BIRD-LIKE MEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 654, 4 May 1929, Page 26

BIRD-LIKE MEN

PROBLEMS OF FLIGHT

SIMPLE AIR MASTERY Experiments which are to be conducted in Germany, France, and the United States aim at enabling pilots of motorless glidiDg machines to effect long cross-country flights without alighting. In light engineless machines with improved wing-shapes and hulls, eaipert pilots can now remain aloft for hours in the neighbourhood of a gliding hill, manoeuvring their cyaft from one to another of a series of ascending wind-streams, which are plotted out beforehand on special maps. But in attempting a long point-to-point glide (says the London "Daily Mail”) the airman may, just when he needs one, fail to find an ascending current which will restore the altitude of his gradually descending craft. What are now to he tested are light man-power machines fitted with mechanism the pilot will operate with his arms and legs. Such movements will actuate flapping extensions at the extremity of the wings. The idea is that the airman shall be launched into the air from some form of catapult mechanism. Then he will climb, by vigorous flapping, until he can manoeuvre his machine into an ascending current. After this, gliding in rising currents and maintaining height by flapping, when no upward trend is available, the pilot will seek to emulate the soaring and flapping night of birds.