Air Yacht

The "family air yacht," a four-passenger dirigible newly built by Capt. Anton Heinen, bobbed at its stubby mooring mast at Toms River, N. J. one chilly afternoon last week. When the engine refused to start, two young mechanics applied a compressed-air booster* to "kick over" the sluggish pistons. Instantly the compressed-air tank and the engine burst, the explosion throwing the crew and their one passenger 40 ft. to the ground, wrecking the fore part of the gondola, scattering a shrapnel of splinters. Flames from the carburetor shot upward but burned out without igniting the hydrogen-filled bag.

Capt. Heinen, a Zeppelin pilot in the War, later a consulting engineer for the Navy's ill-fated dirigible Shenandoah (TIME, Sept. 14, 1925), built his "air yacht" to be produced commercially "for family use." Its initial cost was $19,000, but the prospective purchase price, the designer said, would be "far below $10,000," the operating cost-per-mile lower than that of an automobile.

In a trial flight Capt. Heinen had landed his blimp in 46 sec. He was planning to make the gondola detachable from the bag, for operation on earth as an automobile. At the end of the flying season, the owner might deflate the bag, store it in his garage.

*Not to be confused with a "booster" magneto, for auxiliary starting ignition, the compressed-air principle is also used in starting ordinary engines in heavier-than-aircraft (e. g. the Heywood starter). Other types are: 1) hand inertia; 2) electric inertia, comparable to the automobile starter, by means of a storage battery; 3) a device inserted into an engine cylinder and employing a 12-gauge shotgun shell. When the shell is fired, it creates enough compression to turn the engine several times. The latter device, invented in France, was first shown in the U. S. by Charles A. Levine. Option for its manufacture is now held by Eclipse Aviation Co.. Orange, N. J., sole manufacturers of the inertia types of starter.

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