KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

THE FUTURE OF SOARING FLIGHT 307
propaganda is essential, but propaganda is not the only
need ; machines must become cheaper, training simpler
and flying easier. Machines built on standard lines would
facilitate a mass production that must inevitably bring
about a fall in prices, but it should also be possible to design
types of machines that would cost less to build than those
at present in use. The period of instruction could be
shortened by the invention of gliders possessing inherent
stability, while a development of the art of flight over level
ground would gain recruits among the inhabitants of the
plains. As a matter of fact it is even now possible to make
quite good flights over flat stretches of country by using
longer launching ropes. Launching can also be effected
by means of catapults and motor-cars.
Thus gliding would become the first stage of practical
flying by providing a host of airmen versed in the rudiments
of their craft.
It is quite easy for school-teachers to make the problems
of flight clear to their pupils by means of simple gliding and
soaring models put together on the premises. In their
playtime the children could master all the essential principles
of flight. The greatest general was the man who invented
tin soldiers, for he militarized the younger generation, but
in the same way air traffic may one day receive its greatest
stimulus from some child's experiments with a toy aeroplane.
Soaring must be carried on on a far more extensive
scale than has hitherto been the case. Its task will be :
to persuade as many people as possible to become good pilots.
By soaring we pick out the pilots of the finest quality.
The choice is a quite simple and spontaneous one, as the
unsuitable pupils are weeded out by a process of natural
selection. This cannot be too strongly emphasized. The
movement is still only in its infancy, and at present we do
well to set much value on gliding flight, but it must not
be forgotten that the real object of gliding is soaring. The
more rapidly pupils pass from gliding to soaring, the more
adherents will be won for flying, and the more enthusiastic
will they become.
Here, too, operations on a more extensive scale will
involve a reduction of expenses, because cheap machines