December 4, 2007

Students Now “Fly” without Leaving Ground (May, 1929)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 12:09 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1929
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I’m not sure this would actually help you learn how to fly, but I’ll bet it would be really fun for kids. Someone should make one of these now and hook it up to a flight sim.

Students Now “Fly” without Leaving Ground

ALL the sensations of looping the loop. going into a tail spin, and flying blind through fog are afforded students of the Array Air Corps at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, by an ingenious “primer plane” that never leaves the ground. A miniature fuselage, fitted with a propeller, ailerons, elevators, and rudder, is attached to an electrically-operated framework, and in the cockpit a prospective pilot does his first “flying” in safety.

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November 28, 2007

Hostesses Go to School in Plane Cabin (Nov, 1937)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 8:43 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1937
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Hostesses Go to School in Plane Cabin
Cabins of giant transport planes now serve as classrooms for training air-line hostesses. Taught the mechanical details of the planes as well as their regular duties, the flying hostesses go through an intensive three-week course before they are assigned to regular flights. The photograph above shows a blackboard demonstration of a plane’s heating system.

November 25, 2007

Pinwheel Bus (Jan, 1947)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 12:50 pm
Source: Mechanix Illustrated ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1947
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Pinwheel Bus

Time-killing bus rides from airports to cities will soon be quick hops in ten-place copters.

FROM the window of the airliner, you look down upon the city of your destination. The plane turns with deceptive laziness—you’re moving at a rate of almost 200 miles per hour—and approaches the field. Minutes later you step to the ground. Ah, the wonders of flying. The two cities are 200 miles apart. You’ve gone from one to the other in a little over an hour.

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November 20, 2007

Floating Air Base Has Repair Basin (Oct, 1937)

Filed under: Aviation, Nautical — @ 7:30 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1937
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Floating Air Base Has Repair Basin
A giant, mobile seaplane base recently proposed provides a protected basin 150 feet long and eighty feet wide as a landing harbor for transoceanic planes. As shown in a model just completed, the floating base has a commodious terminal at its forward end, while a water gate at the open end of the basin would permit the latter to be emptied for use as a repair drydock.

November 19, 2007

Revolving Upper Wing Makes Airplane an Autogiro (Oct, 1937)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 1:13 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1937
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Revolving Upper Wing Makes Airplane an Autogiro

CALLED a vertaplane, a new airplane which successfully completed its first public flight recently combines many of the features of autogiros and conventional aircraft. The upper wing of the novel ship remains stationary in normal flight, but whirls like an autogiro blade to permit take-offs and landings at slow speeds and in confined areas.

November 16, 2007

Plane on Motor Car is Short Cut to Flying (Oct, 1933)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 9:51 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1933
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This looks like it would be a lot of fun.

Plane on Motor Car is Short Cut to Flying

Student Learns in Safety to Control His Craft and Maneuver It as Though Actually in the Air

So that a student pilot may learn the feel of the controls of a glider or airplane before he risks his first solo flight, a foolproof training machine has been designed by a Beaver Falls., Pa., inventor. Seated in the cockpit of a captive plane, the pilot may send his craft through the maneuvers of diving, banking, and zooming; but the worst that can befall him if he should crash is a gentle bump on rubber-padded cushions. For a training lesson, an instructor takes his place at the wheel of a motor truck that carries the machine, and starts it across the airport field.

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November 13, 2007

36 Killed on the “Hindenburg” But Records Prove That Zeppelins Are Safe (Aug, 1937)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 7:41 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1937
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36 Killed on the “Hindenburg” But Records Prove That Zeppelins Are Safe

by Bob Gordon

TO MOST of us Earth-bound mortals, there is something singularly terrifying about death from the sky. The only terror equal to it is death from fire. When the two horrors are combined in one spectacular disaster such as overtook the airship Hindenburg, we of panicky imaginations are prone to ignore facts, prone to throw up our hands and cry, “That is enough!”

Yet the men who must face this fate again if airship progress is to continue are far from ready to cry enough. Every uninjured survivor of the Hindenburg crew hurried back to Germany, that he might get a berth in the next great Zeppelin, the LZ-130, rapidly nearing completion.

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November 11, 2007

Count Ten and Then Pull String in Leap from Plane (Oct, 1924)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 9:07 am
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Oct, 1924
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The first page doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the article, but it looks like a pretty cool show.

Count Ten and Then Pull String in Leap from Plane

Two thousand feet in the air, a man in a heavy canvas flying; suit crawls from the cockpit and edges his way along the wing of an airplane. Harnessed to his chest and back are two bulky packs. He nears the end of the wing, steadies himself a moment as he rises upright, waves one hand at the pilot, then calmly steps backward into space. As the body plunges downward his lips move rapidly, framing the words: One, two, three, four, five, six. seven, eight, nine, ten! At ten he jerks a cord at his shoulder and out of the packs billows a great silk parachute. As it tills with air, the speed of the falling man slackens, until finally he is drifting slowly downward for a safe landing.

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November 9, 2007

Proposed Rotary “Aero-Zep” Uses Novel Screw Vanes (Aug, 1930)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 6:53 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1930
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Proposed Rotary “Aero-Zep” Uses Novel Screw Vanes

A MOST unusual type of dirigible involving wide departures from established principles has recently been patented by two South Dakota inventors. They call it the “Rotary Aero-Zep,” and aside from the fact that the entire craft is designed to be constructed of aluminum, the most novel feature of the invention is the metal gas bag which is designed to revolve around the frame trackway carrying the passenger car, screwing the airship forward in the air through the action of spiral vanes mounted on the side of the bag.

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November 8, 2007

AIRPLANE DECK FOR LINER (Jul, 1936)

Filed under: Aviation, Nautical — @ 7:10 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1936
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AIRPLANE DECK FOR LINER
Funnels disappear amidships and hinged masts swing downward to clear a spacious airplane-landing deck on a proposed 100.000-ton super-liner. The huge ship would be 1,250 feet long, with a cruising speed of thirty-four knots and a passenger capacity of 10,000. In war time the liner could transport 20,-000 troops and carry its own convoy of airplanes.

November 4, 2007

ODD ROAD VEHICLE TEACHES TYROS TRICKS OF AIRPLANE CONTROL (Jul, 1936)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 9:57 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1936
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ODD ROAD VEHICLE TEACHES TYROS TRICKS OF AIRPLANE CONTROL

A curious road vehicle, guided by controls exactly like those of an airplane, has been devised by a French inventor to enable would-be pilots to learn some of the maneuvers of flight without leaving the ground. Wheels on outriggers simulate the action of ailerons on a plane’s wings, keeping the machine on an even keel in straightaway travel and controlling its tilt in rounding a turn, as demonstrated by the inventor in the illustration above.

November 3, 2007

WORLD’S FIRST Steam-Driven Airplane (Jul, 1933)

Filed under: Aviation — @ 10:11 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1933
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WORLD’S FIRST Steam-Driven Airplane

Successful Flights with Long-Sought Craft Crown Many Similar Attempts by Early Aviation Engineers

By H.J. FitzGerald

OVER the Oakland, Calif., Airport, a few days ago, a silent plane slanted across the sky trailing a thin ribbon of white vapor. Spectators heard the pilot shout a greeting from the air. They saw him flash past, skimming the ground at a hundred miles an hour. They watched him bank into a turn, slide to a landing, and, with the propeller spinning backward, roll to a stop in less than a hundred feet. They had seen, for the first time in history, a man fly on wings powered by steam! Two brothers, George and William Besler, the former a geologist thirty-one years old, and the latter a mechanical engineer, two years younger, have achieved the dream of Maxim, Langley, and other pioneers of flight. Through their work, the steam-driven airplane, long talked about, long planned, has become a reality.

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