During the spring and summer of 1902 I took trips to England and the United States, of which I shall have a word to say later. Returning from those trips to Paris I at once set about selecting the site of an aerodrome that should be all my own and in which the experience gained at such cost should be taken advantage of. This time I resolved my air-ship house should have an ample space around it. And, succeeding in a way, I realised—if I may say it—the first of the air-ship stations of the future.
After long search I came on a fair-sized lot of vacant ground surrounded by a high stone wall, inside the police jurisdiction of the Bois de Boulogne, but private property, situated on the Rue de Longchamps, in Neuilly St James. First, I had to come to an understanding with its owner; then I had to come to an understanding with the Bois authorities, who took time to give a building permit to such an unusual construction as a house from which air-ships would go and come.
The Rue de Longchamps is a narrow suburban street, little built on at this end, that gives on the Bagatelle Gate to the Bois de Boulogne, beside the training ground of the same name. To go and come in my air-ships from this side is, however, inconvenient because of the walls of the various properties, the trees that line the Bois so thickly, and the great park gates. To the right and left of my little property are other buildings. Behind me, across the Boulevard de la Seine, is the river itself, with the Ile de Puteaux in it. It is from this side that I must go and come in my air-ships. Mounting diagonally in the air from my own open grounds I pass over my wall, the Boulevard de la Seine, and turn when well above the river. Regularly I turn to the left and make my way, in a great arc, to the Bois by way of the training ground, itself a fairly open space.
FIRST OF THE WORLD'S AIRSHIP STATIONS (NEUILLY ST JAMES)
There it stands in its grounds, the first of the air-ship stations of the future, capable of housing seven air-ships all inflated and prepared to navigate at an instant's notice! But in spite of all the needs that I attempted to provide for in it what a small and hampered place it is compared with the great, highly-organised stations which the future must produce for itself, with their high-placed and spacious landing-stages, to which air-ships will descend with complete safety and convenience, like great birds that seek nests on flat rocks! Such stations may have little car tracks running out from their interior to the wide landing-spaces. The cars that run over them will pull the air-ships in and out by their guide ropes, without loss of time or the aid of a dozen or more men. Their observation towers will serve for judges timing stations in aerial races; fitted with wireless telegraph apparatus they may be able to communicate with distant goals and, perhaps, even with the air-ships in motion. Attached to their air-ship stations there will be gas-generating plants. There may be a casemated workshop for the testing of motors. There will certainly be sleeping-rooms for experimenters who desire to make an early start and profit by the calm of the dawn. It is quite probable that there will also be balloon envelope workshops for repairs and changes, a carpenter shop, and a machine shop, with intelligent and experienced workmen ready and able to seize an idea and execute it.
Meanwhile my air-ship station of the present is said to resemble a great square tent, striped red and white, set in the midst of a vacant lot surrounded by a high stone wall. Its tent-like appearance is due to the fact that, being in a hurry to utilise it, I saw no reason to construct its walls or roof of wood. The framework consists of long rows of parallel wooden pillars. Across their tops is stretched a canvas roof, and the four sides are made of the same striped canvas. This makes a construction stronger than it at first appears, the outside tent stuff weighing some 2600 kilogrammes (5720 lbs.), and being sustained between the pillars by metallic cordage.
Inside, the central stalls are 9½" metres (31 feet) wide, 50 metres (165 feet) long, and 13½" metres (44½" feet) high, affording room for the largest dirigibles without permitting them to come into contact with each other. The great sliding doors are but a repetition of those of Monaco.
When in the spring of 1903 I found my air-ship station completed I had three new air-ships ready to house in it. They were:
