Flying Clubs

After a year's study (financed by $12,000 from the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics) the National Aeronautic Association last week was able to present concrete plans for private flying clubs. Such clubs exist in England and Canada, where the Governments subsidize them as an aspect of national defense (TIME, June 3). In the U. S., club flying, like commercial aviation, must depend on private finances, although the Government gave commercial aviation backbone by means of mail contracts and Government officials are now initiating plans for the clubs.

President of the National Aeronautic Association is Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut. The members of the advisory board include Assistant Secretaries for Aeronautics F. Trubee Davison, David S. Ingalls and William P. MacCracken Jr.; and Flying Chiefs Maj.-Gen. J. E. Fechet of the Army, Rear-Adm. W. A. Moffett of the Navy. Other members are Harry F. Guggenheim, Col. Charles A. Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.

The recommended plan for a flying club is this: charter members, preferably ten and not more than 30, put up a total of $6,000. This will provide $4,600 for a typical sport or club plane approved by the Department of Commerce; $200 for operating expenses and $1,200 (approximately 25% of plane cost) for reserve. Dues for flying members should be $15 per annum, for non-flying members $25. Dues will buy memberships in the National Aeronautic Association.

If the club members are flyers, one of them might conveniently manage the club. At least five charter members should be qualified flyers. If novices are to be taught, a professional instructor should be hired. He could also supervise the maintenance of the planes. That is the Canadian and British system. Such an instructor-manager might be a commercial pilot operating in the neighborhood and working for the club only part time.

The flying club should be a private one if possible, or an out-of-the-way corner of a commercial field.

The estimated expense of operating a typical sport or club plane for one hour is this:

Gas and oil $2.25

Hangar accommodations (based on 300 hrs. flying per annum) 1.35

Mechanical service 1.00

Engine overhauls, minor repairs 1.00

Repairs to plane not covered by insurance 1.50

Depreciation reserve (to allow for purchase of new plane after 1.500 flying hrs.) 2.70

Miscellaneous .20

Total. . .$10.00

To cover these expenses the National Aeronautic Association recommends that clubs charge $10 per hour for local flights and $20 per hour for the more hazardous cross-country flights.

Women Flyers

Amelia Earhart was vexed last week. Other women flyers also were vexed, but less audibly than Miss Earhart.

The cause: the Women's Aeronautical Association of California-- proposed a $10,000 air race "for women only" from Santa Monica, Cal., to Cleveland, where the National Air Races will occur Aug. 24 to Sept. 2. When Miss Earhart and others with a taste for prize money and kudos asked for details of this race, the details were vague. And they became vaguer. The female air derby was, it appeared, but an idea. Men flyers were scoffing at it.

Women flyers were, various men were declaring, merely publicity harpies. None had accomplished anything unusual. Miss Earhart, first woman to "fly" the Atlantic and therefore the country's outstanding aviatrix, had only been a passenger with Pilot Wilmer Stultz and Mechanic Louis Gordon on that flight just a year ago (June 17, 1928). Women's altitude, endurance and speed records mean nothing, and are not recorded officially as such. Women lack nerve. They have "nerves." They have no stamina, perseverance or real confidence in what flying ability they might have, etc. etc. Thus said flying males of flying females. The implication was that women could not endure the 2.500-mile flight from Santa Monica to Cleveland conveniently or safely. The scramble for $10,000 prize money might become a shambles.

Suggestions were made to ease the rigors of the race--that it be from Omaha to Cleveland, over level country; that a man pilot accompany each woman racer to extricate her from flying difficulties. The scornful remark was even made that "none of them will be able to get over the Rockies."

Vexed by such gibes, Aviatrix Earhart spoke out as follows: "It is a just thing that men resent women flyers. /- Women do get more glory than men for comparable feats. But. also, women get more notoriety when they get cracked up.

"Women are less expert than men in flying. But that is not because they are women. In the first place, not having the same background of education, they have to be taught many things differently. A man has mechanics thrown at him from the cradle, at least in America. Women haven't. They must pay for everything. Tradition and training, as well as other factors, militate against their becoming bus drivers, officers on ships or locomotive engineers. Yet some women can fly."

She threatened that if women were not permitted to navigate the entire Santa Monica-Cleveland course, over the mountains, plains and rivers, neither she nor other women pilots would enter. She asked: "How is a fellow going to earn his spurs without at least trying to ride?"

No special champion of women as flyers is Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who began her own aviation career last week. She was a passenger on the first transcontinental rail-air-rail service--a New York Central train from Manhattan to Cleveland, there a Universal Aircraft plane to Garden City, Kan., and there a Santa Fe train to Los Angeles. She is resigning as Assistant Attorney General in charge of prohibition enforcement to be Washington counsel of Aviation Corp., Universal Aircraft's owner.

Maine to Spain

An eleventh plane flew across the North Atlantic last week, ten years to the day after the first non-stop transoceanic flight. Three young Frenchmen--Jean Assolant, Rene Lefevre and Armeno Lotti. Jr.-- made last week's crossing, from Old Orchard, Me., to Oyamers, near Santander. Spain, 3,128 flying miles, in 29 hr. 52 min. Neither crossing, distance nor time was exceptional.

But the flight was the first accomplished this season, and the first North Atlantic crossing ever made by a French plane, a Bernard monoplane named Yellow Bird, with a null motor. A 160-lb. stowaway, one Arthur Schreiber, 22. traveled in it, to the hazard of the crew and the handicapping of the flight.

The start at Old Orchard was June 13, a fair day with western winds all the way across the Atlantic. On the long, white, hard beach were the Yellow Bird and the Green Flash, a Bellanca monoplane with Wright Whirlwind motor which Roger Q. Williams and Lewis E. Yancey planned to fly to Rome. The Yellow Bird was going to Paris. The two planes warmed up simultaneously. The Yellow Bird took off first, her tail drooping unusually. The Green Flash in starting crumpled a wheel and wrecked itself.

In the air the flyers discovered why their tail had drooped at the take-off--the stowaway was there. They decided not to throw him overboard. To lighten the load they had dispensed with thermos bottles, victuals and other comforts. They had taken less than their full capacity of gas. Jean Assolant, married only three days to Pauline Parker, pretty Manhattan chorus girl, had refused to take her. But that hulking, selfish boy was with them. His unexpected weight prevented their reaching French soil.

At Paris the Government, which has forbidden Frenchmen trying to fly across the ocean as a useless hazard, last week decided to "forgive" the Yellow Birdmen. But at Seville, Spain, two other Frenchmen, Captain Louis Coudouret and Louis Mallou had to abandon their attempt to fly from Seville to New York. Spanish officials had locked the plane in its hangar, to please the French government.

P: At Reykjavik, Iceland's mountain-hugged harbor, the westbound Swedish "commercial" flyers (TIME, June 17) last week decided to wait until the end of this month before continuing their Stockholm-New York flight. Bad weather over Greenland and need for motor parts are delaying them.

P: In London, a few hours before the French flyers landed in Spain, Sir Arthur Witten Brown lunched with encomiums. On June 14, 1919, he and the late Sir John Alcock started from St. Johns, Newfoundland, in a Vickers-Vimy-Rolls with two Rolls-Royce motors. Next day they Ianded at their precise destination, Clifden, Ireland.

A few months later Alcock was killed alighting at Rouen. Theirs was the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. Lieut.-Commander Alber C. Read, U. S. Navy, and his companions stopped at the Azores on their Newfoundland-Portugal flight in May, 1919.

* Kansas and Detroit also have women's aeronautical associations.

/-Of more than 6,000 licensed U. S. pilots, about 50 are women, a half dozen of whom are commercial pilots.