Opportunities in Aviation Part 6

What is to become of all the new words, some of them with new meanings, the old words with new meanings, and the new words with old meanings, coined by the aviators of the American and British flying services in the war? Are they to die an early death from lack of nourishment and lack of use, or will they go forward, full-throated into the dictionary, where they may belong? Here are just a few of them, making a blus.h.i.+ng debut, so that it may be seen at once just how bad they are:

AEROBATICS--A newly coined word to describe aerial "stunting,"

which includes all forms of the sport of looping, spinning, and rolling. The term originated in the training schedule for pilots, and all pilots must take a course in aerobatics before being fully qualified.

AEROFOIL--Any plane surface of an airplane designed to obtain reaction on its surfaces from the air through which it moves.

This includes all wing surface and most of the tail-plane surface.

AILERON--This is a movable plane, attached to the outer extremities of an airplane wing. The wing may be either raised or lowered by moving the ailerons. Raising the right wing, by depressing the right aileron, correspondingly lowers the left wing by raising the left aileron. They exercise lateral control of a machine.

BLIMP--A non-rigid dirigible balloon. The dirigible holds its shape due to the fact that its gas is pumped into the envelop to a pressure greater than the atmosphere. It can move through the air at forty miles an hour, but high speed will cause it to buckle in the nose.

b.u.mP--A rising or falling column of air which may be met while flying. A machine will be b.u.mped up or b.u.mped down on a b.u.mpy day. A hot day over flat country, at noon, will generally be exceedingly b.u.mpy.

CRASH--Any airplane accident. It may be a complete wreck or the plane may only be slightly injured by a careless landing.

Crashes are often cla.s.sified by the extent of damage. A cla.s.s A crash, for instance, is a complete washout. A cla.s.s D crash is an undercarriage and propeller broken.

DOPE--A varnish-like liquid applied to the linen or cotton wing fabrics. It is made chiefly of acetone, and shrinks the fabric around the wooden wing structure until it becomes as tight as a drum. The highly polished surface lessens friction of the plane through the air.

DRIFT--Head resistance encountered by the machine moving through the air. This must be overcome by the power of the engine. The term is also used in aerial navigation in its ordinary sense, and a machine flying a long stretch over water may drift off the course, due to winds of which the pilot has no knowledge.

DUD--A condition of being without life or energy. An engine may be dud; a day may be dud for flying. A sh.e.l.l which will not explode is a dud. A pilot may be a dud, without skill. It is almost a synonym for washout.

FLATTEN Out--To come out of a gliding angle into a horizontal glide a few feet from the ground before making a landing. The machine loses flying speed on a flat glide, and settles to the ground.

FLYING SPEED--Speed of a plane fast enough to create lift with its wing surfaces. This varies with the type of plane from forty-five miles an hour as a minimum to the faster scout machines which require seventy miles an hour to carry them through the air. When a machine loses flying speed, due to stalling, it is in a dangerous situation, and flying speed must be recovered by gliding, or the machine will fall into a spin and crash out of control.

FORCED LANDING--Any landing for reasons beyond the control of a pilot is known as a forced landing. Engine failure is chiefly responsible. Once the machine loses its power it must go into a glide to maintain its stability, and at the end of the glide it must land on water, trees, fields, or roofs of houses in towns.

FUSELAGE--This word, meaning the body of a machine, came over from the French. The c.o.c.kpits, controls, and gasolene-tanks are usually carried in the fuselage.

HOP--Any flight in an airplane or seaplane is a hop. A hop may last five minutes or fifteen hours.

JOY-STICK--The control-stick of an airplane was invented by a man named Joyce, and for a while it was spoken of as the Joyce-stick, later being shortened to the present form. It operates the ailerons and elevators.

LANDFALL--A sight of land by a seaplane or dirigible which has been flying over an ocean course. An aviator who has been regulating his flight by instruments will check up his navigation on the first landfall.

PANCAKE--An extremely slow landing is known as a pancake landing.

The machine almost comes to a stop about ten feet off the ground, and with the loss of her speed drops flat. There is little forward motion, and this kind of landing is used in coming down in plowed fields or standing grain. Jules Vedrines made his landing on the roof of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris by "pancaking."

SIDE-SLIP--The side movement of a plane as it goes forward. On an improperly made turn a machine may side-slip out--that is, in the direction of its previous motion, like skidding. It may side-slip in, toward the center of the turn, due to the fact that it is turned too steeply for the degree of the turn.

Side-slipping on a straight glide is a convenient method of losing height before a landing.

STALL--A machine which has lost its flying speed has stalled. This does not mean that its engine has stopped, but in the flying sense of the word means that friction of the wing surfaces has overcome the power of the engine to drive the machine through the air. The only way out of a stall is to regain speed by nosing down. A machine which has lost its engine power will not stall if put into a glide, and it may be brought to a safe landing with care.

STRUT--The upright braces between the upper and lower wings of a machine are called struts. They take the compression of the truss frame of the biplane or triplane. Each wing is divided into truss sections with struts.

S-TURN--A gliding turn, made without the use of engine power. A machine forced to seek a landing will do a number of S-turns to maneuver itself into a good field.

TAIL SPIN--This is the most dreaded of all airplane accidents, and the most likely to be fatal. A machine out of control, due often to stalling and falling through the air, spins slowly as it drops nose first toward the ground. This is caused by the locking of the rudder and elevator into a spin-pocket on the tail, which is off center, and which receives the rush of air.

The air pa.s.sing through it gives it a twisting motion, and the machine makes about one complete turn in two or three hundred feet of fall, depending upon how tight the spin maybe. The British speak of the spin as the spinning nose dive.

TAKE-OFF--This is the start of the machine in its flight. After a short run over the ground the speed of the machine will create enough lift so that the plane leaves the ground.

TAXI--To move an airplane or seaplane on land or water under its own power when picking out a starting-place, or coming in after a landing. This is not to be confused with the run for a start when the plane is getting up speed to fly, using all her power.

The NC-4 "taxied" a hundred miles to Chatham after a forced landing, and the NC-3 came in two hundred and five miles to Ponta Delgada after she landed at sea.

VERTICAL BANK--In this position the machine is making a turn with one wing pointing directly to the ground, and its lateral axis has become vertical. The machine turns very quickly in a short s.p.a.ce of air, and the maneuver is sometimes spoken of as a splitting vertical bank. In a vertical bank the elevators of a machine act as the rudder and the rudder as an elevator. The controls are reversed.

WASHOUT--Means anything which _was_ but is not now--anything useless, anything that has lost its usefulness, anything that never was useful. Flying may be washed out; that is, stopped; a day may be a washout, a vacation; a machine may be a washout, wrecked beyond repair; a pilot may be a washout, useless as a pilot. It has a variety of meanings, and each one is obvious in its connection. The term became familiar to American fliers with the Royal Air Force.

ZOOM--To gain supernormal flying speed and then pull the machine up into the air at high speed. The rush of wind will zo-o-om in the ears of the pilot. It is a sport in the country to zoom on farmers, on houses and barns, nosing directly for the object on the ground and pulling up just in time to clear it with the undercarriage.

THE END