SCENERY ABOVE THE CLOUDS.

Waikato Independent, Volume XXII, Issue 2588, 24 August 1922, Page 7

SCENERY ABOVE THE CLOUDS.

Those civilians who intend to venture to a good height during the coming flying season will sec a great deal • both to interest and astonish them.

The distance to which they can see will alone impress them. If they merely ascended above 2,000 feet, they would be able to have a view on every hand of between 50 and 60 miles.

A height of 5,000 feet would enable them to enlarge their view to the extent of nearly ninety miles ; whilst should they venture up to say, 10,000 feet, they could see 125 miles in every direction —that is, the horizon would be that far' away.

But some of the things they would see in the sky would perhaps excite their wonder even more. If thunderstorms were about, and the machine was above the clouds, the passengers might have, the luck to witness the extraordinary spectacle of the big black thundercloud-heads thrust to a height of a thousand feet or more through the level sea of white cloud above which the aeroplane was travelling. i

Sometimes there would be banks of beautiful colours round the shadow of the aeroplane, caused by the sun shining on the water-drops in the cloud on which the shadow is cast.

At other times very large rings would appear. These would be due to tiny particles of ice in the air. A similar ring is occasionally seen round the sun and moon from the ground.

These, with white fogbows, double and treble mock suns, ice-pillars at sunrise, and the whole capped by the glorious cloud scenery, must indeed hold out for the civilian high-flyer a dazzling prospect.