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This lever is mounted on a universal joint, and can be moved from side to side as well as to and fro. Should the biplane tilt, while flying, say towards the left, the pilot moves his hand-lever sideways towards the right. This is a natural movement, the instinct being to move the lever away from the direction in which the machine is heeling.
In other words, man still dominated the machine, and there was still full play for his physical and mental faculties. Moreover, all the inventions of preceding ages, from the first fashioning of the flint to the spinning-wheel and the hand-lever press, were all conquests of the tangible and visible forces of Nature.
Under favourable conditions, such as a pupil will experience in his first flights, nothing more is necessary with the hand-lever than a very slight but fairly constant action; a similar motion, in a way, as is made by the driver of a motor-car when he maintains, by his "feel" on the wheel, his sense of control over the machine.
At the rear extremities of the main-planes as illustrated in the photograph facing page 34 and marked D.D. are flaps, or ailerons, which are hinged so that they may be either raised or lowered. These ailerons are operated, through the medium of wires, by the same hand-lever which governs the movement of the elevator.
Delicate, sure, quick, and firm; such is the touch needed with an aeroplane. With the one hand-lever, as we have shown, it is possible for a pilot to control the rise and descent, and also the lateral movements of his machine; and there remains only the steering to be effected the movement from side to side, from right to left, or vice-versa.
In the controlling actions of an aeroplane and this is a fact which tends sometimes to the confusion of the novice nothing more is required, normally, than the most delicate of movements. The difference say between ascending, and skimming along the ground, is represented by a movement of the hand-lever of only a few inches.
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