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 gaze
at the strange-looking, long-winged monoplane that was under
construction.
"And I hope I can say 'Excuse my fog!' too." Hal Dane lovingly touched
the aeronautical board of the plane whereon were featured the newest
devices to safeguard fog flying.
In the place of trusting to any natural horizon that snow and thick
weather 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 was
merely a small instrument that indicated longitudinal and lateral
position with relation to the ground at all times. Another innovation
was the sensitive barometric altimeter so delicate as to measure the
altitude of the airplane within a few feet of the ground.
The above instruments were to stabilize the plane, to keep it to an even
keel in flight mostly. Now came an instrument to help at landing--the
visual radio receiver. This consisted of two little vibrating reeds
tuned to the radio beacons in use in landing fields. If, in aiming at a
landing, 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 little
movement. So by keeping the two reeds in a balancing quiver, he could
fly directly down the path of the beacon to a landing.
True to his promise, Colonel Wiljohn spared no expense in building Hal
Dane the finest sky boat that ever flew above land or water. Because the
splendid Wind Bird was built for speed, every surplus inch was pared
off--and yet because of the dangers she must face, every known safety
device was also built into her.
Compared to existing types, the Wind Bird had streamline qualities of an
arrow, of a needle! Instead of the old complicated gasoline engine with
its exposure of wide air-cooled flanges butt-heading against the wind,
the new Conqueror-Eisel engine was a marvel of compactness, and of
simplicity. This oil-consuming Eisel engine was fundamentally more
reliable than the old gasoline engines, for it was without batteries,
and was thus not dependent upon either an intricate electric ignition
system, or upon a carburetor system for fuel supply. Separate
fuel-injection into each cylinder assured a dependable and uniform
supply of fuel--thus constituting in a nine-cylinder, nine individually
operated motors in one. And of greatest importance for a vast
trans-ocean flight, this new engine could fly a ship one-fourth as far
again on the same weight of fuel as any other engine had ever been able
to achieve. With an Eisel engine, the great Lindbergh could have flown
to Paris, and then have flown eight hundred miles farther--all on the
same fuel supply!
Fuel supply can mean life or death in the perils of ocean flight. On his
ocean flight, Hal Dane was going to attempt to fly farther than man had
ever flown before.
By experimentation, Hal Dane and Colonel Wiljohn tried to figure out and
face every danger that the boy could be subjected to on his great
flight. They were planning for success, but no explorer can afford to
blind himself to possible danger--fog, storm, wreck on the limitless
waste of the ocean.
Against that dire chance of being forced down upon the water, the Wind
Bird was outfitted with a dump valve that could drop the bulk of the
fuel load in fifty seconds. Another protection in case of a wreck on the
ocean was a steel saw that would enable Hal to hack off the motors and
the steel fuselage, and thus turn the wing into a raft. Within the wing
was a compartment to store emergency rations, a still to condense water,
a water-tight radio transmitter. Four gas balloons were to be carried to
lift the aerial of this transmitter.
Time and again the model of the Wind Bird was sent up with loads greater
than 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 the
rudder, strengthen the fuselage, fit the plane with stronger axles and
wheels.
This was a time of proving and verifying all manner of mechanisms.
Continually, the principal features of both the Wind Bird monoplane and
the strange rotor-bladed gyroscope were given try-outs on dog planes, as
the test planes were dubbed. And continually, "bugs" developed on both
types of models. "Bugs" are what the aero-mechanics call those errors
that always show up when air-minded inventors begin putting theory into
practice. The air is still such an unknown quantity that when mankind
tries to enlarge an air machine from a tiny model into a great
forty-foot wing expanse, a hundred odds and ends of air troubles
immediately develop. This has always been the case. Back in those early
experimental days at Kitty Hawk and at Kill Devil Hill, the Wright
brothers had to fight the error "bugs" that crept into the enlargement
of their models. Those early Wright gliders that flew perfectly in
models scaled to inches, proved whole-hearted flops when enlarged to
man-sized models. By painful, slow degrees, the Wrights finally mastered
the fact that in enlarging a heavier-than-air flying machine, one part
can be enlarged to four times its size, while another part of the same
model may have to be enlarged sixteen times in order to preserve the air
balance.
Hal Dane had the hard-earned knowledge of the Wrights, and of a hundred
other inventors to help guide him to air truths. Yet, for all that, his
planes were both so radically new in type that "bugs" all their own had
developed and had to be patiently weeded out. But ambition drove young
Dane harder than any whips could have driven him. There were periods
when he bent over his drafting table thirty-six hours at a stretch. The
personnel of the Wiljohn Airlines caught the spirit of his vast
ambition, and during months of construction, the organization labored as
it never had before. Day and night, seven days a week, the work went
forward. Out of cloth, wood, and a few lengths of steel tubing grew two
structures that differed enormously. The gyroscope idea was developing
into a squat, square-looking, heavy-set plane; while the Wind Bird with
its streamlined body and vast wing stretch seemed to spell speed, speed!
In periods when he was not needed for drafting or supervision work, Hal
Dane slipped away aboard an old plane on some mysterious journeyings. If
the facts were known, however, one of those journeys was not so
mysterious after all, merely a boy dashing home to see his mother before
he undertook a dangerous ocean flight. His other secret missions were
flights up and down the Pacific coast where he was trying for the
altitude that would best speed him off into the great western river of
the winds. From the data that he gathered, the boy made for himself
strange, wavy-lined maps and charts of the airways. In addition to
these, and based on nautical tables and on gnomonic and Mercator's
charts, he plotted out a great oceanic circle course that was to lead
him northwest from San Francisco, up towards the Aleutian Islands, on
across the Pacific, and in a final southwest dip along the Asian coast
until 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 he
knew it. Here it was April. A few more weeks would usher in May and the
great Onheim Safety Device Contest Hal was more than anxious to get the
Onheim Contest behind him. For after he had flown the gyroscope in that
test, he would feel that he had fulfilled his obligation to his staunch
friend, Colonel Wiljohn,--would feel free to undertake his heart's
dream, the Pacific flight.
Clutching at Hal Dane's heart was the black fear that some other aviator
would beat him to that conquest of the Pacific in the great non-stop
flight.
Mr. Vallant's recent offer of an additional ten thousand dollars was
stirring vast interest in the Pacific Ocean flight. Flyers everywhere
were awakening to the fact that they had let the huge Vallant Prize go
unclaimed long enough. From across the Pacific, word came that Sugeroto,
that small, lithe Japanese aeronaut of princely birth, was warming up a
plane for the flight. Two American aces in a great trimotor were testing
out their plane with the same prize in view. Some ten other aviators
were also reported as planning to get in the Cross-the-Pacific flight.
From his latest expedition into the airways above the western coast, Hal
returned with jubilation in his heart. Even in the old model test plane
he had taken out, he had ridden far and fast on a swift and mighty wind
river high above the California sea edge. Young Dane was wild to be off
in his own wide-winged speed plane, skimming this airpath on his viking
journey across the western ocean before so much multiple competition
achieved the goal ahead of him.
But back at Axion, at the Wiljohn factories, Hal Dane, instead of coming
to his Wind Bird completed for its try-out, found work everywhere
disorganized. The two near-finished planes that he had expected to test
in two such different flights, were left perched on their skids with no
hands patiently, carefully building them on to their perfection.
Over radio had been flashed the news that the whole Three-River district
of south Alabama was under water, that hundreds of square miles of
territory were swept by raging floods.
And Jacky Wiljohn, gone south with his mother for the winter and early
spring at a resort, was in that flood country.
The danger to his beloved idol swept away from Colonel Wiljohn's mind
every plan for air-conquest and glory of prize-winning air models.
To Colonel Bob Wiljohn, aviators now had but one reason for
existence--aviators could act as eyes for the vast rescue army that was
fighting the floods. Aviators could fly over the torrents to search out
the men, women and children clinging to such land heights not yet
reached by the floods! Aviators could rescue families huddled on their
home roofs that tumbled and tossed in the muddy currents!
The pick of planes and men from the Wiljohn Works went south for the
rescue work.
When Wiljohn's star pilot, Hal Dane, read the screaming black headlines
of the disaster and the call for help, he answered that call by pushing
glory 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 the
gyroscope. That rotor-bladed, squat-built contraption was going to get
its proving in a real emergency.