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ar. To land in a rigid ship is at best a ticklish business; indeed, the rigid airship is in exactly the same case as a large sea-going vessel; its chief dangers are from the land, which it cannot touch with impunity. Its troubles have been greatly diminished, since the war, by the development of the mooring-mast, which does away with the necessity of housing the ship after every flight. The prevailing type of weather in this country is unsettled, and the changes in the force and direction of the wind are rapid and numerous. The landing and housing of an airship demands hundreds of men for its performance, and is not safely to be undertaken in a wind that blows more than eighteen miles an hour. A staff of from eight to ten men is sufficient to anchor a large airship to a mooring-mast, where it has been proved by experiment that she can safely ride out a wind that blows fifty miles an hour. At Pulham, our largest airship station, which was taken over from the Royal Air Force by the Controller-General of Civil Aviation in December 1920, a number of valuable experiments have since been carried out with an improvised mooring-mast, and it has been shown that with a properly designed and constructed mast, fitted with adequate receiving gear and hauling apparatus, there will be no difficulty in landing the largest rigid airships in a wind of from thirty-five to forty miles an hour. This spells an immense advance. Sheds will still be necessary for overhauls and repairs, as a dry dock is necessary for sea-going vessels. But an airship on service may be moored to the mast, as a sea-going vessel is moored to a quay, and can take on board or discharge cargo, passengers, and fuel. The trial trip of the first Zeppelin was short, because of accidents to the steering-gear, but on the whole was not unsuccessful. The ship was perfectly stable, and in its voyage of three and a half miles proved that it could make headway against a wind of sixteen miles an hour. A second ascent, lasting for an hour and twenty minutes, was made on the 17th of October 1900. These trials were of value in discovering the faults of the ship; in the following year it was broken up, and Count Zeppelin went to work again. In his second ship of 1905 the power of each engine was increased to eighty-five horse-power, and other improvements were made. This ship suffered many minor mishaps. At last, in January 1906, it ascended over Lake Constance to a height of 1,800
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