The inside of an automobile race track is like a bowl, with the sides growing steeper toward the top. The cars climb toward the outer edge in proportion to their speed, and it is quite impossible to force a slow car up the steep side of the bowl. The faster it goes the steeper the bank must be and the sharper the turn. A pilot must make his own “bowl” and learn to tip his plane the right degree relative to the sharpness of his turn and his speed. A skid means lack of control, for a while, either on the ground or in the air, and of course is to be avoided. By the way, compensating for skidding is the same with a car or plane—one turns either craft in the direction of the skid. Besides skidding, a plane can stall exactly as a car does on a hill. The motor is overtaxed and stops. The plane motor doesn’t stop, but just as a stalled car starts to roll backwards down the hill, so the stalled plane begins to drop. Recovery of control with an automobile is simple; only a matter of jamming on the brakes and getting the engine started again. With the plane there is similarly little difficulty; it falls for a moment until it attains enough forward speed to make the rudder and elevators again effective. This is comparable to the ineffectiveness of a rudder on a too slow-moving boat. If a plane stall with out motor occurs so close to the earth that there isn’t time to recover control, a hard landing results. But in the air, as with automobiles, most accidents are due to the human equation. The careful driver, either below or aloft, barring the hard luck of mechanical failure, has remarkably little trouble, considering what he has to contend with. I think it is a fair statement that for the average landing, the descent of the plane is less noticeable than the dropping of the modern high-speed elevator. It comes down in a gentle glide at an angle often much less than that of a country hill. As a result, unless a passenger is actually watching for the landing, he is aware he is approaching the ground only when the motors are idled. “I would gladly fly if we could stay very close to the ground,” is a statement that I have heard often in one way or another. As a matter of fact, a plane 100 feet off the earth is in infinitely more danger than one 3600 feet aloft. [Illustration: description: Photo full outdoor shot of Earhart in dress clothes standing next to a door caption: IN LONDON (MISS EARHART) © _Topical Press Agency_ ] [Illustration: description: Photo high over shoulder shot of crew facing crowd of photographers caption: “A BIG SMILE, PLEASE!” © _Paramount News Photos_ ]
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account