Cierva Autogiro

Chunky, jovial, rich Juan de la Cierva, 33, inventor of the autogiro, debarked at Manhattan last week, met his serious, rich friend Harold F. Pitcairn, 32, and went down to the latter's city, Bryn Athyn, Pa., near Philadelphia. There the Spaniard, who lives in England most of the time, stripped off his coat and near the Swedenborgian Church which Mr. Pitcairn and his two brothers are building according to their late father's bequest, made the first autogiro flight in the U. S.

Senor de la Cierva, son of a Spanish diplomat, has been building air machines since he was 16. Eleven years ago a trimotored job which he designed crashed on its first flight with one of his friends. The accident set him striving for safety.

The autogiro which he flew last week is his latest model. The fuselage is 16 ft. long, flat and rather wide. Stub wings with upturned tips extend from each side of the fuselage. The tail structure is 8 ft. wide and has boxed double rudders, double fins, an upper (elevator) and a lower (stabilizer) tail plane. When the tail planes are deflected they meet and act as a single plane. The tractor propeller is 81 in. over all and operated by a Genet-Major five-cylinder radial motor which develops 100 h.p. at 2,400 r.p.m.

The peculiar part of the autogiro is, of course, its four horizontal vanes. Their orbit is 30 ft. in diameter, extending over the tail and beyond the tractor motor.

When he was ready to fly Senor de la Cierva started his tractor motor with his landing wheel brakes on. Then he had a bystander give his vanes a shove. They wobbled around about once a minute. He speeded up his motor and the propeller slipstream made the vanes rotate rapidly, about 130 r.p.m., according to their speedometer. The vanes vibrated. To smooth that out he idled his motor for five seconds. Then he released his brakes, sped up the motor again, taxied to his takeoff. The vanes were turning smoothly at 120 r. p. m. and creating a practically solid disc-shaped plane surface reflecting air downward. His take-off was slow.

The inventor, joke-loving, played with his machine. He flew her toward a fence and, just as he might have crashed, pulled her into a stall. She hovered comfortably a few feet from the ground. He got her high and flew her to about 90 m.p.h. At will he held her almost stationary in the air. His landing made spectators laugh. It was like a domestic goose hopping from a fence with wings spread, feet and tail reaching for the ground. He deflected the autogiro's tail planes downward. They brushed against the ground just before the wheels. Then to show off the machine's stability, he rose slightly. Then he descended, stopping in one demonstration, within a few inches, in none, over ten feet.

Harold F. Pitcairn has the U. S. rights to the autogiro manufacture and license. He is building four of them now at Bryn Athyn, all larger than the demonstration machine, all to carry Wright Whirlwinds. Last week's autogiro will be entered in the Guggenheim Fund safety contest, en trance to which closes in October. First prize is $100,000. Five other prizes are for $10,000 each. Chief contenders are the Cierva Autogiro and the Handley-Page slotted-wing plane. Only a Brunner-Winkle biplane of the 11 U. S. entries (including one of the Autogiros being built by Mr. Pitcairn) has tried out so far.