Flights & Flyers

Lindberghs Over Yucatan. Soaring over Campeche, Yucatan, Quintana Roo (Mexico), British Honduras, and Guatemala, Col. and Mrs. Lindbergh and a Fairchild camera last week observed the remains of three Mayan cities and traces of a fourth. Dr. Alfred Vincent Kidder of the Carnegie Institution, who accompanied them, declared gratefully that they had accomplished more exploratory work in 25 hours of flying than a ground party could have done in five years of plodding.

Polar Fears. Polar Explorer Fridtjof Nansen persuaded the Aero-Arctic Society to hire the Graf Zeppelin for a North Polar excursion next May. Preparations went smoothly until last week when Dr. Hugo Eckener asked his crew whether they would go. His age (61) and physical condition would prevent his going, but Captain Ernst Lehmann, who piloted the airship on her last trans-Atlantic voyage, would lead. Half the crew, remembering the wreck of Explorer Mobile's Italia, refused to endure the anticipated arctic hardships, dangers. Captain Lehmann refused to travel with the newly trained men he would be obliged to hire.

Tanager. Birdy are the trade names of many a plane. Most systematic in such nomenclature has been Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co., Inc., with Hawk, Sea Hawk, Falcon, Condor (all birds of prey) and Fledgling. Last week Curtiss tested a new and unusually stable biplane. It has Handley-Page wing slots in both leading and trailing edges of its wings and is to compete for the Guggenheim Fund $150,000 safety prizes. The trade name chosen for this new plane was that of the gay and visually charming Tanager.

British Dirigible. Five years ago the British government decided to build two experimental dirigibles, the R-100 (709 ft. long) and the R-101 (730 ft. long), both huger than the Graf Zeppelin. Purpose of construction was to prove that airships would be useful to travel between the widely separated British dominions. In anticipation mooring masts have been built at Cardington, England (where the R-100 was put together), at Ismailia, Egypt, Karachi, India (where there is a hangar), Groutville, South Africa, and St. Hubert, Canada. As both ships were nearing completion this summer, dire were the prophecies that they were not airworthy, that they would crack up. So impoverished Englishmen, troubled by the spending of $10,000,000 on the ships and their accessories, were glum last week when the R-101 sailed from her Cardington hangar. Nor were they as joyous, as she sailed over London, as the Germans have been over the accomplishments of their Graf Zeppelin.