PARACHUTE RECORD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20930, 8 January 1938, Page 8

PARACHUTE RECORD

PROSPECTIVE ATTACK As practice for a prospective attack on the British Empire parachute descent record, Mr G. W. Sellars is planning to undertake a series of descents from altitudes of about 16,000 ! feet at Christchurch early this year. ' This is the greatest altitude to which a Moth aeroplane can carry him. His reasons for choosing Christchurch as the venue for these descents are first that the wide area of level cleared country offers few dangers in landing, and, second, that he made his first descent at Wigram in July, 1935. Since then he has made 160 descents, his last one, at Auckland lasl month, being from a height of 7800 feet, a I New Zealand record. Outside of the Air Force machines there is no aeroplane in New Zealand that can carry two men, pilot and parachutist, to the height of 23.000 feet, which is the British Empire parachute record, but Mr Sellars hopes to find in Australia a pilot and an aeroplane that can take him above this altitude. To break this record by any considerable margin, both men will have to carry oxygen masks, which the rarefication of the air renders essential above 24.000 feet. If he is successful in setting a new Empire record, Mr Sellars has hopes cf finding support for an attempt on the world record. This is now held in Russia, where a descent has been made from an altitude of 32.000 feet—over six miles. It is many years since the world record was held by a British parachutist. It has passed recently from America to France, from France to Czecho-Slovakia, and from Czechoslovakia to Russia.