Evening star., 1926-02-01
BY LIEUT.. CORLEY McDARMENT.

b1 lIESl L. \OhIE1 McliANhL.>i :.
The difficulty of altitude flying is
attested by the fact that only nVe
aviatorS have ever seriously attempt
ed to face the desperate conditions en-
countered in a try for the worlds att
tude record.
1t was announced the other day in a
cablegram to The Star and its asso-
ciated newspapers of the North Amer
lean Newspaper Alliance that the
French aviator Callizo had already
gone into rigorous training for his
flight over Mount Everest, which
takes place in March or April. The
idea of an aviator undergoirg n long
period OF diet and special exercise
as n preliminary to Il brief flight into
the upper air may have seemed odd
to many readers. But it did not seem
odd to those who know the conditions
OF flight along the earth's ceiling.
WalloWing in the emptiness of outer
space where the silence is broken
only by the subdued roar of a motor,
where no echoes roll where the sun
bIiSterS the skin and the icy wind
pierceS TO the bone like Il steel needle,
is an experience of less than half a
dozen men in the world. The aviators
who would break altitude records
must undergo the strangest expert
Artificial Breathing.
Neither men nor machines can
normally work at the immense
heights where the worlds airplane
altitude records are now hung. Both
must do artificial breathing.
An airplane motor that can rip off
400 horsepower at sea level becomes
a puny chunk of iron of less than S5
horsepower at $4,000 feet, while man
at the same height sloughs off in his
faculties of thinking and acting to the
feebleness of a child.
To remedy this loss of powers, a
motor that is elected to drag an air
plane up beyond its normal ceiling"
is fed compressed air through super
charger, and the aviator, whose hand
must be guided by a conscious BRAIN
is equipped with an oxygen tank.
At about % 900 feet the aviator and
his machine begin drawing upon their
artificial breathing apparatus. The
flyer smokes" his oxygen through a
small tube in about the same way
he would smoke a pipe. In going up
to 10000 feet from sea level. the air
decreases in density from 14.5 pounds
per square inch to % pounds. That
is why the aviator must take in extra
oxygen and the airplane engine must
Reaching the Ceiling"
The airplane engine is furnished
with denser air for its carburetor by
a little turbine fan in the super
charger. This fan, rotating at i'm
menSe speed, pulls in the thin air and
piles it up behind, then shoves it to-
ward the Carburetor. BY making the
fan go faster, the amount of air piled
up can be increased. and it is possi-
BILE to crowd about IA pounds of air
per square inch into the engine at
heights as great as 10000 or so, 900
feet.
But this does not mean that an air
plane can go to this altitude and there
make Il fresh start as from sea level.
At these heights the air is so thin
that it will not support an airplane's
wings, and the propeller has little or
nothing to bite into and pull the ma
chine along. As 4 result the craft
'WalloWS' upon nothingneSS. So, when
an aviator finds his machine getting
loggy, the wings dipping out of con
troll and the nose sinking below the
distant horizon when the elevators are
doing all they can to hold it up. he
knows that the absolute ceiling has
been reached. This can happen even
though sea-level air density is being
supplied to the motor and artificial
respiration has kept the pilot con-
SCiOuS.
Horrors of Upper Air.
The limit to which machines NAV
be flown upward can be figured
mathematically, but there is no
formula for the height to which a
human being can ascend and live.
In a sealed cabin man could, of
course, go anywhere that his means
o. propulsion could take him, but in
the open" his upward flight is GER
tainly limited, and it is evidently not
much higher than he has already
aScended.
One aviator has remarked: Heaven
may be up in the sky, but the higher
you go the more like hell it becomes ~
Every flyer who has climbed to the
thin heights attests TO the horrors of
the experience.
The terrible cold is one element
that tries to keep men battened down
out of the high regions. No matter
how much clothing is worn, the biting
cold works into the body.
Temperatures of 20 or so degrees
below zero are encountered at 35 600
feet, and it does not matter whether
the flight is made in Winter or Sum.
mer. The seasons are only local. 1t
is always Winter q few thousand
feet above the earth, with a strange,
white, Midsummer sun always shin
ing.
The extreme cold has an effect upon