Airship Over Atherton

by Christopher Cummings

  After lunch Stephen arrived with Noddy. Then Stick, Marjorie and Shona joined them. It was a cold day and to Willy’s relief Marjorie wore slacks and a pullover. Willy’s father came out of his study and took charge. The group were herded onto the back lawn and set to work. All the balloons had to be pumped up with air and checked for leaks. This involved immersing them in the swimming pool where any bubbles would show.

  As it was the start of June and of winter the water was cold and nobody felt like getting wet. Willy had to go and change into his bathers and hop in the pool. He felt very self-conscious about his scrawny body and the pimples on his shoulders. Goose bumps from the cold didn’t help. He knew Marjorie’s eyes were on him most of the time.

  Once all the balloons were tested the group had a break for afternoon tea. Willy had a hot shower to restore his body warmth and dressed before joining them. Afterwards Willy’s father made them unroll all the netting and sit in a row on the lawn to overhaul it, like so many fishermen. Then all the ropes and lines were uncoiled to check for breaks or weaknesses.

  “The main weakness is in Willy’s head,” Stephen suggested.

  It was fairly tedious work and by late afternoon the novelty had worn off. When Willy’s father indicated it was time for them to go home for tea he asked who would help the next day. Noddy and Stephen declined. Stick and Marjorie both said yes. Willy pressed his lips together. Blast Marjorie! But he thought it without too much heat because his mind was now focusing ahead to assembling and flying the airship.

  That night he slept soundly. On Sunday they continued with the preparations; testing clips, catches, valves and linkages; greasing and testing the bicycle mechanism; and packing items carefully into boxes and cartons. In the evening Willy realized that Marjorie had been there all day and had not bothered him once. She had quietly helped and worked hard. He thrust her from his thoughts.

  ‘Only five days to go!’ He hugged himself in anticipation. His excitement was steadily mounting- tempered by the knowledge of an essay to write and a Geography assignment to complete.

  In the end he was too busy to feel much excitement. Later he could only remember two things of note from that last week. One was the late nights spent writing the assignments. The other was gazing at Barbara and resolving that he would definitely ask her for a date the following week.

  CHAPTER 18

  AIRSHIP No. 2

  Willy capped his pen and slipped it into his pocket. Thank heavens that Physics test was over! It had not been as hard as he had expected. Sighing with relief he stretched and looked around the school room. Then his spirits lifted even higher. ‘Friday afternoon!’ he thought. Soon they would be on their way to the farm; and his dream of flying an airship would become reality.

  Bubbling with high spirits he headed down the stairs. He met the others under the school. “Everyone ready to go?” he asked.

  “You bet,” Stick replied. “This is going to be great fun.”

  Graham, Peter and Roger joined them. Graham said: “Are you still going ahead with your lunacy Willy?”

  “Of course. It will work. You just watch.”

  “I doubt if we will see it from Kahlphalim Rock,” Graham replied with a grin.

  Peter asked: “Are you all going for a ride on this airship?”

  “I am,” Stick answered.

  “So am I,” Marjorie added.

  “What about you Steve?” Peter queried.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t forget Willy’s first airship,” Graham cautioned. They all laughed.

  Willy scowled good-naturedly. “You are just jealous. Have a good climb up that rock, whatever its name is.”

  “Kahlphalim Rock,” Graham said.

  “Yeah, that one. Don’t forget to light a fire on top tomorrow night so we can see. We will flash torches at it,” Willy said.

  “Sunday night,” Graham corrected. “We plan to take two days to get there.”

  “You still going with these two Roger?” Stick asked.

  Roger nodded. He now regretted he had said he would go hiking but did not feel he could back out. “Yes I am. Wish I was going with you. I’d love a ride in an airship.”

  “You can change you mind if you want to,” Peter said. “We won’t mind.”

  Roger shook his head. “No. I’ll come hiking. Mum wouldn’t allow me to fly in the airship anyway.”

  “The walk will do you good,” Stephen added, alluding to Roger’s pudgy shape. Roger flushed with embarrassment but said nothing.

  Graham gave Stephen a disapproving look then turned to Willy. “We might see the airship in the distance,” he said. “I’m taking my binoculars and we should have a good view.”

  Peter snorted. “If it’s not covered in cloud,” he commented. “Like that time we climbed Mt Bartle Frere. We slogged up that bloody mountain all day through leeches and mud; and what did we see on top? The highest mountain in Queensland- and all we could see was grey cloud ten metres away!”

  They all laughed. Willy said: “The weather will be clear. I checked with the weather bureau. The forecast is for no rain and light winds for the next 48 hours at least. There is a change expected on Monday or Tuesday, some sort of cold front moving across the continent.”

  Roger looked at his watch. “I’d better be off. I’m going shopping with my mum and she said to be home by four. I’ll see you all on Monday.”

  “No Roger, Tuesday. Monday is a holiday,” Stephen reminded.

  “Yes, OK. Goodbye. Take care.”

  They dispersed. Willy also had to go shopping and as well had to do his usual weekend chores; and pack. These tasks kept him busy until it was time to go to Air Cadets.

  As soon as he arrived at the Air Cadet Depot Marjorie ran over to him. She was still in civvies, warmly rugged up in a sweater.

  “Oh Willy! I’m so excited about your airship. Won’t it be fun,” she bubbled.

  Willy had to agree it would be. He felt happier than he had for a long time. His one real regret was that he had not plucked up courage during the week to ask Barbara for a date.

  Stick, Noddy and Donovan joined them. Donovan said: “Wish I was goin’ with yez termorrer. I gotta go up ter Port Douglas to see me cousins and they’re all girls. Yuk!”

  They all laughed unsympathetically at this. Donovan then proceeded to tell a crude joke he had just heard.

  “Donovan!” Willy said, glancing at Marjorie who had begun to blush.

  Donovan curled his lip. “What’s wrong with you Williams? Can’t you take a joke?” he snarled.

  “Yes. But there is a lady present,” Willy replied.

  Donovan looked at Marjorie, then elaborately in every direction. “Where?”

  Willy felt his temper rise. Stick looked embarrassed but did nothing. Noddy giggled. Marjorie looked hurt. There was a moment of tense silence. The situation was resolved by their Flight Sergeant calling them to form up for parade. Marjorie gave Willy a quick smile and bumped against him as they walked across to the parade ground.

  The lessons that followed Willy found interesting. First there was a lecture on how to read an aircraft compass, during which they got to examine and set one; then a drill lesson with rifles: Present Arms. At the end of the nights training Willy was relieved to see his mother waiting so that he did not have to put up with Marjorie. He was starting to get his hunted feeling again.

  “See you all tomorrow,” he said cheerfully as he headed for his mother’s car. He did not look at Marjorie. ‘Don’t encourage her,’ he thought.

  At home he finished packing and found he was too excited to sleep. Instead he lay in bed and fantasized. In his imagination he became the captain of a British Semi-Rigid:- Royal Naval Air Service in 1917- a ‘Coastal’ type; on anti-submarine patrol over the North Sea. Behind and below them was the convoy of ships- no, a squadron of Grand Fleet Dreadnought Battleships- and they were depending on him and his crew to give them early warning and protection from the undersea killers. The weather was getting wo
rse:- rain squalls, patches of low cloud, rising wind- and there! In the whitecaps off the starboard bow!

  Was that a U-Boat?

  Or just some foam? A U-Boat, definitely. He turned to Stick and pointed, then signalled attack. Marjorie reached forward and took hold of his arm to tell him there was something wrong with the balloon. Marjorie! What the devil is she doing here? Blast Marjorie! It is Barbara I love. I...

  Willy was shaken awake by his father.

  “Wake up sleepy head. Up you get. Let’s go and fly airships.”

  Willy sat up and rubbed his eyes. Excitement flooded through him. Memories of Marjorie’s hot embrace fled. Yes! Today was the day! He sprang out of bed and rushed to get ready.

  Two hours later they set off. The Range Rover had the trailer hooked on behind, loaded with the pieces of the airship. Willy sat next to his father. His mother drove her car. Lloyd stayed at home. He had an athletics carnival to attend. They drove around and picked up Stephen, then Shona and Noddy and finally Stick and Marjorie.

  By morning tea time they were up at the farm. Aunty Isabel welcomed them and ushered them all inside for morning tea. After that they unloaded their personal gear and organized the sleeping arrangements. As before the boys were put on stretchers on the back veranda and Shona had a stretcher in the bedroom with Marjorie. Willy approved of that as it made him feel a lot safer. It removed temptation.

  That done they unloaded the airship’s parts in the machinery shed. Willy’s dad moved out the two tractors and a harvester and set the teenagers to work sweeping and cleaning the concrete floor until they had a large, clean work area.

  Stephen grumbled as he swept: “This is all just a plot to lure unpaid labour here to clean up the Williams’ mess.”

  But they were all in a good mood and the work was quickly done. The floor was hosed and scrubbed, then hosed again and squeegeed.

  “Right, that will do for now,” Willy’s father said. “We will have lunch while we wait for the floor to dry.”

  After lunch they returned to the machinery shed. Willy was all for assembling the airship at once but his father vetoed this. “No. We will check every single item. So, as we unpack it we check it, clean it, test it and lay it out on the floor in order.”

  Willy saw the sense in this but chafed with impatience. Supervised by Dr Williams each part was unpacked, ticked off the list, leaned and tested, then carefully weighed. This was done by Marjorie and Shona who noted down the results. The totals were added up by Willy as a running total.

  Afternoon tea time came around. Willy observed that Marjorie was not bothering him. She was friendly but spent most of her time talking to her friend Shona. He also noted that she avoided Stephen. Stephen seemed to make a point of flirting with Shona, making smart comments and generally showing off. All this was no more than a slight distraction to Willy as the work on the airship absorbed most of his attention.

  Using ladders and ropes they suspended the bicycle frame which was to become the gondola from the steel rafters of the shed. Extension frames made from a lattice work of light aluminium tubing 4 metres long were bolted to both ends of the bicycle. This frame was designed to spread the load of the ropes suspending the frame from the balloon. This would help to maintain a more streamlined balloon shape. It also provided somewhere to tie ballast and anchor ropes.

  Immediately behind the bicycle seat a vertical frame 1.5 metres tall, made of metal pipes welded together, was bolted on. On top of this a gear assembly was fitted, to the rear of which was fastened the propeller. A chain-link drive, made from three bicycle chains joined together, led down from the gears to a cog wheel just behind the back axle. This cog wheel was attached to a second wheel which meshed with the bikes normal chain drive and gears.

  Once everything was secured Willy climbed up onto the bicycle, which wobbled and swayed most alarmingly. It took three of them to hold it still so he could settle himself on the seat. He put his feet on the pedals and ordered them all to stand clear. Tentatively he pushed down. The chains and gears began to grind and the propeller started to whir around rapidly, just behind his head.

  “It works!” Noddy cried.

  “Didn’t you think it would?” Willy’s father asked.

  “Oh yeah, but not as well as it does,” Noddy answered.

  Willy pedalled faster and swivelled his head to look. The propeller seemed very close to his back, although he knew it was half a metre away. He got the propeller to go so fast that it become just a blur. It sucked air back past him and the whole frame trembled and seemed to sway forwards. Satisfied it might actually work he slowed down and studied each part of the machinery.

  “I hope this arrangement is OK,” he said. “These chain drives are the one thing I am really worried about. If one of them comes off in mid-air, or worse, breaks, we could have real trouble.”

  His father shook his head. “I doubt it. You can just land. You aren’t setting off to beat the Graf Zeppelin’s round-the-world record you know. You are only going to fly around the bottom paddock.”

  “Maybe,” Willy replied, not hinting that he hoped to fly further afield. “But the arrangement doesn’t feel very strong.”

  “That is why we are testing it now. Give it a real go. Pedal like mad. If there is a problem, or if something’s going to break now is the time to find out.”

  Willy did as he was told. He pedalled as hard as he could until he started to pant and sweat. The gears and chains set up a solid grinding noise that was very satisfying to hear. The propeller became an invisible disc, spinning around with a deep thrumming whir. Willy felt the air being sucked past him and even thought he could feel the frame being pushed forward but decided that was just an illusion, the frame moving as he moved.

  “That will do,” Willy’s father called. Willy stopped pedalling and sat puffing. Perspiration beaded his forehead even though it was a cool winter day.

  Stephen ran his hand down the wooden propeller blade. “Just as well you put the propeller on the right way, or you’d be going backwards.” He imitated Willy looking over his shoulder in astonishment. The others laughed till Stick said: “Wouldn’t matter. It depends on the way that the gears work.”

  “Does not,” Stephen replied. “If the propeller is back the front then it pushes air the other way.”

  “No it doesn’t. It’s a mirror image. Which way the air gets pushed depends whether it turns with a leading edge or a trailing edge,” Stick replied.

  Stephen looked sulky and obviously wasn’t sure. Willy spoke up to prevent an argument: “Never mind that. Let’s put the rudder on.”

  He climbed down off the frame (He couldn’t bring himself to call it a gondola. That seemed too grand a term for the bicycle contraption). The rudder was plastic sheeting fastened to a plywood and timber frame. It was 1.5 metres high and a metre long. It was hinged at the top and bottom to an aluminium pipe which was clamped vertically at the rear of the frame. A diagonal brace was clamped at the top of this, slanting down to the bike frame just behind the seat and only a few centimetres from the tip of the propeller. On top was fastened a steel ring. This was clamped to a thin steel wire rope (off Willy’s sailboat) which led down through the pipe to be attached to the bike frame. The ring was a point to attach some of the balloon’s guy ropes, to spread the load evenly.

  At the bottom of the rudder a thin bar was bolted across. Steel wires were led forward from each end of this to a steel bar which was clamped across the handlebars. By turning the handlebars the wires pulled the rudder from side to side.

  Willy’s father tested it. “That seems to work alright. Hop on Willy and test both the propeller and rudder at the same time,” he instructed.

  Willy did so. He pedalled furiously until the propeller was spinning as fast as he could make it go. Then he pulled the handlebars to the right. He was astonished at the difference the thrust of rushing air made.

  “It’s good. It will work. It feels quite stiff when there is air pressure on it,” he cried.r />
  “I can feel the air being deflected,” Stick said. He stood in line with the rudder and Willy could see his shirt ruffling in the slipstream. Willy pedalled harder for a while and tried the rudder the other way over. His father nodded approval.

  “Good. Hop off Willy,” he said.

  Willy stopped pedalling and climbed down. “Pity this thing hasn’t got wheels,” he observed, indicating the empty front fork of the bicycle frame.

  “You don’t need them. They would just be extra weight,” his father pointed out. “Alright, now we will lay out the netting and start inserting balloons.”

  This was the part Willy had been really looking forward to. They arranged themselves along the netting and carefully unrolled it and smoothed it out. The 14 nylon guy ropes were untangled and laid out straight. After some confusion the whole arrangement was laid on its side and the guy ropes again sorted out. The port side guy ropes, which were then leading out from underneath, were clipped to the framework by stainless steel snap-catches. The front and back lines were also attached.

  Then the filling of the big weather balloons began. Stick operated the taps on the gas bottles. Willy closed the valves on the balloons once they were full. Marjorie and Shona carried them to Stephen who inserted them under the close supervision of Willy’s father. Noddy held the netting open.

  First one balloon was inserted in the small front compartment. This looked very disappointing lying on the concrete floor under the limp net. It did not even rise off the floor. ‘I hope we’ve done our sums right,’ Willy thought, knowing that he was just worrying and that their calculations had ample margin for lift.

  Next a single balloon was inserted in a tail compartment which was then tied off, the fine nylon mesh being fastened to the thicker outside net. Then three balloons were inserted into a second compartment at the nose and three more into a similar compartment at the tail. By then the balloons had just began to stir on the concrete. The addition of one more into one of the two large centre section lifted them slightly. Willy felt his excitement surge along with it.