SMITHY’S PLANE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 674, 28 October 1933, Page 2

SMITHY’S PLANE

PERCIVAL-GULL MACHINE BUILT BY AN AUSTRALIAN. PROPHET WITHOUT HONOUR. x Gaptain Percival, designer ^ of the . l Bereival-Gull 'plane in which' Sir i Charles Kingsford-Smith achieved his , lafest triumph, -is another prophet - without honour in his own country. i Aclbu'ally Edgarj Percival is a Very f-amous Aus'tralian away from home.

Here he was looked upon . as a harem-scarem pilot, feady to rdsk his ineck in any undeveloped flying scheme. |Ret,urning from the war, Percival soon realised that aviation here was looked upon as a development beyond the amibitions, o-f locally-grown talent. Didn't Nced Maps. He had experimemtied with gliders and barnstormed in his Avro. He de- • 3 . signed 'planes and fiew them in cornpdtdtions, but.fivq years aigo he saw that overseas aviation was attracting the ibcist brains, so he siet his course for England. Before going he made a' request fo | a Sydney newspaper executive whieh', when interpreted, meant that if ha were killed, the newspaper would haye his deaith at its door. (Percival explained that; he didn't want maps or any fixed landinggrounds, but if given a letter to- a notable in London, he would fly straight to London and deliver it. Just OfF the Earth. lOver there. h'e fiew with varyimg success in confpeltdtion, and then turned to aircraft designdn-g. Tall, handsome, and ibred near Richmiond, INew South Wales, Percival knew the aeroplane business when he helped Billy Hart fashion the monstrosity which once heat the- Windsor train on a straight stretch' of five m-iles. ' {Hart sait on a box on two sltruts and looked down throuigh his legs at the ground as the machine sped along — (too close to -the earth to be safe. Hart's machine ga.ve Percival- hiis first notions about ayiation and bis flrst aerial fthi'ills. The war taught, him a lo-t mior-e. To-day, while still in his thirties, he has prohahly done more for aerial development than most men. But it is only now after many years of >hard experimental work of a danigerous natube, has Edgar Percival with his Gull really hecome reco^nised. '