KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

HIGH PERFORMANCE FLIGHTS
THE flights made by Lilienthal and the brothers
Wright were remarkable achievements. Measured
by standards of skill, they were as remarkable as
those performed by the best of the modern flyers, perhaps
even more so.
If we are to judge merit by a comparison between the
achievements of persons we call great and those of their
contemporaries, the results obtained by those men were as
outstanding, relatively speaking, as any of the record flights
of to-day. Modern achievements are greater only in their
standards of values, though these are naturally the standards
by which the average man judges them.
Nevertheless there is one important difference between
those early days and to-day. Eliminating the question of
technique for the moment and considering only the actual
flights, we may say that those pioneers owed the distinction
they won solely to the sensitive, skilled hands with which
they manipulated their machines. The modern flyer has
to use his head as well as his hands.
As far as pure flying is concerned, I may venture to say
that Martens possessed the standard of efficiency we demand
from a modern expert pilot when he struggled through his
first flight of an hour's duration in 1922. The only factor
that makes modern flying more difficult is the increase in
the dimensions of the machines. What we mainly require
from the modern super-plane is a good gliding angle which
will enable us to glide the greatest possible distance from
an elevation, combined with a low sinking speed, so that we
can remain aloft in limited aerial fields, even when the
upward movements of the air are only slight. Finally, we
demand a great range of speed in order that we can fly
slowly without stalling and quickly without creating a bad
gliding angle.
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