Evening Star Newspaper, December 7, 1930, Page 65

~ Aviation BY JOSEPH S. EDGERTON. National Capital, a year ago one of the most inactive large cities in the country from an aviation standpoint, now finds itself an aeronautical beehive with few superiors. ‘The beginning of the new year will find 44 mail and passenger planes of at least seven different types, mcst of them multi-motored, operating in and out of this city every 24 hours on reg- ular schedule. There probably will be additions to this number early in the ear. 3 Coupled with military and unsched- uled civil operations, the National Capital's daily average of airplane ar- rivals and departures probably will be well in excess of 60. During the Sum- | mer months, when miscellaneous flying is at its peak, it is anticipated that in the neighborhcod of 75 planes will come and go each 24 hours. 1 Eastern Air Transport, operating | contract airmail service between New | York and Miami, feeling the effects of the new Watres airmail act, is begin- | ning a notable expansion of service which will double its daily flying mile- | age, provide passenger service over its | entire system, make possible day as well as night mail schedules and in- augurate an entirely new seacoast mail and passenger line joining its present route at Richmond, Va. and Jackson- ville, Fia. World’s Heaviest Aif Traffic. When its program is completed this line will be operating on a basis of 14/ flights a day b:otween Washington and New York, 6 a day between Washing- | ton and Atlanta, 4 between Atlania and Miami and 2 over the new coastal | route. Added to the schedules of the New York, Philadclphia and Washing- ton Airways Corporation, this will mean 34 fll;‘ht.s a day between Washington and New York on regular schedule, which it is believed, is heavier by far than the traffic on any other airway in the world. Establishment of the Eastern Air ‘Transport daylight schedule between this city and New York will make pos- sible the execution of a plan now being considered by Postmaster General Wal- ter F. Brown for a fast special mail service between the two cities which will permit the sending of a letter and re- ceiving a reply between.the two cities during the course of a single business day. Letters mailed here as late as noon or 1 pm. would be delivered in New York before close of business under this plan. The mail would be flown under a special stamp combining alrmail and special delivery services. Of importance to the District is an operating agreement reached during the week between Eastern Air Transport and American Airways, the operating subsidiary of the Aviation Corporation, which will permit co-ordination of schedules involving 32,000 miles of fly- ing daily. This will, in effect, provide & unified air system extending through the National Capital from New Eng- land and Canada to Atlanta, where it will split in two great lines, one ex- tending across the Gulf States and Southwest to the Pacific Ooast, the other extending to Miami and there connecting with the giant Pan-American system connecting all the West Indies, Central America and South America. Longest Sea Schedule Begins. One of the most interesting of the recent aviation developments is the in- auguration during the past week of the world’s longest unbroken overseas scheduled air transport line, a 737-mile hop from Kingston, Jamaica, to Cristo- bel, Panama Canal Zone. The long ocean hop is part of the regular serv- ice from Miami to Panama, a distance of 1,385 milss, of which 1,315 miles is over water. ‘The long flight, now being made twice & week in both directions, is to serve not only to expedite Uncle Sam's con- tract airmail service to the Canal Zone | and South America, but also as & prov- ing ground for futurs transatlantic air- mail service, for which the Post Office Department is to ask bids on Decem- ber 29 The airmail definitely is tak- ing to the seaways. Service on the long oversea line be- | gan Tuesday, when one of the big -American Airways _22-passenger Commodore flying boats tcok off from | Miami at 3 pm. bound for Panama. Edwin Schultz, one of the country’s most experienced commercial flying- boat pilots, was at the controls when the big boat lifted from Biscayne Bay and nosed toward Cuba, according to & report received here. With Schultz were a co-pilot, a radio operator and a steward. No passengers are to be carried until the service settled into | its stride. ‘The night was passed in Cienfuegos, on the southern coast of Cuba, where | the plane landed at 5:15 pm. The hop | to Kingston, a distance of 448 miles | over water, started at 6:30 a.m. Wed- | nesday and the big boat landed in Jamaican waters at 10 am. The final leg of the flight, for 674 miles of which the plane was entitely out of sight of land, started at 10:30 a.m. and ended at Cristobal at 5:30 p.m., just 26 hours out of Miami, including the overnight stop at Cienfuegos. While Schultz was flying south, Basil | of ‘the last great links to be forged in Rowe, chief pilot of the marine division SLASHING of Pan-American Airways, was flying north over the same route in a Sikorsky amphibion. He left Panama at 6:30 am. Wednesday, arriving in Miami at 10:45 the next morning. The Kingston-Panama line is ‘one a gieat 22,000-mile chain of inter- naticnal airways linking 29 countries and colonies of the three Americas. Pan- American Airways now is carrying Uncle Sam’s mail in a fleet of 98 transport planes on lines involving 100,000 milcs of flying daily over Central American Jjungles, blue tropical seas, the green isles of the Spanish Main, the great tolling cattle plains of South America and the 4-mile-high Andes. This tremendous system, built up in the face of keen competition from subsi- dized European air lines, ranks today as by far the greatest international air transport system in the world, not excepting the so-called “empire ro\ltes"i of France, England and Germany. Poundage to Mileage. | ‘The p.ovisions of the Watres bill, which was intended to stabilize the aviation industry, were applied during the past week to the Eastern Air Trans- port airmail line from New York to Miami. The action of the Post Office Department will result in the carrying of the mail on the coastal run in pas- senger as well as mail planes. Increased mall schedules, with more frequent service, including daylight trips, will be flown. Under the new arrangement Eastern Alr Transport now will be paid for carry- ing ecirmail on the basis of wcight, milcage and space instead of on the former weight bas s. In the two and a half years the coastal airmail line has been in oper- ation a total of 1,155565 pounds of mail, or some 52,000,000 individual let- ters and packages, have been flown. The quantity has increased from an average of 300 pounds daily during the first month to a daily average of nearly a ton. The coastal line on December 1, when the change went into effect, was flying a total of 5,120 miles per day. By next month the daily total will have increased to 10,500 miles, or nearly half the distance around the earth, flown each 24 hours, Relieving the Pilot. The number of aircraft instruments is “getting so large that instruments now are being produced to aid the pilot in operating his supply of navi- gational equipment. Radio range be: con receiving equipment has come in general use. Two types are used— aural, which enables the pilot to hear signals telling whether he is on or off his course, and visual, which conveys the same mnformation to his eyes by vibrating reeds. The radio range beacons proved an immense poon to piots who have to travel in thick weather. They did, however, add to the burdens of the pilot, and that at just the wrong time. When the pilot was approaching his destination and was beginning to worry about getting down safely, the radio beacon signals began to in- crease rapidly in volume as he neared | Progre the broadcasting station. He had to tune down the volume constantly to keep the volume from hurting his ears or to keep the reeds from vibrating beyond the points where they could be used for guidance. So, as tne pilot’s normal burdens in- creased, his worries were augmented by having to fiddle continuously with a tuning knob on the range beacon set. This burden now has been lifted from him by an automatic volume con- trol perfected by the aeronautic branch of the Department of Commerce. The control does all the tuning without any attention from the pilot, leaving him free to go about his duties and still to receive the benefit of radio guidance when he needs it most. Not only does the new device tune the beacon set. It also can be made to indicate the distance of the plane from the beacon station and proves a great aid in connection with the use of the runway localizing beacon, which forms a part of the system of blind-landing aids now being developed by the aero- nautics branch and the Bureau of Standards at College Park, Md. Los Angeles Laid Up. The U. S. S. Los Angeles, training ship for the crews of the two giant Navy dirigibles now under construction at Akron, Ohio, has been laid up for a two-month overhaul at the Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, N. J. The overhaul period is twice the time ordinarily required to purify helium and fof material upkeep and repairs. The extended period is due to the con- ducting the tests prescribed by the Navy Board of Inspection and Survey re- cently to determine the strength of the now old ship with one or more gas cells deflated. During the overhaul period some sec- tions of the old German outer cover will be replaced. At present, according to the Navy Department, about 72 per cent of the ship's outer cover is the original German cover, now six or seven years old. Prior to the lay-up the Los Angeles | the | has completed development work on a THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. Oy AMERICAN mSTORY BY MOTOR—- == DECEMBER 7, 1930—PART FOUR. "My 0ld Kentucky Home™ 7> K, 7 gl st v = whose plintive 7 Sss | IS w7 the cinnati. sponsive chord in the hearts of® -« # common folkcs everywhere. The door 13 the entrance way 1o the Rowan horme 772 (ight)at Bardstow Where Fogter wrote while on avisit from Cin- ithin its vine-clad walls are TO the door-at the left once came man whose heart was nofes of sadness. The youth vs Stephen (llins Foster,’ still fouch aree ) 74 the furnishings of days {hat have gone, and on the visitor’s ‘register, more than 200,000 names are enrolled. . ©Arerican Hiowwar Eoucariowas. Bumeas was used for many experimental proj- ects involving mechanical handling, methods of mooring, docking and un- docking, in preparation for the han- | dling of the ZRS-4, first of the new Navy air giants. Aeronautics Course Begins. Paul Edward Garber, in charge of aeronautics collections of the Smithsonian Institution, who s nation- | ally recognized as an authority on avi- ation history, began a series of four lectures on_this subject at Catholic University Friday night. Mr. Garber's lecture course will be followed by lec- tures on various other phases of aero- nautics by recognized authorities in the various branches of the science. Mr. Garber’s second lecture, on the evening of December 17, will be on the story of the balloon. Busy Days at Anacostia. Navy test pilots at the Anacostia Naval Air Station, where all Navy flight test work has been concentrated, have put in some busy days lately. In co- | cperation with the Navy Medical De- partment they have put in quite a bi of time studying the hazards of monox- ide gas poisoning from engine exhaust fumes which may be sucked into air- plane cockpits. Monoxide poisoning has been held responsible, or, at least, a major contributing factor, for the fatal crash of Capt. Arthur Page, U. . M. C., during the Thompson Trophy race at Chicago last Labor day. The accurate determination of air-| plane landing speeds has been one of | the difficult problems encountered by test pilots at the local station. Lieut. Frederick M. Trapnell, one of the test | pilots at the local station, who is famous as a member of the star acrobatic sec tion, “The Three Flying Fish,” has in. vented a method of his own for dealing with the problem and tests now are in ess. ‘Trapnell uses a highly sensitive air- speed indicator of which a continuous photographic record is made by a small motion-picture recording apparatus. A number of test flights with the device have been made and the results are being studied and calibrated to deter- mine the accuracy of this method. Pilots at the station also have been working with a variable pitch propeller which can be adjusted from the air- plane cockpit for maximum efficiency in taking off and climbing and for level flight. Various types of variable pitch propellers have been produced for ex- perimental purposes. Development of a propeller which will meet all require- ments is held to be one of the pressing demands of modern aviation. The station’s radio laboratory crew crystal-controlled high-frequency trans- mitter for fighting planes. Construction of a model suitable for flight testing is being completed. Several receiver cir- cuits have been tested to obtain aute- matic volume control and prevent blocking from a nearby transmitter. Installation of radio equipment in the station’s transport planes has been commenced and radio communication will be maintained in the future on cross-country missions. Successful radio frequency filter units AVIATION Needs Alreraft Engineers and Draftsmen COLUMBIA “TECH” ot, Drafting Reading. Extimating Classes Enroll Any Day and Evening Sessions Also Corresy ster Now b. Ei COLUMBIA TECHNICAL SCHOOL 1319 F St. N\W. Metro. 5626 | 1aboratory ‘with a small rotating loop. |are marked with yellow “L’s” designat- - PRICE REDUCTION " ON BRAND NEW " LATEST 1931 MODELS ROADSTERS | SIXES and EIGHTS We are overstocked on this particular model and will sell these cars at once at a considerable reduction. YOUR CAR AS DOWN PAYMENT —BALANCE EASY TERMS! * DISTRICT MOTOR COMPANY have been constructed and installed on generator test stands at the stations and are proving valuable in eliminating induction from the motors when testing | receivers with engine-driven_generator | current supply. A comvass loop (‘Ollb~' ling unit was built and tested in the csults were so satisfactory that this | type of receiver may be adapted for | use with a small retractable loop and installed on Navy patrol planes. The station also has been conducting experimental work with small weather maps which are kept up to the minute to supply information concerning cur- rent flying weather along the coast and the heavily traveled routes into the Middle West. Quantico Field Lighted. ‘The airways division of the Depart- ment of Commerce has finished mark- ing what is known as “Number Two Field” at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va., and this field has been officially designated as an intermediate field on the New York-Atlanta airway. The field is well lighted and the limits ing the corners of the field. The Visual Beacon Arrives. Contracts which have just been awarded by the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce bear wit- ness to a change from the aural type to the visual type radio beacon used to guide airplane pilots with unvarying | accuracy through storm, fog or night. | Thirty visual type radio range bea- con transmitters and accessories have been ordered, at a cost of more than $268,000, for installation along the Fed- eral airways. The aural type beacons now in service warn pllots through earphones whether they are on the course lald down by the beacon, or, if off course, to which side and approximately the degree of error. The visual type beacon was conceived y the Aeronautics Branch n-arly three years ago as a more promising aid to alr navigation than the aural type. It is the result of nearly three years of re- search, laboratory experiments and flight tests carried on by the branch. The signais from the visual type radio range beacon are received on the plane by a radio receiver which operates a reed indicator contained in a small box on the instrument board. In the box are two thin strips of metal known as “reeds,” which are mounted side by side and actuated by the radio signals received. The tips of the reeds are white and are mounted so as to be vis- ible to the pilot. When actuated by the beacon signals, the reeds vibrate, the white tips forming what appear to be two broad white vertical ribbons. When the white lines are equal in length the plane is on the course. Deviation to the left increases the length of the left reed, shortens the vibration of the right reed. When the right reed is longer than the left the plane is to the right of the course. ‘The Department of Commerce is working on further developments of the radio range beacon which may greatly increase the usefulness of the system to all pilots. At present the beacon rays may be used only along the course upon which they are directed. Experi- ments now nearing completion may make it possible to fly a pre-determined course at any angle to the beacon course, making the beacon useful in all directions. PERIODIC INSPECTION OF AUTO RECOMMENDED Motor Company’s Service Bureau Issues List of Suggestions for Car Owners. ‘Temperatures, fast driving, long and hard pulls in sand and other factors unite to make necessary a periodic in- spection of the driving system of today’s motor cars, avers an automobile serv- ice bureau. The important units of the driving system, the bureau states, will often become noisy and inefficient if their care is neglected. Here are the bureau’s recommendations: “Universal joints should be checked for wear and such parts replaced as is necessary. The proper grade and rec- ommended portion of lubricant should also be carefully watched. “Both the transmission and differen- tial should be examined for wear, leaks and proper lubrication. “Springs and brake assemblies should be thoroughly examined. All spring slip nuts (or U-bolts) should be drawn taut, and the small rebound clips on the springs should be tightened so they will_satisfactorily perform their duty PP T Ul Battery and Ignition Service Exide Batteries CREEL BROTHERS 1811 14th St. N.W. Decatur 4220 —BY JAMES W. BROOKS. (Sketches by Calvin A. Fader.) of keeping the leaves in proper align- ment. All dirt and grease should be removed from the springs which should then be lubricated in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. 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Always bear in mind that com- petent and periodic inspection and serv- icing of your car by an authorized serv- lce representative of that make of ear should be your guarantee of greater economy and a longer period of trouble- free operation.” with all and “feel” of an eil that has gone hardly 100 miles, AUTOCRAT—THE OIL THAT I8 DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHERS, Beware of Substitutes you need oil, and judge its advantages for yourself. At the Better Dealers k. BAYERSON OIL WORKS, COLUMBIA 5228 HOUSANDS who have thought only of F. O. B. prices are learning with amazement that the price of a Nash car delivered, fully equipped, is often even less than the F. O, B. prices of other cars in the same field. Car buyers expect more for their money today —and Nash gives you the finest motor cars that money can buy at prices sensationally low... . 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Birch Brothers Clarendon, Va, . Williams & Baker, Inc. 1507 14th Street N. W, B. D. Jerman & Company 2819 M Street N, W. Authorised Washington Nash Dealers ———————————————eeeeeeee el » . Hall-Kerr Motor Co. 3 B Street S. E. otterNash Motor Compeny