Word: planes
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Plane. A 27-year-old engineer, Donald Hall, designed the Ryan monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis. It was built in 60 days at San Diego, Calif. It was christened in St. Louis while Captain Lindbergh was pausing in his flight across the continent (TIME, May 23). The fact that it is equipped with a 200-horsepower Wright whirlwind motor, caused Wright Aeronautical Corp. stock, usually inactive, to jump from 29¾ to 34⅜, with the news of Captain Lindbergh's progress...
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...
...women marveled at the newspaper 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...
Ability to pilot a plane is not due to any "bird instinct," but is achieved by knowledge of a few fundamentals of airplane construction and air behavior, by practice in a dual-controlled ship. Then a pilot develops co-ordinations of his nerve centres which enable him to handle his controls automatically, like a policeman on a motorcycle, a taximan...
...left. Because the whirling of the propeller forces an airplane to the left, an adjustable device has been invented to keep sufficient pressure on the right rudder-pedal to maintain a straight course. But, even with his rudder out of commission, a skilled pilot can manage his plane with his joy stick alone...