Word: cumulus
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...merely an introduction to the infinitely more exciting sport of soaring. Soaring is three-dimensional sailing whereby, to achieve altitude and distance, an expert has his choice of four types of air current: 1) hill-deflected winds, 2) thermal currents from warm spots on the ground, 3) upcurrents under cumulus clouds, 4) explosive updrafts preceding a thunderstorm. At Elmira, long ago selected as the best soaring spot in the U. S. because its prevailing west winds are deflected upwards in successive strata by the huge petrified surf of the Chemung Hills, soarers last week camped in tents below the knolls...
...Bendix prize for the meet's longest distance flight went to Chester J. Decker of Glen Rock, N. J. On the last day of the meet he took off from Elmira, climbed to 5,500 ft., found a "street" (chain of cumulus clouds). Swinging beneath it in long, irregular parabolas from cloud to cloud, he proceeded to Ottsville, Pa., where he glided down - 146 miles from Elmira. His flight narrowly missed the U. S. record of 158 miles...
Scene: Cleveland. No deer but any tame elephant would have felt at home that day in Cleveland's auditorium. The audience chattering, the band playing, the smell of fresh pine lumber, were mindful of a circus. Over the delegates, like a cumulus cloud, hung a battery of loudspeakers shrouded in gauze. The voice of a man amplified to unearthliness rumbled through the hall. Chairman Henry Prather Fletcher, a midget in white, stood in a blaze of golden light from batteries of lights above his head. Everywhere cigaret smoke curled through the blue beams of eight great floodlights glaring down...
...fifth annual gliding contest of the Soaring Society of America. For two days unfavorable winds kept the impatient birdmen on the ground, but on the third day conditions were ideal. Over the flat top of Henry Harris Ridge, newly cleared at a cost of $10,000, floated fleecy cumulus clouds with their promise of thermal currents. Beyond the Chemung Valley 900 ft. below beckoned the blue hills of Pennsylvania...
Last January Australians watched the first two of the old steel-hulled plugs sail off on the 15th race, reviving ghosts of the oldtime crack clippers, booming under sails like cumulus cloud banks. Until late April the others followed: 16 Finnish, two German, one Swedish, carrying a total of 900,000 bags of wheat. Some were so old that the sailors could not chip the hull for fear the chipping hammers would go clean through the plates. Built from 16 to 45 years ago, sailed on a capital representing scrap value, the ships were uninsured.† Their masters knew they...