LIGHT AEROPLANES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4785, 5 December 1924, Page 1

LIGHT AEROPLANES.

FLYING YOUR OWN MACHINE. (By the Air Correspondent of the London Daily Mail.) imagine, please, that you. have decided to buy and fly a little light aeroplane of your own. Why not? Forthcoming trials should evolve a little winged machine, carrying yourself and a friend, which is easy to Uy, which one might almost call “fool-proof'' in its safety, and in which you can ascend from, and alight in, any held of ordinary size.

So why should you not enjoy this newest creation? You will be fiee from the dust of roads. You will breathe an air wine-like in its purity* You will see a wonderful panorama spread below. And you will be devowering distance at the comfortable aerial pace of, say, sixty miles an hour.' Gone will be the fatigue and boredom, on a Continental trip, of changing from train to boat and back again to train. You will just soar up from London, the Channel will flit by beneath, and you will glide down near Paris.

PROFICIENCY IN TEN HOURS. For about £2'so or £3OO you should be able to buy one of these perfected light planets, certified as “airworthy by the Air Ministry, and driven by a staunch little engine very economical iii fuel. Your next step, costing £1 is, will be to register your machine, whereupon you will be given an official identifying sign in the shape of a series of letters beginning witn "G“ (standing for Great Britain), which must be displayed prominently on wings and hull.

After thia you will take your air car to a good flying school, and be taught by an expert to handle it. It will cost you, probably, at the rate of about £l’ 10s an hour for the services of a skilled instructor, and you should be ready to take your Royal Aero Club certificate of proficiency after about eight to ten hours’ tuition.

The Aero Club certificate Is recognised by the Air Ministry, being taken •.as evidence that you are competent to pilot your little machine in crosscountry flights. The chief things you have to do in order to get a certificate are to ascend to a height of 6500 ft, then descend, and—after shutting oft your engine at 4500 ft —land in a glide near a specified mark. Also, showing your control while aloft, you have to perform a seriep of figures of eight in the air.

In connection with the taking of your certificate you have to acquaint yourself with the “rules of the road’’ ’in flying; also with such matters as lights, signals, and the legulations governing air traffic m the vicinity of busy aerodromes.

Your Aero Club tests completed, you have to go to your doctor and pass a medical examination rather on the lines of those required when you take out a life insurance policy. This ips simply to prevent anyone who might be subject, say, to heart failure, or any sudden iltoess while in the air, from being allowed to fly about the 'country, a possible source of dangei not only to himself but to those on the ground.

Your health being certified as good, and your flying tests passed, the Air Ministry issues you a private pilot’s license; at a cost of ss, which permits you to fly your own aeroplane for a period of one year. These regulations governing private flying, drawn up after long consultation between the various bodies and ..authorities concerned, are devised so as to fit in, at one and the same time, with two different points of view. In the first place, they are intended to be as little restrictive as they can possibly be made for those who, in growing numbers, are expected soon to buy and fly their own little aeroplanes. In the second place, they are intended to fulfil the highly important function of safeguarding earth-folk against potential risks from an increasing use of the highways of the air.