AERIAL GLIDING

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 44, 21 February 1930, Page 9

AERIAL GLIDING

NEW SPORT IN. SYDNEY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 13th February. ■ Before long Sydney will have its.iii'sj; tasto of tho thrilling sport of glider flying, or motorless aeroplaning, now all the rage in Germany and in America. Sydney's first modern glider, believed to bo the first machine of the kind in Australia, in fact, will be tested this week. It is a smart little craft, with a,wing span of 35ft, and weighing only 1651b —the same weight, by the way, as the machine in which a German pilot glider hopes to cross the English Channel. It was designed on the Continent and built in Sydney. It cost between £250 and £300, but machines of the same type will be turned out later for about £100 each. This glider is built on much the same lines as an ordinary 'plane. The controls,* for example, are the same. Tho vital difference is that it is propelled, not by motor, as is the ease with ordinary aircraft, but by upward air currents, and is catapulted off: the ground. Glider clubs are already talked, of in Sydney. They will operate in cooperation with the university glider movement and the Aero Club. Tho glider to be tried out this week is for instructional purposes. From it tho pupil will pass to what is known as a secondary glider, and then, as a fullblown glider pilot, to the sail 'plane, which stays in the air for hours and climbs to dizzy heights. If German "rauleiiis can fly these gliders, then Sydney's youth ought to be ablo to do su. It is believed that, the gliders will be useful adjuncts to instruction in ordinary aviation.