A Junior Aëroclub with Its Instructor in One of the New York Public Schools.
The junior aëro tournaments are likely to be the most thrilling experience in a boy’s life. The feats which the world has watched with such breathless interest at aviation meets at Rheims, Pau, or Los Angeles are reproduced in miniature in these boys’ contests without loss of enthusiasm. The weeks or months of preparation in scores of little workshops are now put to an actual test. The model air-ship, which has cost so many anxious and delightful hours in the building, is to spread its wings with scores of similar air-craft. The superiority of the monoplane or biplane forms is to be tested without fear or favor.
For the young inventors, even for the mere layman in such matters, the scene is extremely animated. On every hand one sees the inventors tuning up their air-craft for the final test. There are lively discussions in progress over the marvelous little toys. The layman hears a new language spoken with perfect confidence about him. The boys have already made the picturesque vocabulary of the world of aviation their own. The discussion ranges over monoplanes and biplanes, cellular types, and flexed planes, or of rigid and lateral braces. To hear a crowd of these enthusiasts shout their comments as the air-ships fly about is in itself an education in advanced aëronautics.
Directly the floor is cleared, the judges take their position, and the junior sky-pilot toes the mark, air-ship in hand. “One, two, three,” shouts the starter, and with a whir the graceful air-craft is launched. The flutter of the tiny propeller suggests the sudden rise of a covey of partridges. The little craft, at once so graceful and frail, defies all the accepted laws of gravitation. It darts ahead in long, undulating curves as it floats over the invisible air-currents. As in the aëroplanes of larger size, the length of the flight is dependent almost wholly on the motive power. As the little engine slows down, the craft wavers, and then in a long curve, for it can do nothing ungraceful, it glides to rest, skidding along the floor like a bird reluctant to leave the sky.
When the time comes for the races between the air-craft, enthusiasm runs high. Naturally these contests are the most popular features of the tournament. A line of inventors, with their air-craft, usually six at a time, take their positions at the starting-line. Each air-craft has been tuned to its highest powers. The labor of weeks, the study of air-craft problems, the elaboration of pet inventive schemes, are represented in the shining model. And the problem before the young inventors is most baffling. There are few models to work from, the science is still so young, and the inventor may well feel himself something of a Columbus in launching his frail craft upon this uncharted sea.
At the signal half a dozen propellers are instantly released, a whirring as of innumerable light wings fills the air. The curious flock of mechanical birds rises and falls, dipping in long, graceful curves as they struggle toward the goal. Some graceful little craft perfectly reproducing to the last detail the famous Wright machine shoulders along beside a glistening monoplane which resembles a great hawk with wings outspread. The next craft is perhaps a complicated arrangement of planes of no registered type, while the craft made familiar by the photographs of the famous aviators are reproduced.
The thrill of an aëroplane race is a sensation peculiarly its own. It seems so astonishing that the graceful little craft should remain aloft at all, that they are a never-failing delight to the eye. The varying fortunes of the race, the temporary lead gained by one craft, to be lost the next moment to another, which a second later itself falls behind, and the final heat between the survivors in the race as they approach the goal, are enough to drive the average boy crazy with delight.
A Young Inventor in His Workshop.
