The base at Newfoundland is an airman's paradise, It is the world's greatest but least publicized airport, built within the last three years with an eye to its future use as a great peacetime transatlantic terminus. La Guardia Field would fit snugly into one corner of it Five runways, each 5,000 ft. long and 1.200 ft. wide, spread eagle the field in ten different directions. Guard lights flash along the runway borders and to help the pilot judge his dis tances the lights change colour from amber to green every 1,000 ft. The Shell Oil Ca. has done a remarkable job transporting and stocking great stores of the world's finest aviation gasoline at this distant outpost. We take off on 100 octane gasoline and cruise on 90 octane.
The most respected the outfit is year-old, Australian-born Captain Bennett. He holds the world's long distance record for seaplanes 000 mi from Scotland to South rica, He is a licensed pilot, navigator, engineer. radio operator and the author of some of the best aviation textbooks ever written. I have never known a better all-round flier. For the rest of us, flying the Atlantic is a new experience. An American overland commercial pilot flies on radio beams and is not to know to navigate by the sun a But over the Atlantic, flying big ships at night over a northern route never before risked in winter, we fy entirely by dead reckoning or There are no radio beams ide u e only allowed to get bearings by radio as we near land.
To improve our skill, we attend classes still navigation and the use of a sextant d practice blind trainers be-cen trips in Canada. uncommon to see five or $ us on the roofs of Montreal hotels shoo! at night for practice. An American flier, with 500 hours to his credit. can learn more in a few months of transatlantic flying than in years of flying in the U. S. where celestial nav ion is not required. I have come to know F n etu Pollux d Sirius intimately. One r that I shall al-zo at with reverence is Betelgeuse, call "Beetle Juice." ry imagin-ice, including flotation gear. By button, a door in the cabin pops off and an inflated four-man rubber dinghy, with paddles, falls to the floor. Fortunately we have so far had no need to press this button, for no pilot spanni he Big Pond has yet had an accident over the ocean or had a brush with a German.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.