Word: grounded
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...followed the Seine to Paris, where he circled the city before recognizing the flying field at Le Bourget. Said he: "I appreciated the reception which had been prepared for me and had intended taxiing up to the front of the hangars, but no sooner had my plane touched the ground than a human sea swept toward it. I saw there was danger of killing people with my propeller and I quickly came to a stop...
Getting a plane off the ground is not dangerous except when carrying a close-to-maximum load. A light plane may need only a 100-yard runway. Planes are usually launched against the wind, at a speed between 50 and 90 miles per hour, depending on their weight. The pilot watches his tachometre to make sure that the engine is making a sufficient number of revolutions per minute.* Then he pushes the joy stick forward slightly to get the plane's tail skid off the ground, pulls it backward and the plane rises. Green pilots sometimes try to elevate...
...story of one Bessie Davis of Brooklyn, who recently "learned to fly an airplane after only 20 minutes' instruction." But Miss Davis had performed no astounding feat-considering the fact that she simply manipulated one set of controls of a dual-controlled plane, 1,000 feet above the ground. She was as 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...
...pencil vertically on a table. Affix a piece of cardboard, parallel with the table, to the upper end of the pencil. Slant the pencil at any angle in any direction, keeping its lower end on the table. Imagine that the pencil is the joy stick, the table is the ground, the cardboard is the airplane. Thus, can be seen the approximate positions of a flying ship as determined by manipulating the joy stick. A pilot must constantly keep a hand on the joy stick, just as the automobilist must on the steering wheel. The joy stick is conveniently located between...
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...