AERONAUTICS: In Dayton

Five weeks ago (TIME, July 11) Charles Augustus Lindbergh wished to pay an informal call on Daytonian Orville Wright, pioneer aviator. This wish he satisfied by driving a motor car through back streets of Dayton, by visiting with Orville Wright, by driving away through back streets of Dayton.

Unsatisfied were Daytonians who, hearing of his proposed call, had planned speeches, celebrations. Deprived of demonstrations, the Daytonians muttered and scowled. Said their police chief, “A dirty, backalley trick.” Their mayor, Allen C. McDonald, said: “. . . Dayton will not soon forget.” Said a sarcastic department store, five days after, using Colonel Lindbergh’s visit for self-advertising to draw attention to their “spirit of economy” bargain sale: “There will be no disappointments in this demonstration!”

Last week Charles Augustus Lindbergh again visited Dayton, this time on the course of his U. S. tour to stir aviation interest. Early one afternoon the Spirit of St. Louis whirled, drifted, slid down out of a blue sky, landed on McCook Field. The field was almost literally deserted. So, after a brief conversation with officials, Colonel Lindbergh sailed up in the air once more, reappeared one hour later at the time scheduled for his arrival. Seven thousand citizens, shrilling and cheering, heard Colonel Lindbergh gravely remark on Dayton as an aviation centre.

Officials of Dayton accompanied Colonel Lindbergh while he visited the National Military Home to shake hands with veterans, while he placed a wreath on the grave of Wilbur Wright, while he attended a dinner given in his honor at which Mayor Allen C. McDonald presided. At this dinner, Mayor McDonald presented the aviator with a scroll, signed by himself, saying, “From the Citizens of Dayton … on the occasion of his official visit … as an evidence of their appreciation. . ..”

On the occasion of Colonel Lindbergh’s official visit to Dayton there was no scowling, no muttering. City and county offices were ordered closed at noon. No department store displayed satirical advertisements. Nothing was said about back alleys. And the Dayton Daily News said: “Lindbergh Lasts. . . . The longevity of this Lindbergh ‘boom’ is as remarkable as anything in connection with Lindbergh’s feat. . . .”

In Germany

Between Dessau and Leipzig lie about 35 miles of placid German countryside. Last week, four gentlemen employed by the Junkers aircraft factory at Dessau, took the air and commenced shuttling back and forth between the two cities in two monoplanes which traveled as soberly and modestly as trolley cars.

One of the planes, carrying Pilot Friedrich Loose and Pilot Koehl, had failed to drop the “dolly” (auxiliary under carriage) from its tail upon leaving the ground as it was supposed to do automatically. After the first hour of shuttling, the dolly broke away imperfectly, forcing Pilots Loose and Koehl to earth. But their comrades, Pilots Cornelius Edzard and Johann Risticz, shuttled on, shuttled all afternoon, shuttled all that night, all the next day, all the next night.

At their second midnight they signaled that their hand gasoline pump was not functioning. They might soon have to come down. But their third dawn found them still shuttling, Dessau to Leipzig, Leipzig to Dessau, Dessau to Leipzig. . . .

At Warnemünde, a Baltic bathing resort, an anxious gentleman, hearing that the shuttlers had not yet descended, bustled into a passenger plane and whizzed down to Dessau. He was Herr Professor Junkers, designer and manufacturer of the monoplane J-33-L upon which Germany’s attention was being increasingly focused.

After breakfast, word was sent up to Pilots Edzard and Eisticz of the J-33-L that they had broken the world’s endurance record. They shuttled once more, consuming another hour at their leisurely speed of 70 m.p.h., then circled Dessau and settled upon the Junkers landing field. Their new record was 52 hr., 11 min., 46 sec. Professor Junkers beamed upon them and said: “We are not bragging and don’t feel big after today’s success . . . [but] we never undertake anything we don’t carry out.”

The J-33-L carried 3,700 kilograms (8,158 pounds) of gasoline and could have carried 300 kilograms more—enough even against headwinds, to carry it across the Atlantic, a feat which the J-33-L and perhaps a Junkers comrade, was prepared to try forthwith.

Amateur

When a wobbling balloon, twisted into the elongation of an overcooked sausage, coiled indefinitely over Manhattan, rumors started. Scanning its dilapidated hydrogen bag, messenger boys surmised that it had come all the way from South America. Stenographers announced that it was on its way to the North Pole. After it had drooped to earth near Flushing, L. I., the pilot, one Anthony Hensler, dissolved these rumors.

The balloon, he said, was the handiwork of one Morris F. Hamza, manufacturer of draperies. Mr. Hamza had made it by wrapping up hydrogen in some of his draperies, by attaching a propeller to two motorcycle motors contained in a wicker basket under the bag. When the ropes which held the basket chafed a hole in the bag so that the hydrogen escaped, and the stern bobbed up in the air, Pilot Hensler decided to come down. This he did by dragging a rope on the ground which members of the baying gallery, following his flight on foot or in motor cars, gleefully grabbed and pulled.

Anthony Hensler watched surly policemen pack the collapsible airship into a truck, so that it could be taken away for repairs.

Planned for seven years, built in three, the blimp, 94 feet long with a fancied resemblance to the Los Angeles, had been intended to stay up indefinitely. Those who watched it careen over Times Square, veering in the wind, agreed that indefiniteness had characterized the flight.

Builder Hamza, not discouraged, plans another voyage.

For Fly-by-Nights

When night comes down on the eastern U. S., a row of bright eyes reaching from the Atlantic coast over the Alleghenies to the Great Lakes, begins a vigil that lasts till dawn. Motoring through the mountains you come to these eyes one by one, 10 to 25 miles apart. They are searchlights and all night they sweep the sky in steady circles, their narrow shafts swinging around heaven from anchorages on hilltops.For miles ahead you watch one, catching its brief flash as the beam swings highover your road. Drawing nearer, you see a reflector revolving on a small tower of skeletal steel, a land lighthouse functioning impersonally in solitude. You pass, and see a fainter arm of light waving over the hills ahead, the next eye. They are the night beacons for the U. S. airmail.

Similar lighthouses mark other routes, besides the 900 air-miles between New York and Chicago. From the air, a pilot can see his dark course plotted out 100 miles ahead by luminous, moving asterisks.

But if fog comes down. . . . Airmen crash into mountains when fog comes down. Or they stray many counties off their course. The air mail may be hours late if fog comes down.

Inventor Raymond Machlett of Long Island City, N. Y., lately developed a light of such special incandescence that its long wave light rays can be seen through 20 miles of fog (TIME, July 18).

And last week, Inventor C. Francis Jenkins of Washington, D. C., offered another scheme, whereby a pilot would need to peer no farther than the dashboard in his cockpit to stay on his course. Inventor Jenkins proposed to equip land lighthouses such as those now winking over the Alleghenies with automatic radio transmitters, each unit costing only $250 and manageable by the present lighthouse attendants. Each station would broadcast on a short wavelength measured to light up a wireless light bulb in the cockpit of a passing plane. Darkness, fog, rain, sleet or snow have virtually no effect on radio waves. But distance lessens their strength. If a pilot started straying off his course, the bulb on his dashboard, a “pilot light” indeed, would grow dim. As he steered back to his proper course, the bulb would brighten cheerfully.

South Pole

Said Edsel Ford last week: “Byrd is a great fellow. He is a gentleman, a scientist and altogether likeable. I enjoy being behind him in such enterprises.” Said Commander Richard E. Byrd: “Both the Fords are fine people. Henry Ford is great because he dreams and has ideals and puts them into practice. It was a wonderful experience to talk with him.” Each spoke after a conference in Detroit after which Edsel Ford said he would help financially to back a Byrd flight over the South Pole as he helped back him to the North Pole. The South Pole trip was postponed to 1928.