The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1928-03-22
An Epic of the Air
-By-
Col. Charles
Lindbergh
Copyrighted

Copyrighted

was broken, however, which would
require immediate repairing.
The field was quite a distance
from Alma, and in order to get an
early start in the morning stayed
with the ship that night. During
the heavy rains at Maben, Missis-
sippi, I had constructed a ham
mock of heavy canvas which could
be suspended under the top wing.
tied the corners of this ham,
mock to the upper strut fittings
| and crawled into the three blan-
kets inside, which were sewn up to
form a bag. Thus spent a COM
Portable night.
When arrived over Lincoln the
next day I circled over the Lincoln
Standard factory, and after land
ing on the old flying field south of
town waited for the car which was
sent out to bring in visiting air
men.
The remainder of the day was
spent in ground flying" with my
friends in the factory. We had
not been together for seven months
and the usual exchange of exper-
fences was necessary.
I soon learned that Bud Quincy
had made a parachute for himself
and was intending to test it lby the
simple method of going up to an
altitude of fifteen hundred or two
thousand feet and cutting loose
from the plane. If the chute OPP
ened it was successful.
After a great deal of persuasion
I prevailed upon him to let me take
him up in my ship while we made
the first test with a sandbag.
The tanks had just been filled
with fuel, but I had unlimited con-
fidence in my Jenny, and we dashed
the parachute and sandbag on the
right wing. Bud; who weighed one
hundred and sixty-five pounds,
climbed into the front cockpit, and
we started the takeoff with total
load of about six hundred pounds,
to say nothing of the resistance of
the parachute and sandbag, which
were directly in the slipstream
from the propeller.
Even with this load by a safe
margin we finally attained an al
titude of about 200 feet. Then
we were caught by a descending
current of air which carried the
plane down to within ten feet of
the ground, and try as / would I
could not get any higher. A
wooded hill was directly in front
and to avoid striking the trees l
turned down wind. A railroad
trestle was then in front of us, and
we stalled over it by inches. For
five minutes we lodged hills, trees
and houses. I signaled Bud to cut
the sandbag, but when he started
to climb out of the cockpit to reach
it, the added resistance brought
the plane down still lower. Then
in front of US appeared a row of
trees, much higher than the rest,
which / knew it would not be pos
sible to get over. We were then
passing over a grain field and I
cut the gun and laded down wind.
The grain was high enough to keep
the ship from rolling far and we
unloaded the sand bag before tax
ing Of again. With the weight of
the bag and it's resistance gone,
we had no trouble in getting out
of the grain and back to the flying
field.
A week later Bud carried out
his original intention of testing
the chute. 1t was successful.
Before continuing the flight to
Minnesota, Bud and / made a short
transforming trip through Eastern
Nebraska. Tha territory had been
fairly well covered by barn
stormers, however, and we did very
little business.
At one place where we landed
we were overtaken by a violent
thunderstorm combined with a
strong wind. It came up so sud-
denly that we had only time
enough to tail the ship into the
wind and lash the stick to keep
the ailerons from whipping before