“S.O.S.”?

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 249, 11 January 1928, Page 11

“5.0.5.”?

A MUTILATED CALL HEARD AT DEVONPORT “Aeroplane calling!” These words were heard at intervals during a transmission in the Morse code by a Devonport short-wave experimenter and an operator from the Devonport Post Office a few minutes after 8 o’clock last evening. Both describe the transmission as poor, the letters being badly made and often run together. The message was hard to follow. It stated that flying conditions- over the Tasman were good and that fair progress was being made. No definite position was given. General remarks followed and the transmission stopped, but the whining noise by which the plane could be identified still continued.

Suddenly, three dots in quick succession, two dashes and a dot which might have been a badly made dash, and three more dots—then silence without even the usual whine from the airplane. The listeners believe this was intended to be an SOS call for help. Nothing further was heard after this signal of distress although the listeners waited patiently for over half an hour. Should the plane have been forced to descend, the radio transmitting apparatus could not function. T’ generator is wind-driven, and the aerial is trailed behind with a weight at the end. A forced landing would explain the sudden silence which interrupted the last message.

Lieutenant Moncrieft has had some experience in wireless. He was a keen enthusiast some years; ago when a working knowledge of the Morse code was essential under the Government regulations. Even a person unversed in the code could transmit with fair accuracy if he took the trouble to write out the message in dots and dashes beforehand. This might explain the manner in which the letters were run together a mistake an inexperienced operator is always liable to make. M AT FOXTON WAS PLANE SEEN? ONE WATCHER EMPHATIC Press Association. FOXTON, To-day. After sunset clouds obscured the sky toward the west and south from the ocean beach, interfering with visibility. A continuous look-out was kept and later in the evening flares were lit along the beach. The reflection of these at intervals on the clouds gave people inland the impression that it was the plane. No one appears to have heard the droning of the engine, which should have been distinctly heard had the machine passed inland. One party of watchers still maintains that it saw the light of the plane heading from the sea toward Foxton, and then turn north and disappear in a cloud-bank. Thy sky during the evening was overcast. NO TRACE COASTAL VESSELS’ REPORT WANGANUI, To-day. No trace of the missing plane was seen by the coastal steamers Inaha, Breeze or Kapiti, which arrived here this morning, or the Arapawa from Onehunga. SEARCHLIGHT SHOWN FROM DEVONPORT BASE A single searchlight was trained into the air last evening from one of the cruisers tied up at Devonport base, the idea being that it might be seen by the flyers. Word was received that the airmen had landed and orders were given for the light to be put out after it had been showing up in the clouds for a few minutes. None of the vessels has received orders to go South to join a search for the airmen. H.M.S. Dunedin and H.M.S. Diomede will hold to their programme of going into the Gulf on Monday for exercise. IN CASE OF MISHAP PRECAUTIONS TAKEN WIRELESS AND RUBBER FLOATS Precautions were not overlooked in the preparation of the Aotearoa for the flight, and if she has fallen into the sea there is a healthy chance of the flyers being rescued. To begin with, a radio apparatus has been installed, and though this is no new* thing in long-distance endurance flights, .there have been many such in which this means of communication with shipping and shore has been dispensed with so that a few more gallons of petrol may be carried. In the present instance, of course, there is no need for anything

essential to be omitted for the sake of “gas,” since the machine is capable of carrying far more of this than it would be likely to use in a hop of 1,400 miles. The radio apparatus which is being used transmits a signal, or series of signals, every five or six minutes, and according to a cable from Australia, on a wave-length of 33.1 and 33.5 metres. MACHINE MAY FLOAT While an airplane is not, as a rule, the most seaworthy of vessels, and is not liable to last more than a veryfew minutes if compelled to “land” on the sea, the Aotea-roa is specially fitted to give her a chance should she be forced down. The inside of the fuselage, or body of the airplane, is filled with rubber sacs, containing air, which should keep the machine afloat, especially if, as seems probable, some arrangement has been made to jettison the petrol.

Another precaution is the provision of a rubber raft, which can be inflated in a very few seconds from a cylinder of compressed air which will be carried. This gives the aviators a double chance for safety. The airplane would float for some time at least, possibly until the first ship arrived. If, however, by any mischance it should sink, through a breakage of any of the rubber bags, or should it be capsized by the waves, the airmen would still have the raft to rely on. It can be seen from the thoroughness of the precautions taken that the flight was carefully considered, and was by no means a rash leap in the dark. THE COMPASS USED Navigation, though a comparatively simple business on a boat, becomes immensely complicated in an airplane, mainly for the reason that, when aloft, an ordinary compass cannot be relied upon at all. All the movements of a plane, such as banking for a turn, upset the delicate mariner’s compass, while the effect of the large amount of steel, and moving steel at that, contained in the engine, drives the magnetic needle to the wildest eccentricities. In the flight the ordinary mariner’s compass would have been useless. A much more reliable instrument was used, known in full as the Pioneer Power Earth Inductor Compass. Presumably those who ride in the same airplane with it have some more handy term for it. This type of compass was first popularised by its use in the Spirit of St. Louis, and by the fact that Lindbergh attributed his precise navigation to its use. It is worked electrically, and is a fairly complicated piece of machinery. Its generator' is driven by a windmill attached to the plane, while the indicator, which corresponds to the needle of an ordinary compass, and the controller, are mounted on the instrument board in front of the pilot. When the airplane is on the ground it is pointed in some known direction, preferably due north, for adjustment purposes, and the controller is adjusted till the indicator reads zero. Then, when the machine is taken into the air, all that has to be done to keep it in the direction to which it was adjusted, is to fly so that the needle is kept at zero. The course may be altered any number of degrees by moving the controller, the effect of which is to alter the angle of the brushes of the generator in relation to the .earth. On the new course, as before the controller was altered, the needle must be kept at zero. The Earth Inductor Compass reduces to a minimum, if it does not entirely eliminate, the troubles and errors met with in the ordinary magnetic compass. Since there is no pivot suspension, and no liquid, the compass is not affected by any motion of the airplane except turning, which it is designed to discover and indicated “WRIGHT WHIRLWIND” AOTEA-ROA’S ENGINE FAMOUS MECHANISM TF there was any one thing upon which, more than any other, the success of the flight depended, it was upon the complicated mass of cylinders, pipes and shafts which go to make up the engine of the Aotea-roa. Known as the Wright Whirlwind, it is of a type which seems, by results, to be the best motor in the world for long-distance flights. It was an exactly similar model JSC “Whirlwind” which carried Commander Byrd over the North Pole and across the Atlantic; it was with Wright Whirlwinds that Lindbergh and Chamberlin crossed the Atlantic, and Maitland and Hegenberger the Pacific; and it can safely be prophesied that for some time, at least, few endurance flights will be attempted in America in airplanes fitted with any other motor. It is scarcely to be wondered at that enthusiastic Americans have hailed this remarkable little engine, which although itself very light, weighing about oOSlb, develops 200 horse-power,, as a triumph of engineering for their country, It is a fact that should be better known, however, that the Wright Whirlwind, though built in America, was designed by an Englishman, Mr. Samuel Heron, formerly of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. Its nine cylinders, which are finned like those of a motor-cycle, radiate from a common centre. Air-cooling is used to save the weight of water and cylinder-jacket. At a casual glance the engine seems to be much like those fitted to the Avro airplanes at the Wigram Airdrome. Unlike them, however, the Whirlwind does not revolve while in action, and also unlike them it is noted for its economy in operation. It is used by American mail lines, and the Army and Navy. The seaplanes which ac-

companied the American fleet on their visit to New Zealand in 1925 were fitted with Whirlwinds. WOULD-BE FLIERS OTHER TASMAN CANDIDATES Captain Hood and Lieut. Moncrieff are not the only airmen to have contemplated a Tasman crossing, though they were quickest to act. Several other New Zealanders have at various times talked of making the flight. Only a few months ago Lieut. K. Morton Frewen, an Australian, was only stopped by the newly-drafted Commonwealth regulations from attempting the passage in a Bristol Fighter, an obviously unsuitable type of machine. Captain Moody, a Brisbane aviator, is rumoured to have a Ryan monoplane, of the same type as the Aotearoa, in Australia, in preparation for the trip, though nothing has been heard of him since the first message a month or two ago. Another would-be competitor is Captain E. W. Percival, of Sydney, who will probably attempt a flight from Australia to New Zealand in the coming autumn. Recently he has been experimenting with an Avro Avian machine, which he has imported from England, and if the plane’s performances come up to expectation he will probably attempt to make the crossing in this. The Avian is a light twoseater plane, similar to the wellknown De Haviland Moth, and it was in a machine of this type that Bert Hinckler, the star Avro pilot, made the present light airplane long-dis-tance flight record, of something like 1,200 miles. The normal and most economic speed of the Avian is about 90 miles an hour, while its top speed is over 100 miles an hour. The engine used is an Armstrong-Siddeley Genet, a radial motor, which is of the same type anc! made by the same firm as the engine used in many long-dis-tance flights, notably Cobham’s. It has five cylinders, and develops 76 horse-power. It almost seems possible that there will be nearly as many attempts on the Tasman shortly as there were on the Atlantic as soon as Lindbergh had crossed.