GLIDING TO THE TOP OF THE WORLD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 53, 4 March 1939, Page 5

GLIDING TO THE TOP OF THE WORLD

A Truer Conquest of the Air

Q.REAT technical advances are being made in the art of gliding. In Germany, a country which may be considered as the “cradle” of the movement, the Government actively encourages the sport, writes Air Commodore L. E. O. Charlton, in The United Services Review, London. In Russia, gliding and parachuting appear to be coupled as twin sports with an immense following and with the appeal of a great popular interest, so that it is not surprising that she should claim to have more qualified glider pilots than any other country. The following statement of a few world records will serve to show to what heights of development the art of soaring has attained. In 1935 a German, Rudolf Oeltzschner, flew 313 miles from Wasserkuppe, in Germany, near Frankfurt, to Brno, in Czechoslovakia. The year before that another German, Heinrich Dittmar. reached a soaring height of 14,190 feet over Rio de Janeiro. No longer than a few weeks ago Mr. Philip Wills, one of the foremost sailplane pilots of the world and probably our British best, who holds already a distance record, set up a new height record for these islands by reaching 10,000 feet in a German Minimoa sailplane. He explains that high flying requires a special training and technique for the reason that, above a certain height, it must be performed blind in cloud, and that the instruments for reducing the hazards of blind-flying with which the modern aircraft is equipped are expensive and beyond the reach of an ordinary purse. Apart from that, the

main difficulty is attacks of dizziness to which the pilot is subjected, either because of the rough conditions encountered or because of the necessity to fly blind in constant circles in order to remain within the circumscribed areas of rising air which are cloudcontained. He instances, in analogy, the old parlour trick of walking round and round a walking-stick, clasped with both hands at the top and with the head bent down to touch them. As everyone knows who has tried it, the after-effect to walk steadily and straight is always a lamentable and comic failure. To fly thus blindly, lacking a special instrument equipment, needing all the time to control the plane in three dimensions, and confronted with the serious danger to life or limb which might ensue from ill-judgment, involves a strain on the mind or a nerveracking order, more especially as the instruments with which sailplanes are equipped must be slavishly obeyed at the very moment when the senses shout for an exactly opposite reaction. When at 4,500 feet he saw a large storm-cloud to be building up eight miles off and flew towards it. He found an active current of ascending air and spiralled upwards with it into a kind of diving bell, able, although more and more dimly, to discern the ground below until he reached the top, when everything vanished. He felt in the total absence of the noise and vibration which attends power-flight, as if he had been silently absorbed by a huge octopus. He was as if entrapped in an envelope of sticky nature, and even

the rush of air over the wings and body of his Minimoa assumed a different tone and became smoother and more quiet. Due to the thickness of the cloud, subsequently discovered to be more than a mile high, the vapour which surrounded him was of a bluishblack and also octopus-like in hue, for, to quote his own words, “it is only the shallower clouds or the fringes of the big ones which assume the friendly hues of white or light grey.” With nothing to break the utter stillness except the wholesome buzzing of the electric motor of the tournindicator, he found himself climbing now at 15 feet a second, and then, just as he struck a rough patch, his head began to swim with vertigo. But he had noticed previously the lay of the cloud and by heading north emerged in a few minutes into dazzling sunshine at 7.500 feet. As soon as the dizziness had subsided he headed back again with the intention of flying through the cloud and out again on the other side, but struck a smooth patch of fast-rising air and recommenced to spiral upwards instead. At this stage ice began to form on all protuberances, on the cockpit front, and on the leading edges of the wings. This, howover, did not worry him, for neither rain nor hail was met with, and he knew that Minimoas had safely emerged from just such severe conditions of weather in Germany. Nevertheless, he confesses to a nervous strain, as well he might, and saw relievedly that his altimeter needle had topped the 10,000 feet mark, the height which he had set himself to reach. Visions of tea at the club-house came before him as the light grey, and at last he emerged from the storm-cloud, but only to be disappointed. For a sea of cumulus stretched below, unbroken to the eye, and further blindflying started him in the face. Finally he was fortunate enough to find a small gap and came into clear sky just north of Luton, his cloud having drifted about eight miles during the 35 minutes he was in it.