Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/385

 Night Mail: A Flying Dream to be Realized

��A letter mailed in New York at night will reach Chicago the next morning

���It searchlights of about eignt tnousana candlepower eqiiipped with acetylene gas tanks were used at each emergency station, the pilot would not be likely to lose his way

��THE day is not far distant when you may drop a letter down the chute in New York and be confident of its d*elivery in Chicago the next morning.

The flights of Ruth Law and Victor Carl- strom have afforded ample proof that a New York-Chicago mail service by aero- plane is feasible. The Post Office Depart- ment is actually considering an air-line mail-service between the two cities. It is estimated that the trips can be made in from six to fourteen hours, depending upon the wind, and that the average flying time for the seven hundred and twenty miles will be eight hours. The distance by rail is about one thousand miles.

Definite plans for the maintenance on a regular schedule of this air trunk-line for the mail have been proposed. One plan involves emergency stations every twenty- two miles, each equipped with powerful

��lights. In addition, two landing and one relay station are also planned. The aero- planes would leave the two termini at six o'clock in the evening and deliver the mail before nine o'clock the following morning. Under the most favorable conditions it would reach Chicago by midnight.

Leaving New York at dusk, the aeroplane mail-carrier would follow the lights at the emergency stations to the first landing station, which would be in the vicinity of Williamsport, Pa. There, at a flying field equipped with hangars, tools and spare parts, he would stop for oil and gasoline, and would then continue to a relay station near Niles, Ohio. Here another machine would finish the flight, landing near Napo- leon, Ohio. Powerful searchlights would mark the emergeney stations and special lighting systems would illuminate the flying fields, even in foggy weather.

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