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aerostat was increasing its speed, and obeying the least action of its rudder.

 "The course was, at first, North toward the plateau of Chatillon and Verrieres; on arriving at the road of Choisy to Versailles, and in order not to fly over the trees, the direction was changed and the nose of the balloon pointed toward Versailles.

 "Over Villacoublay, finding ourselves at a distance of about 4 kilometers from Chalais, and being completely satisfied with the way the balloon was behaving, we decided to retrace our steps and to attempt to come down to Chalais itself, in spite of the small space left uncovered by the trees. The balloon turned to the right when the rudder was turned at a very small angle (about 11°). The diameter of the circle was about 300 meters.

 "The Dome des Invalides, taken as a point of direction left Chalais slightly to the left of the course.

 "When we arrived at this point, the balloon carried out a change in direction toward its left with as much facility as previously; and soon, it came back to float 300 yards above its starting point. The tendency which the balloon had then to come down was increased by a maneuver of the valve. During this time, it was several times necessary to move backward and forward in order to bring back [[the?]] balloon over the spot selected for the landing. When 80 meters above the ground, a rope thrown from the balloon was seized by men and the aerostat was brought down in the same meadow from which it had started."

 A distance of 7 kilometers and 600 meters had been covered in 23 minutes.

 On the following flight, on September 12, the balloon successfully resisted a fairly strong wind for about ten minutes. Then as the motor became overheated, it was necessary to stop it. The landing took place at Velizy.

 On November 8, two new ascensions were made with return to Chalais. "La France" was still manned by Charles Renard and Krebs.

 In 1885, the motor was replaced by a Gramme bipolar dynamo which produced 9 h.p.  Some decrease in weight made it possible to take up a third aeronaut.

 On August 25, 1885, "La France," piloted by the Renard brothers made a one-hour flight; but had to land at Villacoublay on account of the wind.

 On September 23, Dute-Poitevin, accompanied the two officers; the balloon flew over Paris, going to the Point-du-Jour to turn. The distance to the Point-du-Jour was covered in forty-seven minutes and the return was made in eleven minutes. The flying speed of the dirigible was 6 meters per

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Transcription Notes:
Could not find whether or not the degree symbol in the third paragraph ought to be transcribed as such or, say, transcribed in brackets (e.g. [[degrees]] or something like that. Also, in the fifth paragraph, there is a word which is not clear, but I transcribed it as "the" because it looks like the "t" and the "h" overlapped.