HOW GLIDING FLIGHTS CAN BE MADE FROM FLAT GROUND.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 65, 18 March 1931, Page 6

HOW GLIDING FLIGHTS CAN BE MADE FROM FLAT GROUND.

A London Letter

Railway* s Novel Vehicle Will Travel Both By Road And Rail.

(Special to the “Star.”) LONDON, February 12. A demonstration of gliding with the glider towed by a motor-car to launch it into the air was successfully given at the Hanworth Aerodrome this week. The weather was by no means good for flying, but Mr Lowe Wylde, the designer and constructor of the glider, made many ascents. For auto-towed gliding the machine is connected to a car by a fine wire cable run out to about 150 or 200 yards. The car is started slowly and draws the glider along until it soars into the air, the pilot releasing the wire when he has attained the desired height. The new method means that llights can be made from any aerodrome or from Rat ground anywhere, the necessity of catapulting from high ground being obviated.

*pHE MASTER OF SEMPIU,. who arranged the demonstration and who himself made gliding flights, emphasised the value of auto-towed gliding as a cheap and easy and safe method of getting living instruction. For a few shillings an hour the beginner can learn with a glider what it would cost him several pounds to learn in an ordinary aeroplane. Apart from its advantages in flying instruction, it is believed that auto-towed gliding will lend to big developments in the. sport of cloud soaring, in which, under suitable conditions, pilots of gliders will remain for hours in the air, taking advantage of the air currents under the cloud-banks to maintain height. Mr Lowe Wylde’s best flight this time was one of two and a half minutes, in which he got up to about 450 feet, made a complete circuit of the aerodrome and landed near his starting point. Two women made their first glider flights—Miss Delphino Reynolds, of Liverpool, who is about to start on an aeroplane flight to the Cape, and Mrs Branson, whose husband is an aircraft instructor. Railway’s Novel Vehicle. A party of officials and guests of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway travelled by road and rail this week in the same vehicle, w T hich has been christened “ The Ro-Railer ” —the run being in the neighbourhood of Hemel Hempstead. The Ro-Railer, ■which seats twenty-six, has mainly the appearance of the ordinary . motor-coach, but at its back there are buffers and inside its pneumatic-tyred wheels there are flanged rail wheels, and in less than five minutes it can be turned from a road coach into a railway vehicle. Passengers step into it from the ordinary platform. At Hemel Hempstead the vehicle ran on to a siding where the ground had been made up to the level of the tops of the rails. Here it was stopped, while the road wheels, which are mounted on an eccentric device and are raised up during the vehicle’s passage on the railway, were lowered to the ground. The coach then drove off along the road for a short distance, and upon returning to a siding was replaced on its railway wheels in little more than two minutes. This vehicle, which can be adapted either for passenger traffic or haulage of goods, is an attempt to combine the advantages of road and rail transport. How useful an attempt it is, remains to be seen. Sir Josiah Stamp said that its future is not yet determined, but it is believed that in practical application this means of transport will be the safest in existence, and can at the same time attain a speed on the road / of over 50 miles an hour and on the rails as high as 75 miles per hour, by means of a special top gear. The Ro-Railer has accommodation lor 26 passengers, and will provide the normal motor-coach service combined with that Of the railway. The London, Midland and Scottish claims that its running .cost on the railway line will be appreciably less than that of the ordinary motor-coach, and that on the road the special mechanism means so little additional weight that the expense is not a great deal higher than that of the ordinary motorcoach. It has among other possibilities that of useful service on branch lines. The idea on which it is based has for some time taken the attention of transport engineers and

manngers, and this “ Ro-Railer ” is certainly an interesting and, one would judge, efficient illustration of possibilities in this direction. The vehicle is comfortable to travel in, both on rail and road, and passengers are attracted by the observation car aspect of the country which it gives from the railway lines. Influenza on the Continent. Reports from several parts of the country of outbreaks of influenza on a large scale are not reflected so far in the statistical returns prepared by the RegistrarGeneral. Influenza is not notifiable. There may be much of it about of a mild type without any appreciable effect on the vital statistics. In the past few weeks there has been a slight increase in the number of deaths ascribed to influenza, and the returns for last week will show a further rise. No notable change has occurred in the tables of age-distribution, and -without that statistical alteration the health authorities do not consider conditions warrant the use of the term “ epidemic.” Another indication of the prevalence or otherwise of influenza is the state of the returns of pneumonia, a notifiable illness. So far there has been no abnormal increase. The health returns, in fact, show little more than the ordinary increases to be expected at this time of the year. The expectation that an influenza epidemic is possible in the near future is based on reports from abroad of widespread outbreaks of a mild type. The League of Nations Health Department has asked European Governments to make special reports on the prevalence and type of the trouble being experienced. Preliminary returns confirm the reports of epidemics on the Continent. Fortunately, British health statistics seem to indicate that the population generally is in a good condition to resist any immediate invasion of infection. The Keats* Home at Hampstead. Hampstead Borough Council is to consider proposals for putting the house where Keats, lived when he wrote “ The Ode to a Nightingale ” back to the condition in which he knew it. The proposed changes are not extensive and chiefly concern the removal of a low annex and some other additions made to the building years after Keats had died. Certain parts of the house remain much as they were in 1818. The sitting-room certainly has undergone no structural alteration, but its window no longer looks out on a garden, and no nightingales are attracted by the surround of buildings that has grown up since all Hampstead was an Arcadia. The Keats’ house is a public property-. Some time ago, there was danger that it might disappear, but a National Committee was formed to save it, and of the total sum of £4650 raised, more than half was subscribed in the United States. The Hampstead local authority is responsible for the Keats’ House, and, in using a part of the adjoining grounds for a branch library, is appropriately designing a museum of relics more eloquent of the poet’s personality than the epitaph on his nameless tombstone in Rome. The idea of restoring the Hampstead house to its late eighteenth century state is happily conceived, and, if judiciously, interpreted, will add much to the attractiveness of a place of pilgrimage for all Eng-lish-speaking peoples.