Abstract

In the Driftway

An Autogiro, is an American development of the epoch-making invention of Juan de la Cierva, the brilliant young Spaniard. Every regulation airplane has to keep going at high speed or it will begin to fall. James Ray, the veteran chief pilot of the Pitcairn Co., which owns the American Autogiro rights, stopped the ship in full flight as if he had applied four-wheel brakes and an emergency brake too, and the ship hovered. Of course it moved forward a little, and so it must when it makes its all but vertical descent for a landing in the manner of a feather on a windless day. Still, there it hung, and hovered, and poised like a bird. But the Autogiro's rotor, those long, flexible, horizontal blades spinning at 125 r.p.m. overhead and themselves able to move up and down and horizontally, too, continued to rotate, and the plane to hover until Mr. Ray speeded up the machine and went on.