Evening Star Newspaper, October 11, 1931, Page 88

2 - v Paris to New York iz 6 Hours in My “The moment the news of this mo- mentuous flight flashes around the world all commercial and military planes in existence will be as obsolete as a horse and buggy.” BY R. S. FENDRICK. PARIS. HIGH-FLYING airplane, built for the French air ministry at great expense and in great secrecy, is going to take th: air about No- vember 1 on a momentous adven- ture that may mark 'a new epoch in aviation and in man’'s conquest over the earth. It has been specially constructed tq ascend te an altitude of 12 to 15 miles, or almost double the present record, and to fly at 400 to 500 miles an hour, which means Paris-New York in six or seven hours, providing there are no strong head winds to battle against. 1n- deed, the French experts privately hope for much higher speeds. A strong wind on the tail of this mystery plane might add 100 or 200 miles more to its speed. After the trials the machine will be flown to th2 United States. The pilot and mechanic will be inclosed n an airtight duralumin cylinder to protect them from the rare atmosphere and intense cold, with all controls functioning through padded Jjoints. If this momentous flight proves successful, all present aviation practice will immediately be thrown onto the scrap heap, and the mo- ment the news flashes around the world all commercial and military planes in existence will be as obsclete as a horse and buggy. The limitations of space will almost col'apse, for this flight will only be a crude beginning of high-altitu fiying. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of material may have to be thrown away and factories everywhere will start working on new models. A five-hour flight between the Old and New Worlds will e utterly commonplace. A horrible vision of fu- ture warfare will open up. . 1] WOULD say that the unknown factor in this experiment is not what the plane will do, but what weather conditions it will encounter at 12 to 15 miles,” an air ministry technician told me. “We are convinced that the plane will, the- oretically, do at least 400 to 500 miles an hour at that altitude and that the two men in it will be completely at ease, but what will they encounter? We know that the air will be much more rare, of course, and many qualified per- sons believe that it is a zone ideally clear, with a rather constant temperature and very light winds and mild atmospheric perturbations. In other words, ‘an ocean of oil,” which would be perfect for our purpose. “Another school of meteorologists pretends that there are great differences of temperature close together on the same horizontal plane, which means violent disturbances, and winds with a velocity of 200 miles an hour. In that case high flying will not be very practical. “This first flight of a plane into the strato- sphere will be almost as daring an adventure into the unknown as was Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic. We can practically say that we know absolutely nothing of the con- ditions at 75,000 feet above the earth. A few trial balloons sent up at different places have been whirled through this zone at 200 miles or more per hour, but is this a normal state of affairs up there? You know, of course, that at 400 or 500 miles an hour an airplane could remain in constant sunshine, being in a fixed relationship with the sun. The earth would be spinning underneath it, but the pilot would be sitting in eternal sunshine. Indeed, he would be in eternity, for, having left the earth, he would have left all sense of time behind.” S new high-flying plane is not a vague project. It stands today, practically fin- ished, in Henri, Maurice and Dick Farman's works, the most important in France, at Billan- court, near Paris. The motor, the supercharger, the propeller and the air-tight cabin have already passed the air ministry's severe test. The Farman Co.'s best mechanics have been working on the job for 18 months. No foreigner has been allowed to see the plane, for although its details will become known eventually, the government hopes to give French commercial aviation an impor- tant lead over that of other countries, main- THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., OCTOBER 11, 1931, New Higlz-Flying Airplane Being Built by the French Government in Great Secrecy May Revolutionize Entire Science of Avia- tion, I'f the Flight to the United States, Planned to Follow Trials Next Month, Proves Successful. taining this lead as long as possible. A great many new preblems had to be worked out, such as exceptionally powerful superchargers, metals that would withstand terrific cold. and a special propeller, not to mention a score of others. All of this apparatus is now being fitted into the plane, but it will be a month or two before finishing touches have been completed. Outwardly, the machine is a medium-sized monoplane without any striking details except a four-bladed propeller that is 4 meters 60 framn tip to tip, or slightly more than 15 feet. The blades have a variable pitch that the pilot can alter during flight. The under carriage has "been heightened to give the propeller room. The principal problem of the air ministry engineers was to maintain the motor's power at high altitude, for the higher a plane goes and the thinner the air, the more difficult it be- comes for the motor to breathe through its carburetor. According to French experts, the power descends to zero at about 55,000 feet. The air ministry chose a 350-horsepower Far- man motor, set in V at 90 degrees, and water- cooled. It is placed in the machine inversely as the long-bladed propeller must be mounted very high. To maintain a normal supply of air for the motor at high altitude the Farman Co. developed a triple supercharger which is at- tached to the back of the motor. The three compressors, each making 25,000 turns a minute, are fixed in a triangular sleeve, and can work separately or together. The first drives air into the second, second into the third and the third into the carburetor. As the machine ascends the pilot uses only the first compressor, and later all of them. This terific pressure would normally raise the air to a high tem- perature, but there are radiators, in the form of aluminum tubes, between each compressor and also in front of the carburetor, to carry off the heat. These compressors absorb 180 horse- power, which must be deducted from the motor's nominal 350 horsepower. On the other hand, at about 65,000 feet, the motor will develop more than 480 horsepower, due to lower pres- sure at the exhaust, thus leaving 300 available for flight. If weather conditions are favorable in the stratosphere, this should be sufficient power to drive the plane at least 400 or 500 miles an hour, as the air resistance is so much lower. The carburetor, gasoline tank, and oiling and cooling systems will all work under pressure, and a special mixture with ethyl-glycol base will be used to cool the motor and thereby re- duce the radiator dimensions. The plane itself is of wooden and linen con- struction, partly because the Farman engineers are convinced that wooden framework has many advantages like resiliency over metal, and also because all metals except pure alumi- num beccme extremely fragile and delicate at the low temperature encountered at 65,000 or 75,000 feet. There is no trouble about the motor, as it will remain warm, but the air ministry experts are still uncertain how con- trol wires and other metallic parts, unheated by the motor, will act. The strongest steel cracks like a thin china plate if cold is suf- ficiently intense. The Tick Revealed as Disease S ‘preader HE common dog or wood tick, looked upon largely as an irritating pest but of little importance to humans save for the annoyance it causes, may in reality be an important spreader of disease. Careful study and experi- mentation have proven without question that it transmits a serious disease of cattle known as bovine anaplasmosis, and it is strongly sus- pected of carrying a fever, either the Rocky Mountain spotted fever or something closely akin to it. It is the possibility of spreading the Rocky Mountain fever. which makes the tick most menacing, for this fever has an unusually high death rate, although its virulence varies in different sections. For some time those who doubted the ability of the tick to spread anaplasmosis pointed out the fact that ticks were seldom found on the bodies of cattle infected with this disease, but experts carrying on the study placed ticks known to have gorged themselves on the blocd of infected cattle on the skins of healthy cat- tle. Four wecks later the disease was discov- ered in the test cattle. Observation disclosed that a tick after gorg- ing itself for a week upon an animal drops off and later may attach itself to other animals after it has passed into the nymph or adult stage. Naturally, with the disease not becoming evident until four weeks after infection, no sign of the tick would be found, yet it would have been responsible for the infection. Hard Labor Required HE golden dreams of those who thought to invest their money in pecan orchards and then sit back and enjoy a comfortable wealth without labor were unfortunately dreams only. Investigations carried on by the Department of Agriculture indicate that a paying pecan orchard is an orchard with a long history of hard work. It takes nearly 10 years to bring a pecan tree from seedling to the point where it will bear on a paying basis. Trees will bear at from three to five years, but the yield is relatively unimportant. The development of a pecan orchard requires much labor, not only in the original prepara- tion of the land, but in the yearly cultivation and fertilizing. = stery Plane INSTEAD of using an untried type of machine, the air ministry decided on Farman *“190,” a medium-sized monoplane, but as the at- mosphere has less lift at high altitude the wing® surface has been increased from 40 to 65 square meters, and the tail planes proportionately. The machine will weigh 2bout 5.500 English pounds and have a speed of 150 miles an hour at the surface. The safety co-efficient is four. The unusual novelty inside the plane is the air-tight duralumin cylinder for the pilot and mechanic. It is 80 inches long and 40 inches in diameter, with a small circular window, filled with heavy giass, at each side and a lid at the top for entering. In taking off the pilot can stick his head out, but once he com- mences to get real altitude he must close this chamber and fly by means of his instruments, having only his side windows, probably frosted, for visibility. The cabin will be supplied with fresh air by a pump operating with the super- ‘charger, and as this air coming from the compressors will te even too hot in the upper altitudes that are so bitterly cold it will be cooled by a special radiator. A new kind of valves have been installed to release the bad air. In case of emergency, due to a breakdown in the air pump, the occupants will have a bottle of oxygen that will last long enough for them to drop to fre:-breesthing altitude. The pilot will have everything he needs in this cabin. The controls will operate through air- tight knuckles. “This air-tight cabin was the easiest part of the problem to solve,” the air ministry tech- nician explained, “and we are astonished that it has never been utilized belore. The system is so much safer and more practical than the practice of going up in an open plane with a bottle of oxygen, and, besides, it protects the whole body instead of merely the breathing system. It is not only necessary for a man to breathe normal'y in the stratosphere, his en= tire body requires about the same atmospherie pressure to which he is accustomed. A person who goes up with only a bottle, or aliows an- other to go up, ought to be put in the mad house. “The two men who go up in this.new piane will be snug as bugs. They can control the temperature and the amount of air in their cabin. The mectal cylinder will be insulated so that it is not too cold to touch. And being free from worry about breathing, they can devote all their time to flying and watching their plane. “A far more complicated question is how the apparatus used for piloting a plane when there is no visibility is going to function at 75,000 feet. These controls are based on the effect of a relative wind; in other words, for normal conditions at 1, 2 or 3 miles, but not for bitter cold or violent velocities. There is the same problem for the measuring indicators, particularly spced. We believe that they will function, b not with much exactitude. It may be necessary to create new instruments to measure air speeds, although we can get ground speeds by flying from place to place.” The propeller was one of the principal probe lems to solve. A small prcpelior with a low pitch is sufficient in the thick atmosphere at low altitudes, but a big propeller with a high pitch is needed in the thin air up above. As ths new plane ascends into the higher regions the propeller will commence to race, thereby heating up the motor, but it will be held at 1,800 revolutions at all aliitudes. The air ministry and the Farman engineers finally worked out a huge, four-bladed metallic affair with a variable pitch that the pilot can change in flight. The tank tests have been entirely satisfactory. As the propeller is so vital and may be affected more by the cold than other metallic parts separate from the motor, the metallurgical engineers tested out many alloys under intense cold befcre they finally chose one. When the plane goes up for the first time there will be more anxiety for this part of the machine than any other._ A light, tough, powerful metal that does not become brittle in freezing temperature has not been found yet. No pilot has been chosen yet for this great adventure into the upper skies, but every one in France is eagerly sceking the opportunity that may lead to fame and fortune.