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Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Warwick,UK Real Name: Barry My Models: Aviation artifacts Visit wonwinglo's Gallery
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Gerardo,just to show what a project this could represent,here are a few lines illustrating the history and enthusiasm of aviation in Mexico,as in a lot of aviation events Lindbergh paved the way forward for the long distance flights,so just for a few moments lets transport ourselves back in time to the golden years of flight,the nineteen thirties- The banquet at the army tent camp at Laguna Salada, a dry lake used for aircraft testing, was over by 10 p.m., but the musical entertainment was just starting. So when General Abelardo Rodríguez abruptly ordered him to bed, Roberto Fierro Villalobos, the guest of honor, turned in reluctantly. Four hours later he was up and making a final walk-around of a high-wing monoplane with Baja California painted on its silver fabric-covered fuselage. Then, taking a last gulp of coffee and exchanging abrazos with fellow fliers and the general, also governor of Mexico's territory of Baja California, he climbed into the open cockpit, checked the instruments and advanced the throttle. The 223-hp roar of a Wright J-5C Whirlwind shattered the nocturnal silence. Moving ponderously with its 1,750-pound load of gasoline, the plane-often referred to as BC-2--lumbered 750 meters across the salt flats, slowly gaining speed, then heaved itself aloft and disappeared into the starry black sky. General Rodríguez telegraphed Mexico City that Major P.A. (piloto aviador) Fierro had taken off from Mexicali at 2:05 a.m. PST, May 30, 1928, en route to Mexico City nonstop. Fierro throttled the engine back to its 12-gallon-per-hour cruising power at altitude over the Colorado River delta. Then, over the Gulf of California, the engine began to cough. In the excitement of takeoff, Fierro had forgotten to switch from the reserve to the main fuel supply. He twisted the valves and desperately worked the emergency pump. When the engine was running smoothly once again, he mused, "The flight [was almost] over at the start, and as for me, most likely the sea would have swallowed me up." Using dead reckoning, Fierro followed the route Captain Emilio Carranza, his friendly rival, had blazed five days earlier. Carranza had flown from San Diego in México-Excelsior, a special Ryan B-1 Brougham like the one presented to Charles A. Lindbergh when he donated his Ryan NYP, Spirit of St. Louis, to the Smithsonian Institution. And in August, in a venture funded by Mexico City's daily Excelsior through public subscription, Carranza would fly it nonstop to Washington, D.C., returning the courtesy of Lindbergh's immensely popular Mexico City goodwill flight of December 1927. Since Carranza's pioneering Mexico City-Ciudad Juárez nonstop flight in September, the Mexican and American press had been calling the modest 22-year-old great-nephew of Mexico's first constitutional president "the Mexican Lindbergh." Roberto Fierro and Emilio Carranza were following the example of Charles Lindbergh, whose landmark New York-Paris flight the year before had sparked a worldwide record-flight frenzy. After meeting Lindbergh as one of his five Mexican army aides-de-camp during his December visit, Fierro wrote, "Lindbergh's arrival gave us the confidence to pursue our dreams of conquering spaces, at home and abroad." How true that was,early aviators were to become the ambassadors of continents bridging them to bring the world together.
__________________ 'And there I was oil on my goggles from a broken pipe,then I looked at the altimeter,all I could see was the makers name !' www.wonwinglo.scale-models.net/ |