plete meteorological and navigation notes which would aid in air- 

 charting (7). As the temperature was slowly rising and conse- 

 quently giving increasing buoyancy to the balloon, it was only 

 necessary to wait a few minutes after he had given the order "All 

 hands off !" to rise without further sacrifice of ballast. With so 

 small a balloon, filled with pure hydrogen gas it requires only a 

 small handful of sand to gain altitude. The management of such 

 a craft inclines one to the belief that the French aeronauts were 

 well within the facts when it is said that they measured the bal- 

 last with a thimble. The difference between a hydrogen filled 

 balloon and a coal gas balloon is the difference between riding a 

 thoroughbred or a plow horse. As the balloon imperceptibly 

 rose foot by foot, the pilot looked over the side of the basket and 

 saw the group of officers and men who but lately had had hold of 

 the basket, and a feeling of elation possessed him. There is al- 

 ways a singularly venturesome feeling which enters into almost 

 every balloonist's soul as he leaves the earth. Experience intensi- 

 fies this feeling which accounts, doubtless, for some of the ex- 

 traordinarily hazardous actions of aeronauts. 



Seated comfortably in a wicker chair which formed part of 

 the de-luxe equipment, the pilot looked out across the beautiful 

 Sierra Madre district and the broad acres of the "Lucky" Bald- 

 win estate to the purple rampart of the San Gabriel mountains 

 only a couple of miles distant. The down-rush of cold air from 

 their serrated sides was already being made visible by the thin 

 silvery mists along their base (See Fig. 2). Experience had long 

 told him that one of the best visual methods of estimating both 

 altitude and drift was the shadow of the balloon on the ground. 

 The air was so pure, the sun so bright that the balloon shadow 

 permitted nearly exact determination of the direction and speed 

 of the balloon (See Fig. 3). 



It was extraordinarily interesting to watch the extreme 

 sensitiveness of the balloon's response to changing temperature 

 as produced in traversing different character of terrain. This 

 was the writer's experience in early airplane flights half a dozen 

 years ago. Although the barograph record of the flight showed 

 an average altitude of 230 feet during the 62 minutes, with a 

 minimum of 150 feet and a maximum of 260 feet elevation above 

 the ground, changes of less than 10 feet in altitude (not readily 

 shown by statoscope or altimeter) were constantly taking place 

 owing to the different absorption and reflection surfaces below. 

 The balloon fell as it left the parade ground of Ross Field and 

 traversed an alfalfa patch with its cool air necessitating throwing 



7. Ford A. Carpenter. Journey Through the Landscape of the Sky. Scientific 

 American Monthly, 1920; also, Charting Air-Lanes, Los Angeles to San Diego. Bull. 

 Am. Metlg. Soc, 1920. 



8. Ford A. Carpenter. The Aviator and the Weather Bureau. Harrisburg, 1916. 



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