AIRWAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 504, 6 November 1928, Page 16

AIRWAY

By The “Roc”

The Auckland Aero Club’s lectures continue to gain favour and are being attended by large and enthusiastic audiences, but the long wait for machines is becoming tiring and monotonous, and over half a hundred pilots to-be are aching for the sight of a plane. m m m The club’s hand-book is now com- j pleted and is ready for distribution. | They are to be delivered to financial | members. The badges are not yet to hand, but when they are ready it has been decided to furnish them to financial members at 3s 6d each, on the understanding that in the event of withdrawal from membership the badge must be returned. mm* Call to Arms Major Cowper, in his interesting address to the Auckland Rotarians yesterday, did not forget to mention to his financial-looking audience the fact that the club was striving to gather sufficient money to furnish a fourth machine. The Rotary Club has proved itself keenly interested in questions of public welfare, and it may be expected that the appeal of the Aero Club’s energetic instructor will not go in • • * Models A Model Airplane Club has been formed in Auckland. The following officers were elected at a meeting held last week:—Club captain, Mr. F. C. McDonald; secretary, Mr. J, HopeEde; committee, Messrs. Noble, Owen and McLaren. The first model flying competitions will be held next Saturday. * m m N.Z. Air Force Recent visitors to the Dominion have at times been a little puzzled at the fact that aviators on the permanent staff of the New Zealand Military Forces are not given their Flying Corps titles, such as flight-lieutenant and group-captain. The Sun’s Wellington correspondent writes that the Defence Department states that this is so because there is no Flying Corps In New Zealand. The officer-aviators are merely members of the Dominion’s military forces, and hold their rank in those forces. * m m The unsuccessful attempt of Commander H. C. Macdonald to cross the Atlantic has spelt another hard blow to the popularising, and thus the progress, of aviation. Chances in long flights can be fairly safely calculated now; and the development of flying is more impeded than helped by Don Quixotes of the air. * • * When Mr. Russell Scholz, son of Mr. F. W. Scholz, who has been a most generous benefactor to the Goulburn Aero Club, Australia, commenced his flying last week, he wore the helmet worn by Kingsford Smith on the occasion of the trans-Pacific flight. It turned out lucky. • • • A Heavy Toll Trans-ocean flights have been very costly in human life. Attempting to cross the Atlantic, 13 —including two women—have flown to death. They were Nungessor and Coli, Captain Hamilton, Col. Minchin and Princess Lowenstein-Wertheim, Hill, Bertaud, and Payne, Captain Cully and Lieut. Medcalf, and Captain Hinchcliffe and the Hon. Elsie Mackay, and Commander Macdonald.

The Pacific has claimed Mildred Doran, Pedlar and Knops, Erwin and Eichwaldt, Frost and Scott. Five were

Dole race flyers, and the other two were lost searching for them. * m m A speed record for West Australia was established recently when an Airways plane flew from Geraldton to Perth—2s6 miles —in 1 hour 50 minutes. Normally the journey by air occupies from two and a-half to three hours, compared with 17 hours by rail. * m m The Sydney Aero Club has recently embarked on an interesting branch of air work—wireless. Licences have been secured for a ground station (2FA) and a mobile station (2FB) and experiments are to be carried out in sending from the ground to a machine and vice versa; and from machine to machine. The ground station will be operating in about three weeks’ time. Directing by Radio Radio engineers at the Bureau of Standards have conquered another obstacle in the advancement of safeguards for aviation. Serious errors in the directing by radio beacons of planes flying at night have been practically eliminated by the development of a new type of antenna for planes. Night flights had revealed a shifting of the course indicator to such an extent that the beacon indications were not considered dependable for mountainous territory. This shifting of the radio course indicator was found to be due to a distortion Introduced in the radio waves as they travel through the upper atmosphere. Scientists at the bureau made a study of this phenomenon and have been able to analyse it satisfactorily. The new antenna, which overcomes the fading of the signal caused by distorting. consists of a vertical ten-foot metal pole. The use of this short antenna has been made feasible by the development of a specialised type of aircraft receivers.

All-Metal Machines The construction of the first allmetal monoplane to be designed in Australia is now well under way and the Australian Aerial Services Co., will be prepared to begin the mass production of this type of plane next year if the public demand and Government support is forthcoming. It is considered possible that this factory will be able to turn out at least one complete machine a week. The machine already under construction is to be called the Lacoster and is expected to be ready for tests in February. • * * Germany—Air Giant The annual report of Lulfthansa, the great German air combine, shows that last year 90 air lines were regularly operated, and that the company’s fleet totalled 160 machines, of which 41 were big air liners. The mileage was nearly six million, and the number of passengers carried 102,681, as against 56,268 for 1926. A comparison of the monthly figures of Lufthansa, Imperial Airways (England’s biggest air service), and W.A. Airways (Australia’s most successful

aerial enterprise) is to put it mildly, illuminating. The European figures are for July of this year, the Australian for September. The table: Miles. Passen- Freight gers. (tons). Lufthansa . 1,240,000 19,782 3SB Imperial Airways . 112,750 6.531 100 W.A. Airways 12,621 170 25 But as “Flight” points out, in commenting on Lufthansa’s vast aircraft business. Germany has no air force to maintain, and it can afford generous subsidies for its airways. . Last year the figure was 15 millions — pounds, not marks. So although its Taubes and Fokker fighters and Gothas have been driven from the heavens the one-time Fatherland is now waging a winning war in the civil air. Becoming Popular A 10 per cent, reduction in the scale of fares for flights by Australian Aerial Services, Ltd., has been made. During the past few months a marked increase has taken place in the number of passengers travelling on this company’s regular aerial routes connecting Melbourne with the Riverina, Adelaide, Sydney and Broken Hill. In its report for August it is mentioned that a Melbourne doctor obtained the utmost benefit from aerial travel by chartering a taxiplane from Melbourne to Canberra, and thence by aerial mail machine to Adelaide. The complete journey is 1,054 miles, ana was completed in 32 hours. By travelling in this way he was enabled to keep urgent appointments at both Canberra and Adelaide, which would have been impossible otherwise. Another Melbourne doctor also attended to urgent business by engaging a taxiplane to convey him to Rochester The total mileage flown since the inception of the service is 643,26 a; total miles flown during August, 14,496; percentage of arrivals within one hour of schedule time, 97.3; and the average speed, including intermediate stops, 66 m.p.h. There has been no fatal accident since the inception of the service. ;• * m * Airships Sir Keith Smith thinks that the Tasman can be flown commercially with airships, but the Zeppelin’s 45 days’ battle over the Atlantic does not suggest that the turbulent Tasman would treat airships any more kindly than does the fierce Western Ocean.Kingsford Smith, against headwinds, flew his petrol tanks almost dry to recross the Tasman, and even so, could make little more than halfspeed. How would a Zeppelin, with a huge gas-bag for the wind to play with, have fared in similar circumstances? Commander Burney, English airship authority, and supervisor of the building of super-dirigibles RIOO and RlOl, admits that neither Graf Zeppelin nor RlOl possesses sufficient speed to carry out a regular service across the Atlantic, even though the latter will be 10 knots faster than the Zep*p. A speed between 95 and 100 miles an hour is necessary, he says. To achieve this even larger airships would be required to accommodate the

ixtra fuel, and the greater the size >f the airship the greater its wind 'esistance. The difference between airplanes ind airships may be compared, from a passenger’s point of view, in that it is nore comfortable than an airplane, laving sleeping berths, dining saloons md promenade decks.