Word: earthed
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...entered the cockpit. At 7:52 a. m. he was roaring down the runway, his plane lurching on the soft spots of the wet ground. Out of the safety zone, he hit a bump, bounced into the air, quickly returned to earth. Disaster seemed imminent; a tractor and a gully were ahead. Then his plane took the air, cleared the tractor, the gully; cleared some telephone wires. Five hundred onlookers believed they had witnessed a miracle. It was a miracle of skill...
...more than six feet tall, rangy, handsome, blond. He knows flying as the barnstormer with a $250 plane and as the chief pilot for the St. Louis-Chicago air mail route. He is a prominent member of the Caterpillar Club, having four times become a butterfly and descended to earth in a parachute. In the Missouri National Guard he earned the rank of captain. As his next exploit, he is considering a flight from California to Australia (6,500 miles), with a stop at Hawaii...
...Instruments. Over and over again "Lucky" had repeated that his "luck" had consisted chiefly in a faultless motor, a periscope by which he watched ahead without exposure, and in an earth induction compass by which alone he steered to a point within three miles of his theoretic arrival point in Ireland...
...safe as a person learning to drive a new Ford on a wide, straight concrete highway in the absence of traffic. If she had attempted to take the plane off the ground or land it, then she might well have encountered difficulties. It is on the earth or near it that green pilots have most of their accidents...
Returning to earth is where the experience and "feeling" of the skilled pilot are most evident. Without looking at his instrument board, he can tell by the feel of his plane that he is traveling in a straight line parallel with the ground and is ready to land gracefully. An inexperienced pilot often fails to detect a wind that is causing his plane to drift sideways. This may account for a wrecked landing-gear, a crumpled wing. This is why planes, like pitching ducks, land directly into the wind whenever possible. A perfect landing is when the two wheels...