Rubber Cord Used as Self-Starter for Light-Plane Engine
USING the principle of the rubber-band-powered model, William Strohmeier, of Lock Haven, Pa., recently demonstrated a new lightweight self-starter for engines on private planes. By turning a crank on the instrument panel of his Piper Cub monoplane, Strohmeier winds up a rubber shock-absorber cord that runs the length of the fuselage. Thirty turns of the crank stretches the cord to the required tension. Read the rest of this entry »

HOSPITAL ON AIRSHIP MAY SWEEP PATIENTS ABOVE CLOUDS IN QUEST OF MORE SUNLIGHT

For persons suffering with tuberculosis, or just from nerves, will physicians soon prescribe a trip to the clouds in a flying clinic instead of a visit to the mountains?

Not long ago Charles L. Julliot, French lawyer, proposed that airplanes or dirigibles transport such patients above the clouds. His suggestion, which America hears was approved by the medical faculties of France, called attention to the fact that high altitude and sunshine produce well-known changes in the blood, in many cases beneficial. Add to this the natural exhilaration of an air trip, he says, and the effect might be even better than that of a mountain vacation (P. S. M., Mar. ’30, p. 34). Read the rest of this entry »

How would they turn sideways? Wouldn’t it be impossible to do all the other stuff on the ground? Like, you know, get on the plane?

Planes Need No Wheels

Airplanes should keep their wheels on the ground, believes Samuel S. Knox, of Long Beach,. Calif. He has patented a landing strip formed of pneumatic-tired wheels, which could be powered to speed take-offs and braked to shorten landing rolls. It would free the plane of landing-gear weight.

“From then on I was too consarned cold to feel anything very much.”
I thought consarned was a typo, but it would have been weird since the correct replacement would have been “consumed by” or “concerned with the”. Turns out it means: confounded; damned.

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New Midget Scouts of the Air

by Lieut. RALPH S. BARNABY, U.S.N. First Man to Pilot a Glider from a Dirigible

If scouts were important to old style warfare, they are doubly important to the new warfare of the air. Army and Navy officials have experimented with every possible idea. Only recently they tested the value of gliders for scout work from dirigibles at Lakehurst. Lieut. Barnaby tells here his story of gliding a motorless ship from the dirigible Los Angeles.
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Landing airplanes on top of buildings was a really common theme in articles of this time. It’s kind of boggling that anyone thought it could be done safely.

Runway for Airplanes Atop Skyscrapers
A NEW YORKER has invented a novel turntable runway which he believes will be suitable for landing and take-off of airplanes from the tops of high buildings. The device is declared to offer many advantages over the proposed platforms for such landings. The landing table can be tilted at any angle and swung about in any direction so that the wind is along its axis. The incline naturally serves as a brake on the landing ship and air blasts assist in checking the speed of the landed ship. The turntable would also present an incline which would enable a faster than ordinary take off.

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Guggenheim Safety Planes Feature Controllable Wings

By MAJOR R. W. SCHROEDER

Editor’s Note: Major R. W. Schroeder, head of the Curtiss Flying Service in the mid-west, former chief test pilot of the army, and former world’s altitude record holder, was one of the contestants in the $100,000 safe aircraft competition initiated by the Guggenheim Fund. He set a world’s altitude mark several years ago in a sensational flight in which his plane fell five miles out of control after the major’s eyeballs had frozen. Read the rest of this entry »

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SEADROMES to DOT the ATLANTIC OCEAN

AN experimental model has proved a success, plans are now being made for the anchoring between New York and Bermuda of the first seadrome for ocean flying airplanes and it is the hope of the supporters that as a result such seadromes will eventually dot the oceans providing safe landings for aircraft.

The one-ton steel model of the seadrome was placed in the Choptank River at Cambridge, Md. The model was one-thirty-second the size of the intended dromes. Read the rest of this entry »

Octagonal Hangar Houses Planes Without Waste Space

WHENEVER a new aviation field or airdrome is planned there always arises the problem as to the type of hangar which should be erected. If the aviation field is planned for a small town or for a limited number of planes the problem is simple but when a modern airdrome with unlimited aerial traffic is contemplated, conditions are different. Read the rest of this entry »

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The LINDBERGHS Learn to GLIDE

by CLYDE FREEMAN

Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh and Mrs. Lindbergh now hold licenses as first class glider pilots, having completed a series of lessons in the Bowlus sailplane, plans for which were recently published in Modern Mechanics. The Colonel enthusiastically declares gliding to be the finest sport he knows.

ON TWO exciting days recently from hills adjacent to San Diego, California, Colonel and Mrs. Charles A. Lindbergh in a sailplane designed by William H. Bowlus. demonstrated the ease and facility with which persons untrained in gliding can learn to master a motorless craft.
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My New Dirigible on Pontoons

by Lt.-Cmdr. C. D. BURNEY
Designer of Britain’s Giant R-101

Commander Burney, world authority on dirigibles, pens this revealing story of a startling new idea in lighter-than-air craft. Squat, elliptical, double hulled, hangarless—seagoing and self sufficient, the new ship on pontoons conceived by the designer of the R-101, is the solution to profitable ocean passenger trade.
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PLANES’ RADIO MESSAGES “CANNED” FOR DISASTER RECORD

RADIO communications between plane pilots and airport dispatchers are now permanently recorded on wax cylinders by an electrical machine recently installed by the U. S. Bureau of Air Commerce at a California landing field. Reports made by pilots and orders given by dispatchers, kept on file in record form, are thus available to examiners investigating the causes of any accident to a plane.

ARMCHAIR PILOTS

They fly babes with beeper boxes They’re not really armchair pilots, because they never fly from armchairs; they’re more likely to be in jeeps, or in “mother” planes. But the name does fit after a fashion, for these boys are nowhere near the planes they are flying. They are the Army Air Forces’ radio pilots. Wiggling levers on little five-pound boxes, they control huge four-motored giants that may be 50 miles away behind a cloudbank. Read the rest of this entry »