THE MOTORLESS PLANE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 51, 28 February 1929, Page 12

THE MOTORLESS PLANE

THE THRILLS OF GLIDING YACHTING IN THE AIR Like a giant bird of prehistoric days, the streamlined, featherweight craft of thin plywood framework and light-woven linen wings is poised on a Hilltop for a stirring take-off. it js a windy day. To a nook at the bottom of the craft’s nose several men attach a tow-rope of rubber as thick as a man's finger. A gust of wind sweeps the mu. Aireauy the pilot das climbed into the cockpit and strapped himself in. “Let ’er go!” Half a dozen men race down the slope, drugging the machine at increasing speed as if it were a kite being launcned. Others run beside it, uoiuing up the fragile wings from me ground until they seize tiie air and uft the draft. “Free!” shouts the pilot. They let go. The tow-rope fans off and the loosed glider soars over their heads. There is no noiae, no smell, we read m Popular {Science Monthly,” only the beating of the wind against the wings. Like some giant crane, the great soaring bird wneels and glides on motionless pinions. Such a sport is gliding, or flying :n a fotorless airplane, launched, as we have seen, in the same way as a kite. This sport has just been introduced into America by three experts from Germany, the home of gilding. The three exports are Captain I’aul Koehre, Dr i’aul Laubenthal, and Peter Hesse 1 bach. These experts went to Cape Cod where proper conditions exist, md there tney have been demonstrating, teaching, and changing some conceptions. A glider flight, we are tola, need not end in a few minutes. In Germany one lasted more than fourteen hours. As for the flight in the Darmstadt, in which Hesselbach set a new American record on Cape Cod, Joseph T. Ballard, in ‘The Sportsman,’ Boston, tells us of it.

The Flight After describing :t take-off much like that above, he writes: There are one or two spontaneous cheers as young Peter Hesselbach care-, fully manoeuvres to gain altitude, anil then controls his motorless glider to take every advantage of the prevailing wind. Soon he banks into the wind, then heads the nose of his ship diagonally across the wind current, and slips down the beach again for a distance of two or three miles. He turns, banks and is again winging hrs way swiftly and silently towards the observers. He passes about eighty feet overhead, and continues his course for some eight miles down the other stretch of beach. Back and forth he goes, occasionally changing the course to take advantage of lifting currents to gain altitude lost in Hight. {Suddenly, he disappears over the edge of a hill and does not return. The observers soon realise that the flight has come to an end. They do not fear for the safety of the pilot, knowing full well his capabilities. After a brief search he is located *n a meadow near the main road. He has made a successful landing, with no damage to the ’plane or himself—and what is more, has established mi American record of over four hours, covering a total distance of 120 miles. The Darmstadt attains a majestic appearance when its broad wings, wich a spread of 60 feet, are set up. The craft is simply constructed, cf four-ply birchwood and linen. Its fuselage and other features are the same as those of a small-motored monoplane. The Darmstadt has no motive power whatever. It is equipped with a simple pedal arrangement for manipulating the ailerons and wings, and a stack for guiding the rudder. On the rudder a large black goose is painted in modernistic style, and at the nose is the emblem of the University of Darmstadt, whose students built the craft. It was launched ry ten men, wielding a long, slender yellow rubber rope, which acted as • a sling.

How it is Done Staying aloft thus in a motorless heavier-than-air machine seems an impossible feat, but there has been ample demonstration of its possibility. To learn how to keep up in the air in such a mach'ne it would be well, since Germany is at present the home of gliding, to turn to a German source. Accordingly, we quote from Johannes Nehring, member of the Academic Flyers at Darmstadt, Germany, who wrote thus in “European Sport Activities,” published this year in Bremen: The first thing which the young sailing flyer must learn is gliding. This signifies nothing more than flying from an elevated place in the open field to a lower point. Such glides can be carried out even without any win*?. Our best gliding planes, or shall w»? say, sailing planes, attain a distance of about a mile when gliding, in ‘.he absence of wind, from a height of 300 feet. If one were to start, therefore, with such a machine from a mountain 5000 feet high, one would fly a distance of 60 miles, provided the land-ing-point were at elevation zero. Eveiy motor airplane comes to earth by gliding if the motor is turned off, but in such planes, the gliding angle when compared with that of sailing planes (which in exceptional cases arc used for flights without motor) is very poor. And now as .to “sailing.” This is only possible in an ascending current of air. We call such a current the “upwind,” and it must at least be so strong as to make up in each second the distance which the plane loses in elevation in gliding. The task of the sailing flyer, therefore, is to make use of the upwind. If the upwind is stronger than the sinking of his plane, he will be lifted and the plane will rise above the starting-point. Repeatedly wo have seen sailing planes attain heights of 900 and even 1500 feet. Even with a passenger, the sailing plane Margarete of the Darmstadt Technical College has frequently risen more than 900 feet.