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1930 

The WASHINGTON Star

AVIATION

Glider pilots take tests for licenses; pigeon flies to Pittsburgh at 25 miles an hour; Caterpillar Club initiates decreasing

By ERNIE PYLE

  The town has a new bunch of licensed glider pilots, in fact its first bunch. Last evening at Congressional Airport, just before sundown, seven glider pilots took their tests for licenses as Inspector Harry Bissell looked on. 
  Heading the list were Mrs. Hattie Barnaby (wife of Lieut. Ralph Barnaby, U. S. N.) and Dean Arthur F. Johnson, of the George Washington University engineering school. 
  The others were L. Ron Hubbard, Ray A. Heimburger and William Stewart, all G.W. students, and Harry F. Appleby and Francis Van Fleet.
  All have been taking gliding lessons under the tutelage of Glenn Elliott at Congressional. They used a Franklin glider, which is good not only for training but for soaring.
       *    *    *
  To get their licenses, the students had to make several flights, 
including 180 and 360-degree turns, and down-wind landings. They were pulled into the air by an auto, then cut loose. All had to reach an altitude of at least 400 feet. It took two hours to run off the tests.
  That new air passenger service
between here and Chicago, scheduled to open Friday, looks pretty good.
  When you can get from here to  Chicago in 4 hours and 15 minutes, you’re traveling.
  The planes are the beautiful Lockheed Orion—six-passenger, low-wing cabin job, with retractable landing gear. They are supposed to cruise at 165, and have a top speed of better than 220.
  When you ride this line, be sure and fasten your safety belt, because you hit the bumps so fast you’re liable to find your head playing a concert on the cabin roof if you aren’t tied-down.
         *    *    *
  You remember that day before yesterday Pennsylvania Airlines brought 20 homing pigeons down 
here from Pittsburgh, then turned them loose to race the plane back north.
  The pigeons left here at 11:10 a.m., the plane left at 12:10 p.m. The plane reached Pittsburgh at 

The Commercial 
National Bank
14th and G Streets
Banking in All of Its Phases

2:10, averaging 100 miles an hour for the 200-mile flight.
  One pigeon flapped into Pittsburgh at 7 that evening, averaging 25 miles an hour for the trip. Another on arrived at 1:30 yesterday, after 26 hours in the air. The other 18 pigeons are, like many trans-Atlantic fliers, long overdue.
     *    *    *
  Either flying is getting safer, or else fewer people are wearing parachutes with which to jump out of airplanes.
  Because, in the first six months
of this year, there were 31 less emergency parachute jumps than in the first half of 1930.
  Last year (first half) 65 persons saved their lives by abandoning their disabled planes in midair. This year (first half) the number was only 34.
  On July 1 there were 371 members 
of the famous mythical Caterpillar Club, and those members have 
made 386 jumps, 15 being repeaters.
         *    *    *
  People who were with the Ludington Line and aren’t any more include: - Felix duPont, (millionaire 
$20-a-week dispatcher), and Frank 
Sheltz (pilot)....Miss June Westwood, the Eastern Air hostess who got so much publicity for being 
calm when one of the Condors 
caught fire in the air, is no longer hostessing.... Also Mildred Johnson is no longer in charge of E.A.T. hostesses.... We could go on like this for columns, naming the “no longers.”... There is a Stinson Junior at Washington-Hoover Airport, with only 151 hours in the air, that they will sell for $3800.... A woman called up the field yesterday and wanted to buy an airport. They offered to sell her theirs, but she said no, she wanted one in Ohio. Any one would do, she just wanted 
an airport in Ohio.... There is 
now teletype service between here and Pittsburgh to handle business 
of Pennsylvania Airlines.
     The Air Mail
  Pabst and Andre, Treat and Johnston flew the two southbound ships from Newark to Atlanta last night. Potts and Jamieson. Brown and Treat flew the two north bound planes. 
They couldn’t find “Little Jack” Little to bring the shuttle in[[?]] from New York