BALLOONS to Deliver Mail to Planes
PAUL P. HORNI, of Newark, N. J., has recently been granted patents on a device which holds promise of supplying the intermediate towns along the air routes with air mail service.
The device consists of a pair of captive balloons which are separated but bound together with a spreader bar. The balloons may be permitted to rise to any desired height, where the mail plane flying between them may pick up the mail sacks which are held above the center of the spreader bar.
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LOS ANGELES RACES Prove Air THRILLERS
More and more power and less refinement of streamline design is the cry of present day designers as proved by contesting planes in great 1933 Los Angeles Air Races. Flown across country by an eye witness this up-to-the-minute account of the past year’s aviation progress summarizes records, achievements and points out the races’ thrills.
by JAMES BOWLES
ROARING across the continent in 11 hours, 30 minutes, Col. Roscoe Turner not only clipped 63 minutes from his former east-west trans-continental speed record, but he inaugurated something new in the way of planning his route.
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ICE-ISLAND in Mid-Atlantic Proposed
SEADROMES for ocean landing fields are not a new idea, a steel ‘drome designed by Edward Armstrong, recently described in these pages, being well on the road to practical acceptance. But the proposal to build seadromes of ice, recently advanced from Germany, seems fantastic until one realizes that the idea has already passed the experimental stage with flying colors.
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Planes That Go Straight Up OPEN NEW FIELDS FOR AVIATION
By Edwin Teale
AMONG the skyscrapers of lower New York City, a few weeks ago, a strange wingless craft drifted down in a vertical landing. Its wheels touched the concrete of a pier and rolled less than a dozen feet. With balancing wings eliminated, it represented the latest style in autogiros. The flying windmill has taken another step toward the goal of a thousand inventors, the helicopter.
An autogiro can descend vertically; but it can take off only after a run. A helicopter could get out of a field the size of its landing gear. It could climb straight into the sky, could hover like a humming bird, and could drop like an elevator descending its shaft. Entirely new realms of aerial travel await the perfection of such a craft.
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Skywriters see it this way
They spell from right to left and make words that are 15 miles long.
SO YOU have a new pen that writes under water, a pen that writes for three years without a refill, and never leaks. Kid stuff!
I know a bunch of guys that write with a gadget that can make letters a mile high, write a word 15 miles long that’s visible for 40 miles, and can write 15 miles of letters in 20 minutes.
Yes, I’m talking about “sky scribblers,” the smoke writers. It all started back in 1922 on England’s Derby Day at Epsom Downs. Everything was going along as dignified as usual with King George and Queen Mary there to add a bit more tone to the affair. Suddenly some chap glanced upward at the sky, clutched his ascot and yelped, “Blyme, look there now, it’s bloomin’ writin’ in the sky!”—and thereby began a unique industry, Skywriting.
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“Grand Central” of the Airways
By Allen Warren Elliott
ON a misty morning a little more than a year ago, one of the most remarkable industrial babies ever born was ushered into existence almost exactly in the geographical and population center of New York City.
The industry was aviation and the infant was La Guardia Field, already something of a whopping prodigy because $40,000,000 had been spent to make it the largest port of the skies, bigger than anything England, France, Russia or Germany could offer.
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Rotating Blades To Row Planes In Air
JUST as the propeller supplanted the paddle wheel, revolutionizing shipping, so are the new Voith-Schneider vertical feather-blades, successfully tested in Germany, expected to supplant the propeller.
The blades, mounted on a rotating disk, have been used for the past two years on river and harbor boats with marked economies in operation coupled with a decided increase in maneuverability. As the disk rotates, the blades present a full face on the back stroke, and then assume a feathered position for the return circuit. Steering is accomplished by an adjustment which delays the feathering movement, the open faced blades thus pushing the stern of the vessel to starboard or port as desired.
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