The New York herald., 1922-05-07
night MAIL FLYING
Will Be MADE SAFE
Radio Direction Finders
and BeacOns of Light
Chief Features. y
PLANES OVERHAULED
Farmer. 85. New Aviation
Enthusiast, Will Fly to
Albany To-day.
BOMBING TESTS PROCEED
1'nsee Cylinder Air Flivver,
Despite Lung Trouble,
Makes Safe Drop.
BOMBING TESTS PROCEED

Night flying, soon to begin on the
air mail line across the continent. will
render double service to this coun-
try. in the opinion of aeronautical au-
thorities.
Not only will it make it possible for
from San Francisco to New York in
twenty-four hours or so but the ex
perience gained in operation will do
much to speed the establishment of
regular lines of aircraft which will fly
day and night.
The competition between airplane
and railroad train in carrying mail
has been somewhat like the celebrated
race between the hare and the tor
toise, because the tortoise train travels
all night while the hare plane stays
still on the ground. Even without night
flying air mail travels about twice
as fast as train mail, but with night
flying experts believe train mail will
be made to appear like slow freight.
The announcement of night flying was
made by Col Paul Henderson, Second
Assistant Postmaster General, in charge
of air mail with the reservation that
II would not be attempted until the
engineering staff of the service had COM
pleted its work of making this type of
aviation safe.
--~When the first plane takes off from
Curtiss Field, Garden City. for night
fight, it will not head westward with a
Il L. IL
eye watching an unsteady compass,
wondering where in this or the next
world sunrise viii find him.
Instead the plane will start with n
confident aviator so equipped that 1t
will be a difficult task for him to lose
his way unless he loses both sight and
hearing.
BeacOns Across Continent.
All the way across the continent this
pilot and the pilots relieving him will
be guided by beacons shining upward
into the air from emergency landing
fields thirty or forty miles apart. Thus.
at no time during the fight will he be
more than twenty miles from a field.
In the event that he has to land because
OF motor trouble. signal from the
plane, a flare, will cause the illumna-
ton of the field by flood lights in ad-
uitlOn 10 lne DedcOn.
Each plane. instead of an oscillating
compass which can not. because OF
drifting winds. be used with any GER
tainty. will be equipped with a radio
direction finder which will unerrngly
point the way to the next control field
despite fog, snow. rain or darkness.
These arc the plans of the Post Office
department. and already they are well
on the way to completion. The lights
At the emergency fields. a great number
cf which already have been located. will
be operated by the farmer owning the
neld. They will require only n few
minutes attention about the time the
fiier is scheduled to pass overhead.
The control stations at Curtss Field,
GSellefonte. Pa. Cleveland, Ohio; Bryan,
Clio; Chicago. ILL.,. Iowa City. Iowa !:
Omaha, Neb. North Platte. Neb.: Chey
enne. Wye. Rock Springs. Wyo.; Salt
Lake City, Utah: Elko. New; Reno.
New, and San Francisco already have
been equipped with radio stations.
All that is necessary now is TO equip
the planes with a small. light type OF
radio direction finder to pick up the inn
pulses sent by the fields. The pilots in
addition will have radio receiving sets
IN their cockpits so that they can get
me- s.of any bad weather or unusual
cor sons they are running into. Thus
ernpf the eighty remodelled De Hav-
end day. to reel off their two miles a
minute steadrT and surely between the
Atlantic andraAe Pacific.