Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 291, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1920 — WIRELESS PHONE AIRPLANE GUIDE [ARTICLE]

WIRELESS PHONE AIRPLANE GUIDE

Radio Gives Instant Response to the Inquiry “Where Ami?” DIRECTION FINDER'S WORK ■ ■ V* Five Time* a* Easy to Get Lo*t in «n Airplane a* In an Automobile, Because of the Greater Speed, Says an Expert. New York. —The airplane ordinarily . travels about five times as fast as an automobile or steamship, and this explains why it is five times as easy to get lost in an airplane as in land or water vehicles, according to John R. Cantley of the Wright Aeronautical corporation. “Difficulties such as this, however, seem to exist merely to give someone in the aeronautical game the pleasure of overcoming them,” he said. “The pathway to commercial aviation a few years ago seemed insurmountable, but now all obstacles have been cleared away. In the case of guidance the aero experts have decided to use the new wireless telephone. “There are no signboards in the air, and by the time an aeronaut had calculated his position by old-fashioned nautical methods he would 1 merely have placed one spot on the earth’s surface where he knew be was not located. Consequently the aviator, to supplement his air maps while flying in clouds, during low visibility, or over unknown territory, must have some fast way of reckoning his location. Radio is rapid, faster even than the plane, and is therefore the ideal aid to aero-navigation. Guided by Radio. "When the NC4" winged her way across the ocean there was a skilled navigator. Commander A. C. Read himself, In the forward cockpit with the usual instruments of marine navigation, but behind him was a radio man who operated, in addltto'h to the usual wireless with trailing antennae, a radio direction finder. The mechanism gave him the exact direction of the nearest destroyer in the chain stretching from Trep ssey to the Azores. Merely by heading in the direction from which the destroyer radio signals came the plane roared her way across the ocean. This was one of the first uses of the wireless as navigation equipment, and it was of course crude. In aviation everything is crude which Is more than a few months old, for never did any other industry progress so rapidly. "In addition to the landing field system which is surely coming in this country, as it is elsewhere throughout the world, as commercial aviation develops, there will undoubtedly be built up a system of radio stations at the landing fields and at other points. The carrying of direction-finding apparatus is of course burdensome in airplanes, since besides its weight it requires either an operator or part of the time the attention of the pilot, who should be free to handle the plane. In the stations themselves this apparatus can be Installed Instead. All that the plane will need is a simple radio phone sending and receiving apparatus. “‘Where am I? Where am I?’ the pilot will inquire, speaking into his transmitter. Somewhere down below, perhaps concealed by underlying clouds or mist, the stations will hear and almost instantaneously calculate the direction and answer. Does this sound far-fetched? Already navy radio stations use precisely similar methods, «ave that they use wireless telegraph signals and are dally giving locations and bearings to ocean steamships on the Atlantic coast The application to airplanes is a mere matter of establishing stations and installing equipment oh planes. _ “In addition to giving locations these

stations will be of great value to keep planes on long flights informed as to prevailing winds at various heights, changing meteorological conditions, cloud heights and so forth. The men in the plane will be In very much closer communication with the world while flying a hundred miles an hour five or ten thousand feet above the earth than tourists in an automobile below them. "Larger machines, of course, will probably carry their own operators, who may handle directional wireless apparatus as well as their radio mechanism, but small planes, machines corresponding to automobiles in passenger and freight capacity, can dispense with a radio man, yet have precisely the same directional advantages. "Leading airplane companies, such as are now making planes for service across the continent, or parts of it, will probably be compelled to erect their own radio stations, but eventually I believe ,the federal government will recognize its duty to aircraft as well as sea craft and establish a comprehensive system of stations. These stations will be of great value to air service flyers, mall pilots, forest fire patrols, etc., as well as to civilian flyers, and in addition could be used for other radio purposes as well. < Personally I am of the opinion that the air traffic will In the near future be all such stations could handle. The American people are far too progressive not to grasp rapidly the advantages of multiplied speed in the transportation of passengers, mails and freight.”