AIRWAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 622, 26 March 1929, Page 16

AIRWAY

"THE ROO"

B'J

It has been definitely decided that the Auckland Aero Club's pageant will take place at the Ihumatao Airdrome on Saturday, , April 13. It is anticipated that some of the Southern Aero Club's machines will take part in the display as well as at least one GovThe meeting will feature many of the Dominion’s most skilled pilots, and the various competitions will take the form of races, varied acrobatics, general “stunting." and many other spectacles seldom witnessed in the Dominion in the past. More Pilots In point of achievement. the week before last was the biggest in the history of the Xe w South Wales section of the Australian Aero Club. It sent along 19 of its club-trained pilots to sit for their “B” licence —the “ticket” that enables the holder to fly commercially—and, for the first time in Australia, it established interplane radio telephony. Bad weather conditions prevented any flying being done at Ihumatao on two days of last week. In all, 11f hours were spent in the air by the club’s Moth planes during the week, 7? hours being dual instruction, while the rest was taken up in passenger Invisible Airship ‘At the instigation and payment of the English Government. there is shortly to be built in Nottinghamshire a trial airship which, it is said, will be practically invisible,” announces the Heroldo de Esperanto. “The contractors will use a new material similar in appearance to glass, but unbreakable and possessing the same workability as metal. Only the motors and ligature will be of ordinary material. The new substance possesses the quality of being quite imperious to weather and will not rust.

Pacific Flyers The New South Wales Government has given a cheque for £4,500 to Squadron-Leader Kingsford Smith and Flight-Lieutenant C. T. Ulm. which represents the previous Government s guarantee to enable the Pacific flignt to be undertaken. The Premier. Mr. Bavin, paid his Government’s contribution of £ 2,500 last November. * * *

An Air Message In the course of an address at Oamaru recently, the Minister of Defence, Mr. T. M. Wilford, said he had an important message to deliver to the local bodies of New Zealand. It was a message similar to that delivered by the Air Minister in Great Britain. When he had visited Great Britain and the Continent last year he interested himself in aviation, and was impressed with the great strides that had been made in civil aviation since 1912. He pointed out that Germany had now 14,000 miles of civil air routes in use or in course cf construction. When he was in Nuremberg a business man had told him that he could now receive correspondence in one day that had previously occupied four days in reaching him. France had 8,000 miles of air routes, and Britain only 1,100 miles. He pointed out, however. that Britain had been devoting itself to scientific research before it pushed on with its air routes. It now had the finest airplanes in the world, and this was proved by the fact that America had recently selected British machines. In America mails were now carried by air with the adidtion of a little extra postage. So far as New Zealand was concerned. it was nowhere.

He wished to ask the local bodies if they were willing to help in providing civil aviation by securi n g landing grounds. He did not wish them to set up air clubs or to provide hangars. All he asked for was a landing ground. He did not ask that it should be pro-

vided to-day or week, but in time to come. The cause of accidents was “stunting, and he felt perfectly safe when travelling in the air with the experienced pilots New Zealand already possessed. The landing ground could be said to be the railway station of the future. The Government could not be expected to finance the purchase of, say 50 landing places in all parts of the Dominion. He pointed out the value of the air service from the point of view of national defence. He expressed the opinion that New’ Zealand had absolutely no defence at present against what be considered would be the future mode of warfare. If the country had to provide 50 landing places for airplanes, when it was attacked it would be in a parlous condition. He hoped, therefore, that tlie local bodies would assist. To show that the big battleship was no longer the first line of defence, he instanced the American experiment by which a huge battleship was sunk in eight minutes by the concussion of a 2.0001 b. bomb which had been landed in the water 40 feet from the vessel by an airplane.