FLYING WITHOUT FEAR.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10748, 12 September 1913, Page 7

FLYING WITHOUT FEAR.

-When Wilbur and Orville Wright wrought patiently upon their out-of-the-way sandhills, gliding in a toboggan that needed rso rails but sat upon the yielding air,they were greatly harassed by the great difficulty that when your toboggan has no rails, one rail, to use an Irishism, is apt to give way. Their glider would not kaep an even keel. And they made an invention which lat9r enabled them practically to corner the use of aeroplane wings which can be "wared." The waring wing rectifies the titling of an aeroplane by increasing the lift of the wiuggOn the|falling side, and is to be found not only upon the Wright biplanes, but in the Bleriot mouoplane. The same result is secured in other types—tiie Farrnan, for example—by means of ailerons, which are small flaps hinged to the rear edges of the wings at each end, rigged so that those on the wings Which are tending to drop can be pulled downwards, giving them an extra lift So much for the first problem in the geeuring of stability, and the way it was overcome. It Las been left for a man whose name will go into history as a pioneer m aerial daring to find means for solving the problem in a really startling fashion. For the new machine of Bleriot, recently tested and found to be an inspiring spectacle, is one of the greatest developments since the discovery that man could really fly at all It is extremely easy to make a small model which ha 3 real inherent automatic stability. Such a model, in the form of a glider, caa be made out of folded paper. But it secures its properties trom a form which really bears little resemblance to a practical or practicable flying machine, though such a model may contain a principle of valuo in serious work. The really astonishing and spectacular feature of Bleriot's machine, as far es the cable mereage indicates, is that while many inventors have sought means for preventing a capsize by checking their machines when they begin to leave safe flying altitudes, the safoas-a-lifeboat aeroplane appears to be capable of recovery from the most topsy tnrvy situations. Considering how even the most daring of men rnmt find it difficult to co-ordinate his actions with his intentions while he is hanging upside down a long way above the hard and unfriendly earth in a new faugled device, however well he may trust it, it must appear in the meantime that this new machine can look after itself, and prefers to fly right way up. If it is thus stable and fool proof, flying as an art is to go, and flying as a craft. or even as a simple matter of a little skill, will come m its place. Difficulty and risk have almost alone been the bars to its becoming a pastime of the community. It may not be long now till telegraph wires shall be banished into underground conduits, so that the flying men shall have no invisible obstacles in their unmapped tracks.— N Z Herald