“Because I am afraid you are going to be disappointed,” and with these words Ned passed on.
The next few weeks were busy ones about the workshop of the Boy Inventors, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, the electric hydroaeroplane began to take shape. The enthusiasm of the boys infected the workmen and even Sam Hinkley appeared to work with more than usual fervor.
Briefly described, the hydroaeroplane portion of the craft consisted of two twin boats, each about forty feet in length and constructed of a special aluminum alloy jointed together by strong vanadium connections. Between the pair of boats, which will be more fully described later, the storage tanks, which were the novel feature of the Jeptha Nevins craft, were placed.
In the center of each of the boats was a small raised cabin, the cabins being connected by a hollow passageway. At either end of the craft the wings, of biplane pattern, were attached. The wing spread was ninety-five feet which, with the craft’s electric engines of enormous power, gave the giant air-craft a lifting capacity of two thousand pounds.
Above the storage batteries, and between the twin “boats,” were the motors, each coupled to two sets of propellers placed fore and aft on either end of the craft and outside of the wings. A light, but strong, framework supported the outer bearings of the propellers and served to give them sufficient projection to insure balance. The forward set of propellers were so “pitched” as to pull the craft through the air, while the after ones furnished a driving impulse.
One of the most important features of the invention was the device by which electricity was made while she was in flight or skimming over the water. This was a generator of considerable power geared to the shafts of the propellers. As the craft drove along, the storage batteries were constantly recharged by this device. For the initial, or starting “charge” the batteries were furnished with “juice” by a small compressed air-driven generator which could also be used in case of accident to the automatically driven device. Thus the necessity of gasolene was done away with and the Nevins craft was equipped, so far as power was concerned, to cross the Atlantic Ocean. But, of course, no such project entered into the minds of her young constructors.
The planes themselves were covered with sheets of aluminum attached to frames of radiolite, a metal as light as aluminum and of great tensile strength. Landing wheels, supported by powerful shock absorbers, provided for alighting, and special balancing devices, attached to the bow and to the stern of the novel craft, minimized the danger of coming to earth with too great a shock to the weighty fabric.
On the top of each cabin was a powerful search-light, and each was fitted out with two bunks and other conveniences as in the stateroom of an ocean liner. The pilot house was mounted above the covered passage, or tube, already referred to, which connected the two parts of the craft. It contained a wheel not unlike that of an ocean liner and levers to control the balancing wings and the pitch of the planes.
As for the engine-controls, the motor being electrically driven, the machinery to control it was wonderfully simple. An apparatus not unlike a switchboard, as may be seen in any powerhouse, was mounted within convenient reach of the helmsman. The light controls also were affixed to this board. Mastery of the huge craft was within instant power of the driver. A signaling system to each cabin, in case of emergency, was another feature added to the general completeness of the equipment.
Such is a brief description of the Nevins electric hydroaeroplane, a craft in which the Boy Inventors were destined to meet as strange adventures as had ever fallen to their lot.