by Joan Clark
CHAPTER XVI
ABOVE THE CLOUDS
"Boy, you can say 'Excuse my clouds!' when you ride that thing, eh?"John Weldon, master mechanic at the Wiljohn Works, stepped back to gazeat the strange-looking, long-winged monoplane that was underconstruction.
"And I hope I can say 'Excuse my fog!' too." Hal Dane lovingly touchedthe aeronautical board of the plane whereon were featured the newestdevices to safeguard fog flying.
In the place of trusting to any natural horizon that snow and thickweather all too easily obliterate, there was set in Hal Dane's ship an"artificial horizon." This was not so immense as it might sound, but wasmerely a small instrument that indicated longitudinal and lateralposition with relation to the ground at all times. Another innovationwas the sensitive barometric altimeter so delicate as to measure thealtitude of the airplane within a few feet of the ground.
The above instruments were to stabilize the plane, to keep it to an evenkeel in flight mostly. Now came an instrument to help at landing--thevisual radio receiver. This consisted of two little vibrating reedstuned to the radio beacons in use in landing fields. If, in aiming at alanding, Hal turned to the right of his course, the right reed vibrated,while at too much of a left turn, the left reed registered its littlemovement. So by keeping the two reeds in a balancing quiver, he couldfly directly down the path of the beacon to a landing.
True to his promise, Colonel Wiljohn spared no expense in building HalDane the finest sky boat that ever flew above land or water. Because thesplendid Wind Bird was built for speed, every surplus inch was paredoff--and yet because of the dangers she must face, every known safetydevice was also built into her.
Compared to existing types, the Wind Bird had streamline qualities of anarrow, of a needle! Instead of the old complicated gasoline engine withits exposure of wide air-cooled flanges butt-heading against the wind,the new Conqueror-Eisel engine was a marvel of compactness, and ofsimplicity. This oil-consuming Eisel engine was fundamentally morereliable than the old gasoline engines, for it was without batteries,and was thus not dependent upon either an intricate electric ignitionsystem, or upon a carburetor system for fuel supply. Separatefuel-injection into each cylinder assured a dependable and uniformsupply of fuel--thus constituting in a nine-cylinder, nine individuallyoperated motors in one. And of greatest importance for a vasttrans-ocean flight, this new engine could fly a ship one-fourth as faragain on the same weight of fuel as any other engine had ever been ableto achieve. With an Eisel engine, the great Lindbergh could have flownto Paris, and then have flown eight hundred miles farther--all on thesame fuel supply!
Fuel supply can mean life or death in the perils of ocean flight. On hisocean flight, Hal Dane was going to attempt to fly farther than man hadever flown before.
By experimentation, Hal Dane and Colonel Wiljohn tried to figure out andface every danger that the boy could be subjected to on his greatflight. They were planning for success, but no explorer can afford toblind himself to possible danger--fog, storm, wreck on the limitlesswaste of the ocean.
Against that dire chance of being forced down upon the water, the WindBird was outfitted with a dump valve that could drop the bulk of thefuel load in fifty seconds. Another protection in case of a wreck on theocean was a steel saw that would enable Hal to hack off the motors andthe steel fuselage, and thus turn the wing into a raft. Within the wingwas a compartment to store emergency rations, a still to condense water,a water-tight radio transmitter. Four gas balloons were to be carried tolift the aerial of this transmitter.
Time and again the model of the Wind Bird was sent up with loads greaterthan ever the real Wind Bird would have to carry on the Pacific flight.During these load tests, Hal found that he would have to redesign therudder, strengthen the fuselage, fit the plane with stronger axles andwheels.
This was a time of proving and verifying all manner of mechanisms.Continually, the principal features of both the Wind Bird monoplane andthe strange rotor-bladed gyroscope were given try-outs on dog planes, asthe test planes were dubbed. And continually, "bugs" developed on bothtypes of models. "Bugs" are what the aero-mechanics call those errorsthat always show up when air-minded inventors begin putting theory intopractice. The air is still such an unknown quantity that when mankindtries to enlarge an air machine from a tiny model into a greatforty-foot wing expanse, a hundred odds and ends of air troublesimmediately develop. This has always been the case. Back in those earlyexperimental days at Kitty Hawk and at Kill Devil Hill, the Wrightbrothers had to fight the error "bugs" that crept into the enlargementof their models. Those early Wright gliders that flew perfectly inmodels scaled to inches, proved whole-hearted flops when enlarged toman-sized models. By painful, slow degrees, the Wrights finally masteredthe fact that in enlarging a heavier-than-air flying machine, one partcan be enlarged to four times its size, while another part of the samemodel may have to be enlarged sixteen times in order to preserve the airbalance.
Hal Dane had the hard-earned knowledge of the Wrights, and of a hundredother inventors to help guide him to air truths. Yet, for all that, hisplanes were both so radically new in type that "bugs" all their own haddeveloped and had to be patiently weeded out. But ambition drove youngDane harder than any whips could have driven him. There were periodswhen he bent over his drafting table thirty-six hours at a stretch. Thepersonnel of the Wiljohn Airlines caught the spirit of his vastambition, and during months of construction, the organization labored asit never had before. Day and night, seven days a week, the work wentforward. Out of cloth, wood, and a few lengths of steel tubing grew twostructures that differed enormously. The gyroscope idea was developinginto a squat, square-looking, heavy-set plane; while the Wind Bird withits streamlined body and vast wing stretch seemed to spell speed, speed!
In periods when he was not needed for drafting or supervision work, HalDane slipped away aboard an old plane on some mysterious journeyings. Ifthe facts were known, however, one of those journeys was not somysterious after all, merely a boy dashing home to see his mother beforehe undertook a dangerous ocean flight. His other secret missions wereflights up and down the Pacific coast where he was trying for thealtitude that would best speed him off into the great western river ofthe winds. From the data that he gathered, the boy made for himselfstrange, wavy-lined maps and charts of the airways. In addition tothese, and based on nautical tables and on gnomonic and Mercator'scharts, he plotted out a great oceanic circle course that was to leadhim northwest from San Francisco, up towards the Aleutian Islands, onacross the Pacific, and in a final southwest dip along the Asian coastuntil he brought the Wind Bird down in Tokio, capital city of Japan.
Work so engrossed Hal Dane that the time seemed to slip away before heknew it. Here it was April. A few more weeks would usher in May and thegreat Onheim Safety Device Contest Hal was more than anxious to get theOnheim Contest behind him. For after he had flown the gyroscope in thattest, he would feel that he had fulfilled his obligation to his staunchfriend, Colonel Wiljohn,--would feel free to undertake his heart'sdream, the Pacific flight.
Clutching at Hal Dane's heart was the black fear that some other aviatorwould beat him to that conquest of the Pacific in the great non-stopflight.
Mr. Vallant's recent offer of an additional ten thousand dollars wasstirring vast interest in the Pacific Ocean flight. Flyers everywherewere awakening to the fact that they had let the huge Vallant Prize gounclaimed long enough. From across the Pacific, word came that Sugeroto,that small, lithe Japanese aeronaut of princely birth, was warming up aplane for the flight. Two American aces in a great trimotor were testingout their plane with the same prize in view. Some ten other aviatorswere also reported as planning to get in the Cross-the-Pacific flight.
From his latest expedition into the airways above the western coast, Halreturned with jubilation in his heart. Even in the old model test planehe had taken out, he had ridden far and fast on a swift and mighty windriver high above the California sea edg
e. Young Dane was wild to be offin his own wide-winged speed plane, skimming this airpath on his vikingjourney across the western ocean before so much multiple competitionachieved the goal ahead of him.
But back at Axion, at the Wiljohn factories, Hal Dane, instead of comingto his Wind Bird completed for its try-out, found work everywheredisorganized. The two near-finished planes that he had expected to testin two such different flights, were left perched on their skids with nohands patiently, carefully building them on to their perfection.
Over radio had been flashed the news that the whole Three-River districtof south Alabama was under water, that hundreds of square miles ofterritory were swept by raging floods.
And Jacky Wiljohn, gone south with his mother for the winter and earlyspring at a resort, was in that flood country.
The danger to his beloved idol swept away from Colonel Wiljohn's mindevery plan for air-conquest and glory of prize-winning air models.
To Colonel Bob Wiljohn, aviators now had but one reason forexistence--aviators could act as eyes for the vast rescue army that wasfighting the floods. Aviators could fly over the torrents to search outthe men, women and children clinging to such land heights not yetreached by the floods! Aviators could rescue families huddled on theirhome roofs that tumbled and tossed in the muddy currents!
The pick of planes and men from the Wiljohn Works went south for therescue work.
When Wiljohn's star pilot, Hal Dane, read the screaming black headlinesof the disaster and the call for help, he answered that call by pushingglory dreams out of his mind and going down into that flood country too.The ship Hal went south in was the dog plane test model of thegyroscope. That rotor-bladed, squat-built contraption was going to getits proving in a real emergency.
