Self-Propelled Surfboard
SKIMBOATING—newest fad at Cypress Gardens, Florida—is rapidly outgrowing that novelty classification. It provides you with all the thrills of aquaplaning without making you lug a boat along. Also, you can break down this self-propelled surfboard into three small sections.
Developed by Emil Hansen of Bryn Mawr, Pa., the craft has a 7-1/2-hp outboard engine housed in a watertight aluminum hull. It’s 90 inches long, 24 inches wide and weighs 120 pounds. Top speed is about 30 mph and you steer it with a rudder aft and by shifting your body.
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Fast Ice
The cold facts about the smooth sheet of ice that gives wings to the feet off the skaters in Icecapades, biggest of Ice shows.
BY Margot Patterson and Allan Gould
IF THE millions of people who witness the big ice-travaganzas yearly ever stop to think about the sheet of ice on which the skaters pirouette, it is probably only to wonder idly how the red, white and blue pattern gets inside the ice.
Yet the manufacture and maintenance of that thin sheet of frozen water is more important than the stars of any show. A featured performer could break a leg and the show would continue, but without the ice there could be no performance. So in each of the arenas where an ice revue plays during a season, the ice is pampered and babied, sweated and scraped, barrelled, planed, sprayed—all in all. treated with more care than a connoisseur gives the patina on a treasured antique.
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Fun Under Water
War gear of “Frog Men” will create new sport, save lives
By HARRY SHERSHOW
OUT of the wealth of atom bombs, flame throwers, booby traps, and other World War II inventions, have come some devices that promise to survive and become indispensable in peace. Among them are oxygen-charged respiratory units, perfected for the Army and Navy for underwater offensives against the enemy. Like DDT and the jeep, these breathing machines will be of service to anyone who learns to use them.
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Bike Craze Raging-Rentals Make Money
CREDITED to comely Miss Joan Crawford who started daily bike riding six years ago as a method of keeping physically fit, the bike riding fad has swept to all corners of the nation. Bicycle makers rub their hands with gusto, wink at the Depression, and continue to sell great quantities of wheels at around twenty dollars per machine.
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10-15 mph? That seems like it would be pretty impractical. Especially since your body would have to remain near vertical when you were cranking away…
Water Sports Fans Race in Novel Hand - Powered Craft
THE newest water sport in Berlin swimming pools is handicap racing with the recently-introduced “grinding wheel” boat weighing but six pounds and measuring a yard in length. On the water speedway the racer places his head and arms in the openings as shown in the accompanying photo and proceeds to grind away toward the goal.
The cranks of this unique racing boat are connected through what looks like a grindstone to the propeller blades in the rear, which drives the craft forward at a speed sometimes as high as 10 and 15 miles per hour.
Well, they certainly look speedy…look at him go!
Japanese Water Skis Are Speedy
COMMONLY associated with northern climes, skiing has invaded the Orient with the successful introduction of water skis. The skis are tip-tilted pontoons propelled by the common gliding stroke and aided by special ski poles. Recent tests of the skis in Yokohama harbor developed a speed of 200 yards per minute.
