The aeroplane setting-up room of the factory resembled a union depot in floor surface. Its south or yard front was a drop of heavy canvas with roof supports at one hundred feet intervals. Within this far-reaching compartment, and dwarfing all other forms of aircraft, stood the Ocean Flyer. A heavy tarpaulin, partly covering the big central car, gave an added air of mystery to the gigantic machine. Its unusual weight was indicated by the fact that the big airship was not resting on its extra size automobile landing wheels but was supported on temporary jacks.
“How do you get it in and out?” was the editor’s instant inquiry as he noticed the one hundred foot wide entrances and the wing spread of one hundred and seventy feet.
“The landing wheels turn to any angle,” responded Ned as he threw off his coat. “We move them sideways, push out one of the wing planes, turn the wheels back to a right angle and then ‘the tail follows the dog.’”
While the three boys sprang on the side galleries of the car and began to draw off the protecting cover, the visitors advanced under the high, wide, spidery planes and gazed in wonder at the metal marvel. One after another, on each side, the dull, gun-metal colored planes reached out in unbelievable length and lightness. Braces reaching from the bottom of the car and metal cables from the top partly supported the vast expanse of magnalium steel sheets. But, toward the outer ends, the wings extended unsupported in apparent defiance of all mechanical construction.
“It’s the corrugated structure and the stiffness of the metal alone,” explained Major Honeywell.
The decreasing length of each plane, the first eighty feet, the second sixty and the last forty feet, did not detract from the majesty of the structure and only added to its birdlike appearance. Each plane, made of three separate, telescoping fore and aft sections, measured twenty-one feet in depth. The immense pressure gauges, almost concealed under the curved front of the main plane, by which the rear sections were drawn in by cables on a spring drum until the chord of each of the three planes—or its depth from front to back—was reduced to seven feet, were almost concealed by the artfulness of their construction. Yet the spring drums and their extended cables were in sight, beautiful illustrations of the unique method by which the ingenious boys were able to provide pressure surface when they needed it and contract it when soaring speed demanded only a maximum of front or cutting edge. The curious, golden tinted “moon propellers,” like the thick, heavy wheels of a liner, suggested nothing of the long, oar-bladed propellers commonly in use. These, one on each side of the car, were located just beneath and forward of the front edge of the long planes. Powerful, magnalium chain drives connected these with the shaft in the car. Behind the chain drives a light metal causeway extended twelve feet from the car to the propeller bearing so that the latter might be reached while the car was in transit, by an operator for adjustment and oiling.
“All right,” exclaimed Alan from the car gallery above. “Stand by to come aboard.”
The visitors hastened from under the shadow of the planes and looked up. The lead colored hull of a ship rose before them. A completely closed car, pierced with ports and doors, twelve feet wide, thirteen feet high and thirty feet long, extended between the first planes and disappeared in a maze of metal truss work in the rear—a magnalium braced tail seventy-three feet more in length, not counting the twenty foot rudder at its stern.
“And you mean to tell me that heap of metal can actually fly?” exclaimed the editor at last, unable longer to conceal his amazement.
“Like a gull and as fast,” answered a new voice and Buck Stewart, in straw hat and natty summer clothes, joined the group.