Calm radio orient9/16/2023 ![]() The general equipment had to include, among other things, instruments for blind flying and night flying radio and direction-finding apparatus facilities for fueling and for anchoring. Our craft, the Sirius, with its six-hundred-horsepower cyclone engine, was equipped with gasoline tanks which would carry us for two thousand miles, and with pontoons that would enable us to land in Hudson Bay, on the many inland lakes throughout Canada, along the coast of Alaska and Siberia, and among the Japanese islands. Our equipment had to be as complete as theirs, and our carrying capacity was far more limited in weight as well as space. Whereas we must plan and budget our fuel, arrange for its location along the route, sometimes sending it ahead of us by boat or train, sometimes using fuel already cached through the North.Īnd although they had to be prepared for longer time, we must be prepared for greater space- north and south, sea and land- and therefore more varied conditions. ![]() They might have difficulties in using it, now coaxing it, now fighting it but they would never completely drain their supply. Wherever they went and no matter how long they were gone, they could count on the wind for power. ![]() The early travelers, although confined to navigable waters, and restricted by slow speed, nevertheless were favored with a limitless fuel supply. fiercenesse of wilde beastes and fishes, hugenesse of woods, dangerousnesse of Seas, dread of tempestes, feare of hidden rockes." But in any comparison between us and the early navigators, there were disadvantages to offset advantages. Our fast monoplane could carry us far above most of the dangers mentioned by Master George Best It is true that as air travelers we were free of many of the difficulties that had beset the early surface travelers in search of a Northwest passage. Months, and indeed years, of preparation made such freedom possible. Those firm black lines implied freedom, actual enough, but dearly won. The firm black lines which we ruled straight across Canada and Alaska, preparatory to our flight, implied a route which, in its directness of purpose and its apparent obliviousness of outside forces, looked as unerring and resistless as the path of a comet. All this he must know before he can win that freedom of a bird, before he can follow that straight line he has drawn on the map, directly, without deviation, proverbially "as the crow flies." Not only must a man know how his plane is made, what it will do, how it must be cared for but also- to mention only a few of the rules that govern him- what the ceiling of his plane is, whether it will go high enough to clear any elevation on the route what the gas capacity is, how far it will carry him what points he can reach for refueling how to navigate through a signless sky where he will land for the night where he can get emergency repairs what weather conditions he may meet on his way and, keeping in mind the back stairs, what equipment he should carry in case of a forced landing. Rules of construction, of performance, of equipment, for one rules of training, health, experience, skill, and judgment, for the other. It rests, firmly supported, on a structure of laws, rules, principles- laws to which plane and man alike must conform. How long before him the unexpressed wish wrestled in the minds of men, no one can tell.Īnd since flight is not a natural function of man since it has been won by centuries of effort since it has been climbed to arduously, not simply stumbled upon since it has been slowly built, not suddenly discovered, it cannot be suspended as the word "freedom" is suspended in the mind. ![]() For Icarus, trying to scale the skies with his waxen wings, was merely an early expression of man's desire to fly. ![]() In that careless phrase he is apt to overlook what lies behind the word "free." He is apt to forget, or perhaps he never knew, the centuries of effort which have finally enabled man to be a bird, centuries of patient desiring, which reach back at least as far as the Greek world of Icarus. The average person who hears the drone of a motor and looks up from the walls of a city street to see an airplane boring its way through the clear trackless blue above- the average person, if he stops to use his imagination, may say to himself casually, "Free as a bird! What a way to travel! No roads- no traffic- no dust- no heat- just pick up and go!" ![]()
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