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Show rSlimickind Death's Own Tricks to Make the Air Safe jW' Re7a;able Picture of Aviators Practising the Tail Droi: 'X)aml ul,slde-Down Flying to Be Able to Cope with Such , 00iH& v; Conditions When Met Unexpectedly. HERE is an extraordinary picture pic-ture of two of the newest, most astonishing and perilous peril-ous feats of aviators. The aeroplane aero-plane shown dropping swiftly in the foreground is not falling helplessly. help-lessly. It is dashing to ground as swiftly as gravitation can carry it, but the aviator, John Nielson, expects ex-pects to regain control of it before it reaches earth's surface, where, unless he does gain control, he will be dashed to certain death. In the other aeroplane In the picture pic-ture Pegoud, the French aviator, is seen flying head downward, not be-causo be-causo his aeroplane lias turned turtle, but because he desires to test flyiug in that way. Neither of these men are doing their dangerous acts ior amusement or to thrill onlookers. The purpose Is to mnko flying immuno from the sudden horrible death that, takes increasing in-creasing toll of their ranks, by imitating imi-tating all death's tricks and so discovering dis-covering how to beat them. Pegoud, in a remarkable 'Interview 'Inter-view recontly, thus explained the principle: "You cannot really learn how to beat a game until you have passed through that game," he said. "For those who fly through the air death has up his sleeve a multitude of tricks, for which the penalty of not knowing is extinction or crippling. A sidowlse veer, a sudden dropping . a hundred things may causo the fatal fall. But Death's groat card is the unoxpectodnoss with which he pla3 his tricks. "Many of the things that have caused tragedies have been things Hint, oould they only have been ro-) ro-) hearsed ouci or twk-o, would noc have been dangerous -at all. "Therefore, a few of us have said, 'We will rehearse these tricks of death' so avo may know and tell how to moet them when they come not of our own volition. For this we risk our lives in upside-down flyiug, u tho vertical tall drop, and so on But we eliminate tho element of the unexpected. It is truo that we may be killed doing these things, but we have not yet been killed those of us who are learning to play Death's own game. "For instance, there is my feat of flying a mile upside down. I have so learned to inaster the 'planes under such conditions that If unexpectedly I should turn turtle L should still know how to keep control and save my life. It is tho elimination of the tiny movement between the time the unexpected happens and the time in which the aviator grasps the situation that wo strive to eliminate. For that tiny movement is the difference between life and death." Tho tail drop, shown here, is even more dangerous thou the upside down flight. The aviator gets into position by a series of short "nosing "nos-ing up" flights. Gradually his aero-plune aero-plune assumes the vertical. When It does so it is simply let to drop like a stone. Equilibrium is regained re-gained by what is known as a back volplane. That is, tho rudder pianos are so moved that tho drop of the machine is changed into an abrupt arc. If this arc is not too abrupt the aviator regains control. If it is too sharp the plane strikes the earth with sufficient forco to destroy it and most probably Its driver. This tail end dropping Is one of the -commonest causes of fatal accident ac-cident in flying. Sudden heavy gusts of wind that cause the up-tilting up-tilting arc frequently met with |