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Show Blimps to Be Sold at Auction May Cut Capers in London Supposititious Story on the Purchase of "Ford of the Skies" by "Priceless Percy" Deals With Many Possibilities. I j By Universal Service. LONDON. Aug. 20 (By mail.) "Going going gone! One first-class blimp in excellent condition, guaranteed to wear; excellent pet around the house; kind to children; costs only about $20,000 a year to operate." All of which may or may not be the cry in the mouth of the government auctioneer before these lines see print. For the British admiralty has several airships of the nonrigid type which it plans to auction off to the general public pub-lic some time soon. It will be interesting to see whether the man willing to pay from $7000 to $9000 for a second-hand Rolls-Royce ear will be careless enough to take on a dirigible balloon. The type of blimp the admiralty is to put on the block cost the government from $22,000 to $47,000 to build orig-' inally and was used for submarine hunting hunt-ing in the English channel and North sea. They have a single car hung below be-low the enlongated gasbag, fitted with two engines, each operating a propeller; pro-peller; they can accommodate six people peo-ple comfortably and can attain a speed of about thirty miles an hour. But supposing Priceless Percy, the Piccadilly Pet, should bid in one of these Fords of the skies: let's see what it would cost him, approximately, to go blimping. First, he'd have to have a ten-aerc lot with a housing shed on it, and every time he went up or came down from his private aerodrome he'd have to have on hand a launching or landing party of at least fifteen men. One permanent engineer, a mechanic and assistant mechanic and if Percy didn't possess a pilot's license one regular sky pilot, would constitute the private blimp's regular crew. Then there would be the little item of hydrogen gas, which is far more expensive, Geraldine, than illuminating gas, although just at this minute a market report on hydrogen hydro-gen f. . o. b. is not at hand to tell you just what it totes up in dollars and cents. Add to that gasoline for the motors and oil, ditto, the upkeep of the engines en-gines and a new twelve-foot walnut propeller pro-peller now and then, and you'll discover dis-cover that Priceless Percy 's sky yacht would cost him per year just about as much as one of these out-of-date racing yachts we used to see racing off Sandy-Hook. Sandy-Hook. To say nothing of the damage suits Percy would accumulate through his pernicious practice of dropping empty-champagne empty-champagne bottles overside while passing pass-ing over thickly populated territory. Then, to think that just one large thunder storm, with one little bit of lightning striking in the right place, would reduce Percy's investment to junk to say nothing about Percv himself. |