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Updated: May 6, 2025
"And, of course, I'll want your stabilizer on my craft." "That's very good of you to say. It will give me a fine chance to demonstrate it," said Mr. Vardon. Later in the day, Dick, his chums, the aviator and Larry Dexter were talking about some of the flights made in the army machines that afternoon.
One of these magnets closes an exhaust-valve, and the other opens an inlet-valve, in the compressed air tank. At once air is forced into this double cylinder, which you see at the bottom of the stabilizer, filling the half which is to operate its own set of rudders; and a piston begins to work inside.
"I realized that as soon as I began making airships, and so I devised what I call a gyroscope equilibrizer or stabilizer. A gyroscope, you know, is a heavy wheel, spinning at enormous speed, on an anti-friction axle. Its great speed tends to keep it in stable equilibrium, and, if displaced by outside forces, it will return to its original position.
Since hearing about the twenty thousand dollar prize his interest in airships seemed to have increased. "The stabilizer, or equalibrizer, whatever you wish to call it, is to keep the airship from turning over," explained Mr. Vardon, and he went into the details with which I have already acquainted my readers.
The only outward damage visible was the twisted stabilizer, but the boys realized that she must be a shambles within. "I guess we'll have to wait a while before we go back aboard. There might be radioactivity around the hull," Roger remarked. "I don't think so," said Tom. "The Polaris was still coasting when we left her. We cut out the drive rockets, but we didn't brake her.
"You're my protection in getting out of here, and if I have to freeze you and carry you aboard, that's just what I'll do! Now get moving!" Tom walked to the air lock of the ship, Sinclair right in back of him. The rebel leader pressed an outside button in the ship's stabilizer fin and the port swung open slowly. "Get in!" growled Sinclair. Tom stepped into the ship and waited.
"Obviously." Kit nodded. "But who is that? Who would want to do a dirty thing like that?" "Who indeed?" said a voice in back of them. They all spun around to face Quent Miles. He lounged against the stabilizer fin and grinned at them. "What do you want, Miles?" asked Kit.
His machine, a renovated Fokker, was tipsily zigzagging along without any guidance except its stabilizer and its own momentum. To say the boy was half paralyzed at first is not too strong. But a revulsion swept through him in a flood.
"When it is, it will be one of the finest aircraft in this, or any other, country," declared Mr. Vardon. "I don't say that just because I am building it, but because Mr. Hamilton is putting into it the very best materials that can be bought." "And we mustn't forget your stabilizer," laughed Dick. "What's that?" Uncle Ezra wanted to know.
The transport plane stood by the door of a hangar on this military field, and mechanics stood well back from it and looked it over. A man crawled over the tail assembly and found one small hole in the fabric of the stabilizer. A shell fragment had gone through when the war rockets exploded nearby. The pilot verified that the fragment had hit no strengthening member inside. He nodded.
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