Empire Air Limb Across Canada

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 22, 27 January 1937, Page 10 (Supplement)

Empire Air Limb Across Canada

TO BE READY IN 1938. A dream of Canada’s greatest airmen, in times of war and peace, is to be realised in the coming summer, when the Rockies —the last and most forbidding handicap to aviation—are to be conquered, in the Anglo-Canadian scheme to link the Pacific littoral by , air with tho Motherland. Tho Dominion Government, by agree ment with Great Britain, has undertaken to provide regular air mail service from ocean to ocean, and to share the cost of the subsidy to Imperial Air ways. Thus, the vast world notwork of Empire air services will bo extendel to North America. Three hours across British Columbia and the Rockies, from Vancouver to ; Lethbridge, eight hours to Ottawa, twenty hours to Halifax —these once | visionary hopes for tho futuro are to be the practical flying schedule. For many years preparatory work has been going on. Airports, intermediate and emergency landing fields are now strung across the continent, with no gap of moro than thirty miles without a spot to land across this terrain, studded with lakes, rivers, and high mountains. The prairie provided a simple task for the airway planners. It is virtually one vast landing field. The route across the desolate regions of Northern Ontario is only partially complete; consequently. the coming summer will see only the Vancouver-Winnipeg section in operation. The entire Trans-Canada Airway will be in running order some time in 1938, by which time, it is anticipated, the Trans-Atlantic service will be operating on a full-time schedule. London, linked with Vancouver, will then be the apex of a round-the world airway, hooked up at Ilong Kong with the clipper ’plane service of the Pan-American Airways, based at Alameda, California.

Radio Beam Course. Shuttling back and forth across Canada the aeroplanes will bo guided by wireless. Three parallel radio beams mark the course. The central beam creates a steady buzz in the air phones of the pilot; while he hears it he knows he is flying straight on his course, on the middle beams. Should he get over to the left he will get a “dash-dot” signal, indicating that he is over in the zone of the left-hand beam, and must turn right to pick up his course. A "dot-dash” signal will warn him he is veering towards the right-hand beam. •‘Homing,” in the airman’s vernacular, is the radio compass or directionfinding equipment that ha 3 revolution-

ised flying to the point of absolute safety. Last week, a heavy gale, blowing in from the Pacific, turned back the Chiua Clipper when she was 12u0 miles out of Honolulu, on her way to her home port in California. Radio warned her master, to within a few minutes, when he should turn the giant machine back. Thus, what in pioneering days, but two years ago, would have ended in disaster, now becomes a mere routine of flying. Only the most modern, high-speed aeroplanes can provide the proper degree of efficiency required for the Trans-Canada service. Weeks of training are required for "flying tho beam.” The last word in safe flying is tho "blind landing” method, used earlier in limited visibility and low ceiling, but now so perfected as to enable a pilot to land in the densest fog. Twin-engined aircraft, with Hydraulic, retractable landing gear, air brakes, variable pitch propellers, end other ultra-modern accessories, will, in the not distant future, enable a letter, posted in Vancouver to-day, to be delivered in London the day after to morrow.