[CHAPTER II AVIATION FOR AMATEURS]
The man who contemplates buying an aeroplane for his own use will be especially interested in three subjects: First, how difficult it is to learn to fly; second, how long it takes to learn; and third, what is the cost of up-keep. By difficult I do not mean dangerous; any one who has gone far enough to consider owning and operating a machine knows and discounts the element of danger, and as to cost, it is easy to get figures on the first cost of an aeroplane; what the investigator would like to know is what it is likely to cost him for maintenance, breakage, and so on.
With a competent teacher and if ever competence was necessary it is here learning to fly is neither difficult nor dangerous. Six weeks ought to be time enough to teach one to fly, provided the pupil knows something about motors and is apt in other ways. Contrary to popular belief, reckless daring is not one of the requirements for success. Indeed, a man who applies for a position as aviator with the announcement that he is a daredevil afraid of nothing under heaven, is very likely to be rejected for this very reason, and a pupil who has the common sense to know that there is no especial point in defying a quite impersonal force like gravitation will get up a much better start than one who has so little caution that he wants to get up in the air too soon. Caution is the great thing for the beginner. Let him learn the machine first from the ground and on the ground, learn the controls and find out what to do when he shall be up in the air. Then let him learn how it feels to run over the ground on the wheels. Then he will begin to make "jumps," little ones, then longer and longer, until he is free of any fear of the air. This comes sooner with some than with others, and it is said that in some rare cases fear of the air never exists at all, for the great aviator, the star performer, like any other great man, has to be born with certain qualifications and a good many of them. There is no reason, with the advancing improvement in the flying machine, why almost every one with a real desire to fly should not be able in a comparatively short time to learn to do so.
As for the third point, it will cost no more to keep an aeroplane than to own an automobile. The initial cost is the greatest. Of course, there are the same qualifications that obtain with the automobile the cost of up-keep will depend upon whether you have many and serious breakages and whether the owner looks after his own machine. Should the owner prefer to hire a competent mechanic, his wages will be about the same as those of a first-class chauffeur. As for smash-ups, the expense of these would be considerable, but not as much as it would be if an automobile should have an accident. For contrary to the ideas of a good many of the uninitiated, it is quite possible to injure an aeroplane, and quite seriously, too, without in the least hurting the aviator. In this respect the hydroaeroplane is of course safest of all; I am reminded of a recent accident at Antibes, near Nice, France, where Mr. Hugh Robinson, who was demonstrating a Curtiss hydroaeroplane, suffered a badly wrecked machine without the least injury. Forced to make a quick landing, he chose, in order to avoid a flock of motor boats filled with spectators, to dive directly into the water. The shock threw him out of the machine and he swam about unconcernedly until a motor boat picked him up. Of course a similar sharp contact with the solid ground would have wrecked the aviator to some extent as well, but it is possible to put a hydroaeroplane completely out of commission, necessitating expensive repairs, and not be more than shaken up.
Really there is much less danger of smash-ups than the outsider would think, provided the aviator is a careful driver. The main thing is to have great judgment in choosing a time for flights. An inexperienced aviator should never take up his machine in an unsteady wind of greater velocity than ten miles an hour. The less wind the better, for the beginner. The dangerous wind is the puffy, gusty sort, and this should be avoided by any but the most experienced aviator. It must be remembered, however, that it is the variations and not the velocity of the wind which causes trouble.
Another item of expense to be taken into consideration is the transportation of an aeroplane from one place to another, for it does not always go on its own wings. This, however, is neither difficult nor expensive. I am able, for example, to take down my machines and pack them in specially constructed boxes so that they take up but a comparatively small space for shipment. The setting up process is not difficult, nor even complicated, and can be performed by any one having had the proper instructional term at a first-class aviation school. An illustration shows an aeroplane, in its case, carried on an automobile.
With regard to safety as a steady, every-day means of transportation, all of us, in and out of the profession, know that, as Mr. Hudson Maxim has said, to make the aeroplane a common vehicle for, say, the commuter, "It must be improved so that flights shall become more a function of the machine and less a function of the aviator." At present a great deal depends upon the man who is flying especially upon his quick and accurate judgment and his power to execute his judgment instantly and automatically. The man who buys an aeroplane to fly knows this beforehand and takes it into account; indeed it is a question whether, if the flying machine were as safe as a rocking-chair, there would be so much fascination about it; but while the aviator will always have to take into account, no matter how the mechanism may be improved, a certain element of danger that must attend it, he may as well remember, to quote Mr. Maxim once more, that "the tenure of life of no automobilist is stronger than his steering gear."
It certainly is not looking too far ahead to forecast the entrance of the aeroplane into the commuter's life. The great mass of the people certainly will not take the air-line, any more than they are now coming in by automobile every morning, and yet how many business men–and not necessarily the richest–do make the trip, that twice a day they used to take in a railroad car, in the open air, with the exhilarating breezes of their own automobiles? Perhaps not these same business men, but a corresponding class, will undoubtedly reduce the dull hours of train travel by half and turn them into hours of delight by the popularisation of aeroplane transportation. As has been the case with every means of transportation that has shortened time of travel, the habitable zones around cities will grow larger and larger as places hitherto inaccessible open before the coming of the swiftest form of transportation known to man, and the only one not dependent upon the earth's surface, whether mountain, swamp, or river, to shape its course.
If we had a course only a few hundred feet wide from New York to St. Louis or Chicago, aeroplanes could go through every day and there would be little danger; indeed, even as things are now, it would be a much safer method of travel than by automobile, as well as of course much faster. Long lanes with grass on each side and an automobile highway in the middle would be of the greatest advantage to both forms of travel. In crossing mountains on the downhill side an aeroplane could glide for long distances at an angle of one to five, so that if the elevation were a mile high it could glide five miles before landing. And on the up-hill side it could of course land immediately and with ease.
To return to the amateur, it is always better to go around an object that you can not land on immediately. Landing is indeed one of the most important points for the amateur aviator to consider. If it is possible, watch all accidents and study them closely. I take every means I can to learn what causes an accident so as to guard against it myself. Strictly speaking almost everything about the art of aviation is being learned by experimentation and the causes of accidents, while not always exactly ascertainable, are of the greatest interest to builders and operators of flying machines, for out of the accidents of to-day often come the improvements of to-morrow.