Curtiss’ Hydro-Aeroplane at San Diego Getting under Way
(From the Columbian Magazine)
The aeroscaphe of Ravard was a machine designed to move either on water or in air. It was an aeroplane with pontoons or floaters. The supporting surface aggregated 400 square feet, and the gross weight was about 1100 pounds. A fifty horse-power Gnome seven-cylinder motor at 1200 revolutions drove two propellers of eight and ten and one-half feet diameter respectively: the propellers being mounted one behind the other on the same shaft.
Flying over the Water at Fifty Miles per Hour
Curtiss at San Diego Bay
(From the Columbian Magazine)
Ely’s great shore-to-warship flight was made without the aid of the pontoons which he carried. Ropes were stretched across the landing platform, running over sheaves and made fast to heavy sand bags. As a further precaution, a canvas barrier was stretched across the forward end of the platform. The descent brought the machine to the platform at a distance of forty feet from the upper end: grappling hooks hanging from the framework of the aeroplane then caught the weighted ropes, and the speed was checked (within about sixty feet) so gradually that “not a wire or bolt of the biplane was injured.”
Blériot-Voisin Cellular Biplane with Pontoons
Hauled by a Motor Boat