ON HIS NATIVE HEATH.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 101, 19 June 1911, Page 4

ON HIS NATIVE HEATH.

FAMOUS FLYER AT FEILDING. JOE HAMMOND’S RETURN. Joe Hammond, the now famous aviator, arrived in ' Feilding by the Auckland express from Wellington on Thursday last. He was met at the station by a small concourse of friends with enthusiastic greetings. Mr Hammond will probably stay some six weeks with his friends there. Ho says if sufficient support is forthcoming he is prepared to undertake aviation experiments in this country, but they must necessarily prove somewhat expensive. He thinks there is every chance of aeroplanes dropping considerably in price in the near future. and attributes their present price to the difficulty of procuring suitable engines, in which there is more or less of a monopoly. The motors on Mr Hammond’s machines cost 500 guineas each at the makers in Paris. If a few towns can' put up a guarantee Mr Hammond will give flying exhibitions in the summer. Mr Hammond’s longest flight without a stop was 200 miles. “As for my height,” ho says, “my record is 9900 ft., which I reached by taking big spirals for one and a half hours. In Australia I made nearly a hundred flights, travelling between a thousand and twelve hundred miles.” Though Mr Hammond used a biplane for most of ir.s exliibiti.ins, ho is now a firm believer in the monoplane of the Bleriot typo. “In both types the motive power is a Gnome engine with rotating cylinders running at 1250 revolutions, generating 50 horse power. It weighs only 165 lbs fixed complete. A biplane has 471 feet of plane surface, the monoplane between 260 and 280 feet, both Slaving the same engine pmwer. Forty miles an hour is the best speed with a biplane, but with a monoplane you can travel twice that speed.”