The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1920-03-20
MAKING TRAVEL
BY AIR SAFE
Wireless Telephone viii Do Much
to Insure Speedy Mail
Deliveries.
BRITISH EXPERTS AT WORK

"HCH iNCW SyStSHH 10 WoThin9 FToP%
erIy Pilots Will Be In Constant
Touch With Ground by Means
of Wireless.
London.-Will the aerial mail serv.
ice, when its organization has been
improved, still continue to be inter-
rupted by such adverse weather as
during the past week prevented on
several days the flying of the mail
machines between London and Parisi
Asked this question the other day by
a representative of the London Times,
Holt Thomas, whose high speed BIZ
planes carry the London-Paris mail.
replied with an emphatic mo-"
AT present, he explained, we are
flying daily over what is, to a large
extent, still an u~norganized route and
it is no exaggeration at all to say that
when all the organization which we
are busily preparing is brought ac-
tually into play, as it will be before
we have to encounter another winter,
such conditions as prevented Lieuten-
ant McMullin from getting through
to Paris on the first day of the air
mail last Monday will have no ad-
verse effect at all on the flying of a
machine, either from the point of view
of safety or of adhering to scheduled
time.
Wireless ~telegraphy will help us
enormously and we have now the
services of one of the most practical
experts in this country, who is on
centrating his attention exclusively on
the question as to how directional
wireless and the wireless telephone
may be made to help us in regular
daily flying and to overcome such
difficulties as at present cause delay.
Information for Plane Pilot.
When we have this system working
properly it will mean that during our
hours of flying, say from IL o'clock to
4 p. M, every land operator will be
listening for messages from the air
and a pilot having set out say from
Hounslow. and wishing to know ex-
actly what the weather is like in the
channel, will simply take up his re-
celver and call "Hello, Lympne." All
the other stations on the airwaN will
hear, but only Lympne will reply, and
in a moment the pilot will be given
the information he requires. It will
also be quite easy for one pilot to
speak to another while two machines
are In flight.
In each machine, also. we shall
place a light telescope mast. This
will be jointed and will lie in the
fuselage without taking up any room.
But should a pilot have to make a
compulsory descent he will on alight-
Ing take out his mast, joint it together
and place the "aerial' of his wire
less telephone on the top of It. Then,
when he has raised this mast and
stuck the end of 1t In the ground
1t will be about 80 feet high when
fully extended-he will be able to call
up the nearest aerodrome on his wire.
less telephone and tell them just what
field he Is down in and what his
trouble is. In such a case. If a man
cannot ascend again quickly, we shall
send another machine to him from the
nearest relief point, which will take
on his mails. We shall soon have a
system, both on the English and
French sections of the route, whereby
a pilot who has a forced landing can
get into touch Immediately with the
nearest land agent of the service. who
will take over his mails at once and
send them on their way in a fast mo-
torcycle.
The point is now demonstrated very
clearly that with a skillful pilot and
a fast machine the only sort of at
mospheric conditions which seriously
interrupts flying is such as we en-
counter sometimes on q bad November
day, when an Opaque mist, beginning
almost at ground level, may extend
upward, in an unbroken mass, to an
altitude of something like 10000 feet.
HURTING Through the Fog.
A pilot in an airplane, flying on
through a thick mist. is as unhappy
as a pedestrian in a dense fog-onIy
more so. Not only is there the ques
ton of finding his way, but he is
faced also by the embarrassing fact
that. through not being able to turn
his eye upon any horizon line. he can
not judge the altitude or inclination
of his machine in relation to the
ground below. with the result hat he
may get into a side slip or spin and
find suddenly that his machine has
passed out of his control-a condition
of affairs which may spell extreme
peril.
Then we expect very soon to have
improved considerably the instru-
ments in a machine which tell its
pilot its altitude and inclination when
he is deprived by fog or cloud of a
horizon line. Then. as yet another
point. we are working on the question
of lighting aerodomes and landing
grounds so that a pilot can make a