| The Aeroplane | NOVEMBER 20, 1929 |
A Gliding Club, the first in Australia, has been formed at Geelong. This town is some forty miles S.W. Of Melbourne, and is situated on an extension of Port Philip, the enormous natural harbour on which Melbourne is built.
A number of enthusiasts have formed this new club and have had a training glider built by the Aircraft Manufacturing Company Ltd. This glider is of the high-wing type made familiar by the Germans and since imported into America.
The monoplane wing is carried on the top of a very deep and narrow girder framework, to the bottom of which is fixed a forwardly projecting skid. This girder extends aft, and supports a monoplane tail unit. The pilot sits in front of the wing. His back is against the front post of the girder, and he sits on the skid. He has the usual stick and rudder-bar controls.
The Geelong glider was tested on the local aerodrome by towing behind a car, after which the machine was taken to some rising ground in the neighbourhood of the town.
Here a large number of flights were made. The machine was launched by towing, a motor-truck pulling the glider up one side of the hill so the machine could glide over the crest and down the other side. The longest flight lasted for about two minutes, the type of glider used did not permit of very long flights.
After some more practice, the Gliding Club hope to go farther afield and find a suitable terrain for catapult launching in the approved fashion, with a rubber tow-rope.
The Gliding Club intend to raise enough money by public subscription to buy first an advanced training glider and then a super-streamline "sailplane" such as the Germans use for their long-distance glides of over 100 miles.
There is a tendency nowadays to de-strenuate sport, or, at any rate, to suit it to lazy men. People do not learn to sail boats, for that is difficult. Instead they buy outboard motors or something similar. Gliding is attractive to the true sportsman because there is no power-plant to pull one through difficulties, and one has to learn to get by sheer skill the best results from up-currents as one finds them.
The sport is not expensive, and if a suitable terrain is available, should be a means of enabling many who could otherwise not afford the luxury, to take to the air and learn to fly.
In view of the way gulls find places all over the downs and Scottish hills where they can indulge for hours in soaring flight, one has often wondered whether gliding would not be possible in this country, although the interest aroused at Itford soon disappeared.
One of the German Gliding Clubs has enclosed the pilots seat on their Zoegling type glider. This has had the effect of improving the gliding angle from 1 in 8 to 1 in 12 and giving the glider improved rudder control. The pilot has a greater sense of security, but owing to the small dimensions the rudder bar has had to be made unpleasantly short.
The nacelle has been built of 2mm. and 1˝mm. plywood to a streamline section (Goettingen 410) with the greatest breadth just forward of the pilots seat.
This article was sent in by Bill Johnston who guards the original jealously.