AIRMEN’S ADVENTURES

Taranaki Daily News, 9 June 1931, Page 9

AIRMEN’S ADVENTURES

TOUR OF A GIPSY MOTH. ' PORTUGAL TO AFRICAN COAST. London, May 1. Few air travellers nowadays, when the light aeroplane trip across the world is almost a commonplace, can hope to enjoy the thrills of Hying where no man has ever flown before to the extent described by' Mr. Eduardo Bieck in his vivid account, just received •n London, of a journey of 12,730 miles from Lisbon to Portuguese Guinea and Angola and back to Portugal, which he made in company with Lieutenant Humberto da Cruz early this year. . In many places the airmen s Gipsy Moth two-seater biplane was the first light aeroplane to be seen and in others the first flying machine of any kind to land. Evidently there is still much to do in the way of air exploration; the ambitious private owner need not yet sigh for. fresh worlds to conquer. The journey was full of incident and pleasantly spiced with adventure. The airmen flew through tornadoes, were chased to a height of 8000 ft by a whirling sandstorm, dodged torrential rains—and sometimes failed to dodge them—fought against the harmattan wind from the desert and flew for hours in low clouds and bad visibility. At some tropical aerodromes the air was rare, owing to the great heat; once the aeroplane stalled coming into land, but the skill of the pilot corrected the error in time. At the next aerodrome they decided to take no chance of the same thing recurring and levelled out to land at the extraordinarily high speed of 95 miles an hour, thus keeping well above the stalling point even in the thin hot air.

Mr. Bieck states that the machine spent 170 hours in the air, flying nearly every day. For 25 days it was picketed in the open at the end of the day’s flying without any sort of cover, under blazing sun in some places, deluged by terrific rains at others, but on its return to Lisbon, they say, the machine and engine were in perfect condition, the fabric spick and span and as taut as on the day the airmen left Lisbon two months before.

At Abidjan, on the Ivory Coast, the craft was picketed for the night under trees. A violent tornado broke sudleny, one of the holding ropes parted and the machine was lifted and flung against a tree, smashing the port elevator. No “spare” of. this magnitude was nearer than England and a; local carpenter was set to work to make a new elevator, using an elastic indigenous wood called avodiri. The new elevator was covered with what remained of the torn fabric and coated with two tins of motor-car paint. “The test flight,” declares Mr. Bieck, “was most exciting, as we were not quite certain of the elevator’s factor of safety! However, the machine took off all tight and once in the air we rocketed it violently and as it stood perfect to this test we decided that the elevator would see us through. And it did.” The entire flight, except for two “fill ups” with aviation spirit was done on what Mr. Bieck calls “very ordinary” motor spirit, sometimes containing a large percentage of kerosene. The engine got rather hot once or twice under this treatment, but did not otherwise complain, and a slight top overhaul on the return journey, done by the two men in an open field under the tropical sun, cheered it up again. Mr. Bieck attributes the need for any overhaul at all entirely to the very bad quality of petrol obtainable. The itinerary sings of strange peoples and glamour, even in days when all the world seems known and few secrets are hidden. Down the African coast the travellers flew to Portuguese Guinea by way of Morocco, Mauretania and Senegal. Then they shot inland to Tambacounda and Kayes on the Senegal River and Bamako on the Niger, nextoyer virgin forest to the sea coast at Abidjan and again along the coast to Loanda and Benguella in Anga’.o, travelling past Accra, Cotonu in Dahomey, Lagos, Duala in the Cameroons, Port Gentil in Gaboon, Pointe Noire and the Belgian Congo.