The rapidity with which history is made in aeronautics is forcibly suggested by the revision of text made necessary by recent news. The new Deutschland has met the fate of its predecessors; the Paris-Rome-Turin flight is at this moment under way; and Lieutenant Bayne, attempting once more his France-to-Corsica flight, has—for the time being at least—disappeared.
THE POSSIBILITIES IN AVIATION
Men now fly and will probably keep on flying; but aviation is still too hazardous to become the popular sport of the average man. The overwhelmingly important problem with the aeroplane is that of stability. These machines must have a better lateral balance when turning corners or when subjected to wind gusts: and the balance must be automatically, not manually, produced.
Blanc Monoplane
Other necessary improvements are of minor urgency and in some cases will be easy to accomplish. Better mechanical construction, especially in the details of attachments, needs only persistence and common sense. Structural strength will be increased; the wide spread of wing presents difficulties here, which may be solved either by increasing the number of superimposed surfaces, as in triplanes, or in some other manner. Greater carrying capacity—two men instead of one—may be insisted upon: and this leads to the difficult question of motor weights. The revolving air-cooled motor may offer further possibilities: the two-cycle idea will help if a short radius of action is permissible: but a weight of less than two pounds to the horse-power seems to imply, almost essentially, a lack of ruggedness and surety of operation. A promising field for investigation is in the direction of increasing propeller efficiencies. If such an increase can be effected, the whole of the power difficulty will be greatly simplified.
Melvin Vaniman Triplane