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Show H AVIATORS FLY HERE TODAY H With the broad, undulating surface of the big H Fair Grounds park dotted here and there with H the white tents of the Frenchmen's Farman and H Blerlot aeroplanes, and a throng of the curious H ones hovering around the huge white machines H as the powerful motors chug along, warming up H, for the great flights this afternoon, Salt Lake is Hj experiencing the first thrills of its most unex- H pected aviation exhibition. H, The announcement the first of the week, nf- H, ter several days of futile telegraphing and cor- H 1 & H . Phtti bj Lit Angilti hxamlnir H The Foreign Aviators Who Are Hue to Fly Reading from H j left to right, those in the group are Masson, Brulle, the H 1 great Paulhan, Cleary, Mitcarel. H respondence with Cleary, the manager of the H company of French aviators who appeared in m I Los Angeles, that Paulhan and his associates B would fly here today and Sunday, was so startling H ' that it took the papers and the town fully eight 'l hours o wake up to the fact that they'd have a H chance to see Paulhan cut the same aerial ca- H pers that sent several hundred thousand people H ' in California last week to the verge of hysteria M with delight and wonderment, and when the Far- B man and Bleriot bird-things go swinging up M against the sky line this afternon at the Fair m grounds, they ought to sail over the up-turned B faces of most of the town, with a few thousand B outsiders to All out the crowd, providing the won- M drous achievements of these Frenchmen on the fl ' coast last week exert the compelling interest and B that they should. H Paulhan's antics in the air there made history H for aviation, and when one stops for a moment to M picture in his mind the sight of a man in a H twenty five foot frame work of canvas with a M fifty horsepower motor at his buck, slipping along i' the ground for a few feet and then climbing up H into the gray clouds above to turn after three or j four hundred feet and come sweeping down H in great spirals, tilting the contrivance at will, now up, now down, turning corners as B sharp as any motor car can turn, slipping over M your head so near you can hear every shot of 1 the motor's exhaust, and seo the driver raise and M lower his planes with a twist of a little wooden WB steering wheel in front of him as he cuts along M through the ether at a fifty mile clip, the m . Fair Grounds ought to be jammed to the fences m this afternoon and tomorrow, for it may be many H'. . a day before we have another chance to see these Hjf sights, despite the fact that from the develop- Hj t ment of the sport the past few months aeroplan- H! ing is today wbere automobiling was ten years Hj ago, with scarcely a whit more danger attendant Hl and certainly all, if not more, of the exhilaration, Hi the charm and wonder of it all. H The performances of Paulhan and Curtis and H the others in Los Angeles read day after day H more like fiction than news stories. It's a little H bit strange in a way that to the average man H reading these news stories of acroplaning there H comes no instantaneous thrill, no consuming de- B i Li sire at flist to see them, with one's own eyes, and the reason is hard to And, unless it is that the sights are so unreal, so unlike every other performance that thrills. But drop your paper for a moment and think back to the first balloon you ever saw sail off into the blue, and paint for yourself just a little picture of a man in a wooden and canvas framework, soaring around over you on any old level he cares to go, and you'll be an early bird at the Fair Grounds today. Edward F. O'Day, writing in one of the coast journals on the second day of the Los Angeles meet follows the events of the afternoon in this way: "The crowd has been aroused to enthusiasm by" two flights made by Glen H. Curtiss and another an-other made by Willard in a Curtiss machine. Their enthusiasm was natural because they had never seen an airship rise from the ground in all their lives before, and these first flights by Americans Amer-icans were exceedingly well done. But as the afternoon af-ternoon wore on the crowd began to hunger for a change of fare so soon does an American audience audi-ence exhaust the novelty even of r aeroplane and it was a distinct relief when two immense strange-looking dirigible balloons were floated out of their sheds. One belonged to Beachy, the other to the well-known Roy Knabenshue. "It was duly megaphoned hat Knabenshue and Beachy would make a flight together, and after af-ter lengthy preliminaries of cranking the propeller propel-ler the dirigibles were shot upwards. They dipped dip-ped and careened and rocked, but kept their course well toward the western pylon of the field and all eyes were focussed on them to watch their turning. Very few in that great throng heard a noise like the chugging of a motorcycle in a part of the field farthest removed from the grandstand and very few noticed that an unfamiliar unfa-miliar airship was sneaking along at a little distance dis-tance above the ground, speeding in the general direction of the two dirigibles. But when the .. .. ..... Whynirwtii.iwa. i JEjml. HHNHHHiiHIHHHHHHRHiMHHHiHHi Phut b hxamlnir Paulhan Going Over the Grandstand in One of His Sensational Flights at Lcs Angeles machine shot suddenly to a height of one hundred hun-dred feet and attention was distracted from the dirigibles, a great roar went up from the crowd and by a sort of intuition, it seemed, everybody learned at once that Paulhan was making a flight in one of his Farman machines. The dirigibles, having doubled the pylon, started back over the course with the wind behind them, racing madly. Paulhan followed in his immense airship, cutting through the blue with amazing speed. "Paulhan, after passing the dirigibles, swerved suddenly and circled the course again. When he reached the pylon nearest the western end of the grandstand he went far off the field and finally final-ly disappeared. Then with a dramatic suddenness sudden-ness which seems part of nature with this amazing amaz-ing aviator he poked the nose of his machine over the top of the grandstand and swooped down j to the field again so close to the heads of the spectators that one loud gasp was heard from in- ' numerable throats. Paulha brought his ma- ' chine to earth as impetuously as he had started , it. He had been in the air for eight minutes and twenty-eight seconds, and he had covered three and three-quarters miles. "The Paulhan machine is much larger than the Curtiss biplane and much heavier. It has a big rotary motor which impresses one with its tremendous potency, and when the machine ! passes overhead, the simile so often used of the flapping of myriad wings seems weak and inadequate. inade-quate. Yet big and noisy as it is, the Farman biplane is as graceful, as supple and as sure in the air as a skylark. Watching it, you know that the aviator has it under perfect control, and that the secret of his marvelous serenity as he sits hunched at the steering post is an absolute confidence con-fidence in his ability to stay in the air as long as he desires, to go where he desires, and to descend de-scend where he desires. Soaring like a bird, the machine also returns to terra firma with the lightness light-ness and ease of a bird. Perhaps it is because every movement of the Farman biplane is so birdlike bird-like that one immediacy prefers it to the Curtiss Cur-tiss machine and decides thdt Farman and Paulhan Paul-han aie closer to the solution of the aviation problem than Curtiss and Harmon. As unosten- ' tatiously as he had entered the race against the dirigibles Paulhan made a second flight with hardly ten minutes' breathing interval. This time he cut capers in the air. He flew by the grandstand with both hands off the steering gear, I waving his hat and gesticulating to the howling throng. He darted over the crowd and swooped back again ,making straight for a group of some twenty or so who stood in the center of the field, hypnotized by his performance. Fearing that he would come down upon them, the men scurried in every direction, only to find that Paulhan had darted upward again and was waving them a mocking adieu as he flew off toward the end of the course. "To describe how one feels when witnessing for the first time the spectacle of a man mounting mount-ing into the air and flying is not easy. It is a I sight certain to awake emotion. No mattei .ow much one may 'have read about aviators, the printed page and the photographs can convey no real idea of the wonder of it all. You remember that the man up above you is helping to solve the problem of centuries; that he is realizing a dream which is older than the story of Daedalus and Icarus and the legend of Phaeton driving the chariot of the sun." The announcement from Paulhan that he will attempt to break all aeroplane records for height, speed, endurance and cross-country flights may bo taken to mean that a sensational sight or two out of the ordinary, even in aeroplaning, is on today's to-day's program, which will begin in the neighborhood neighbor-hood of two o'clock. |
