may keep pace with the progress now being made in regard to air-clubs, conferences are to bo held at which plans will be ca.tlined enabling on aerial branch to he fitted into its place in the general Boy Scout cr ganisation.

UNIFORM CONTROL OF EUROPEAN FLIGHT. An International Air Commission is being held in Paris this week. Among the subjects being discussed is the alteration of Article 5 of the Aerial Navigation Convention, 1919, so as to admit the free circulation of the air-craft of ex-enemy States in the air space of both Allied and neutral States. Article 5 reads as follows: “No contracting State shall, except by a special and temporary authorisation, permit the flight above its territory of an aircraft which does not possess the nationality of a contracting State.” The effect of this was that, so long as Germany and other ex-enemy States were not parties to the Convention, they were debarred from the right of innocent passage through the territory of the signatories Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark declined to adhere to the Convention, pointing out that their own aircraft might not bo shut out of Germany in retaliation. The difficulty was met in a measure by a Protocol of June, 1920, allowing temporary “derogations” from Article 5. This was found to bo a clumsy diplomatic process, and now all the leading signatories have signed a Protocol carrying Article 6 so as to give a much widesr latitude for aerial navigation over the whole airspace of Western Europe. The Commission has no authority to make this change, but favours it. It is believed that the two Protocols will ease the way not only for Germany to enter the Convention, as Bulgaria already has done, but the former neutral countries to do the same. This would mean a uniform control over international flight throughout Western Europe.