A NEW AEROPLANE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20273, 6 April 1934, Page 1

A NEW AEROPLANE.

Of Revolutionary Design and is “ Uncrashable.” United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, April 5. Britain will shortly be offered the plans of the Bellaplane, a revolutionary type of aircraft which is claimed to be uncrashable.. It is able to land anj'where or make a record flight to Australia. The designers are Dr H. P. Holler, an American, and Mr John Howard, a Canadian. The Bellaplane comprises a heliumfilled envelope, which partly supports a plane equipped with four engines and two autogiros. It is able to carry twenty-five passengers at a cruising speed of 100 miles an hour. Australian Designer’s Plane for Air Race. LONDON, March 27. ( aptain Edgar Percival, the Australian aircraft designer, will enter his new Mew Gull machine in the speed section of the Centenary air race from London to Melbourne. He intends to fit an extra tank to the machine, giving it a range of 1000 miles. Captain Percival hopes that the greater speed of his plane will compensate for the limited range. He has not yet decided whether he will pilot the machine himself. The Mew Gull is a tiny ail-wood single-seater, low-wing monoplane. The wing span is 24ft. The machine is 19tt long, and is powered by a 150 hp. Napjer Javelin air-cooled engine. It is intended for sporting pilots and for training fighter pilots. The cruising speed is approximately 190 m.pdi. and the top speed 215. It is priced about £IOOO. On a recent trial the machine climbed like a rocket to 3000 ft, and then dived to the aerodrome, whizzing past the spectators at a speed of 260 miles an hour. It is the first non-military machine built in Britain capable of more than 200 miles per hour. Flew Gliders at 16. Born near Richmond, New South Wales, in 1897, Captain Percival ear'y succumbed to the lure of flying, and at 15 had flown gliders of his own design. At 16 he was a member of the Hart Aviation Company of New South Wales. Enlisting in the Light Hoise during the Great War, he later transferred to the Royal Air Force and served in France and Palestine, afterwards joining the Royal Flying Corps and serving in Egypt until 1920. On his return home, Captain Percival became Australian agent for A. V. Roe and Co., and “ barnstormed ” the Commonwealth in his own Avro. Always experimenting with new designs, he won a prize for a machine of h«s own make in 1925, and in 1929 went to England and became a test pilot tor the Bristol Aeroplane Company. There he designed the Percival Gull machine, a type which Sir Charles Kingsford Smith used to achieve his last solo record flight to Australia last October.