AVIATION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 33, 7 February 1913, Page 5

AVIATION.

AN AIR FLEET FOR CHINA. By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright (United Press Association.) Paris, February 6. China has ordered twelve bi-planes for an aerial fleet, to be trained by French officers and instructors. I FIRST SWISS WOMAN AVIATOR. Mine. Marie Rudolf, a widow, aged 34, of Berne, has just obtained her certificate as an aviator, passing thf tests on a fast aeroplane, and being the first Swiss woman to do so. Mine. Rudolf is the proprietor of a small and select cafe in the capital much frequented by deputies and sportsmen. It was in her establishment, on the initiative of the late Colonel Schaeck, that the Swiss Aero Club was launched. She is a keen business as well as sportswoman, and very popular at Berne, where she intends to make flights shortly on an aeroplane which she has ordered in France.

“GAS BAGS.” The well-known French aviator, Yedrines, at a conference recently at Lausanne on aviation, advised the Swiss not to buy for military purposes any type of airship, which he stated were only “gas bags,” and easily destroyed by wind and weather, not including cannon fire. Yedrines is of opinion that only very fast monoplanes will be of great service to the military authorities, and in the next Gordon-Bennett meeting at Rheims he hopes to attain 280 kilometres an hour with a special new machine which if being built for him. Yedrines hold, that .the greater the speed the greater the safety from air currents and “holes,” and that an aeroplane can easily destroy a slow-going airship Yedrines spoke on the same subjec at Geneva, and had a warm welcome.