FLYING UPSIDE DOWN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 38, 15 October 1913, Page 5

FLYING UPSIDE DOWN.

THE SAFETY AEROPLANE.

WONDERFUL PECOUD.

London, September 5

Apparently the trick aviator is likely soon to become almost as great a bore as the trick cyclist, writes the special correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Yon have read by cable of the feats of Adolphe Pegond, who had been Hying with his Bleriot machine upside down, looping the loop, and cutting other aerial capers at Hue, the aero-dome near Versailles. The story of tlu? performance as given by file Paris correspondent of the London newspapers, however, is worth reading in some detail: —

“You sae that blue hole between the Clouds?’’

said M. Pegond at Hue that morning. “1 shall begin there.” He climbed into the seat of his monoplane. “Here, my lad,” he said suddenly to a mechanic. “Here’s my purse. If J don’t come down again it is yours.” It was a grim joke at such a moment. Most of ns felt a slight shiver, but M. Pegond was smiling as usual. Up and round and round he went in sweeping circles. The beautiful monoplane, a fragile thing of golden brown ski mining along the dense white vales of clouds, would have been a sigiit to earn our admiration, lint M. Pegond has killed the interest of ordinary flying. He parsed above the cloud- out of sight for several minutes. At last he reappeared, a tiny tiling 3000 feet above, in his “blue hole.” And now it begins. There is a loud groan of fear and wonder mingled from the crowd as the monoplane plunged head first downwards for 400 ft. or so. Now it turns, and there is M. Pcgound underneath, head downwards, and the two little landing wheels perched up on top. As you peer through the glasses, wonder of wonders, Pegond is actually waving one arm, not above, hut below his head. Somehow one does not have the spasms of horror that one anticipated. The monoplane looks so steady and glides so firmly and so straight down its gently inclined course that it is hard to realise that its position is anything but normal.

And now it is giving a great wriggia. There is no other word that conveys so well the impression that the aeroplane makes in righting itslef. First it tails vertically again. Then the tail goes over until it is still for a second or two. He is flying upright once more, but in the reverse direction to that of his topsy-turvy dive. Lastly, with a quick corkscrew twist to the right, it resumes the direction of the dive once more, and behold it has suddenly become an ordinary well-be-haved monoplane flying steadily and prosaically round the field. But no monoplane could be prosaic for long with M. Pegoud on hoard. While the crowd below shouted, “Vive Pegoud!” and tried to drown • the roar of the engine with their shouting, Pegoud began leaping and curveting and Playing a Whirligig in the Air . in a 'fantastic fashion that is terrible yet delightful to watch. At last he consented to come down, and the crowd lifted him from his seat and carried him round the field, and fllh d his hands witli hastily plucked flowers, and thrust pencils and postcard photographs of himself into his lingers and worshipped him enthusiastically. He only went on smiling, quietly and amusedly, not shy, yet not in the slightest degree excited by the tumult. “You saw me wave to yon?” he said. “What did it feel like?” shouted a score of voices. “Well,” he said, “the petrol was leaking drop by drop out of the air-hole of my reservoir, and falling on my face. The draught from file propeller blew it ail over me like a spray. It felt just like being in a barber’s-chair upside down. You see it is just as easy to fly on your hack as the other way up.” Bleriot is Immensely Proud of his safety appliances and of the man who has had the physical courage to put it into operation. Theoretically it could not fail, he observed, but added that it required a man of Pegoud’s temperament thoroughly to test it.

Bleriot declares that, except in a few perfected details, the machine with which the experiment was carried out does not differ from any other of the Bleriot monoplanes. He thinks that any aeroplane of solid construction can become a seH-righter.

“Even a biplane?”, he was asked. “That I will not affirm,” he responded. In the present case the motor is a simple of) h.p., fitted with a stahiiisator rather larger than the type hitherto employed hy the constructor, and with particularly solid steering cords and lover connections. “I am convinced,” Bleriot insisted, “that the military commissions will require each aeroplane for use in the army to ho able to float in air in any position.” The experiment that has so fascinated Paris, as it opens up a vista of safe flying for■ everybody, is not strictly new, though, in its de-l finite experimental aspect, it is so. j Captain Auhry and Corporal Madon. of the Army Air Battalion, each righted themselves in air when their monoplanes had overturned hy accident. Madon actually “looped the loop” involuntarily. five times before arriving safe and sound to earth. A third aviator, Morin, also escaped with his life, through the self-righting of his i Blonotj