AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2019 - 46

AVIATION
HEADSETS
PORTABLE
INTERCOMS

New Transcom III
Stereo Intercom

PILOT BRIEFING
AVIATION HISTORY

SPO Portable Stereo Intercom
* Make and receive cell
phone calls through
the intercom.
* 5 Year Warranty.
* Works with stereo
or monaural
headsets.
* Music input for Cell
Phone or MP3 player.
* Operates on battery or aircraft power.
* Includes a cell phone / music input cable and a
cable for DC aircraft power.
* The Transcom III models available are Standard
and High Noise Environment N Series.
SPO-23 and SPO-23N (2 place)
SPO-43 and SPO-43N (4 place)
SPO-63 and SPO-63N (6 place)

S-58S Stereo Headset
* Flex microphone boom.
* Dual volume controls.
* Custom headset bag.
* Powder coated
no-glare frame.
* Gel ear seals.
* 5 Year Warranty.
* Youth version
available.
* Stereo / Monaural
switch on the cable.

PTT Push-To-Talk Switches
* Attaches to the control yoke with a
hook and loop strap.
* Available versions:
PTT-HS Use with headset
alone or with a portable
intercom.
PTT-ICS Use with a
portable intercom.
* Coiled cable extends
to 6 feet.

See our web site for our complete line
of headsets, intercoms, and accessories.

Sigtronics Corporation
909 305-9399 * www.sigtronics.com
178 East Arrow Highway, San Dimas, CA 91773

Accidental hero
Others had tried, but Lucky Lindy made it so
B Y J U L I E S U M M E R S WA L K E R

ALTHOUGH THE WRIGHT BROTHERS had proved manned flight more than 20 years before,
it was not until a young Minnesota pilot flew nonstop in a windshieldless aircraft across
the Atlantic Ocean that aviation became the world's newest fascination. "We'd been standing on our heads to get them to notice us but after Lindbergh, suddenly everyone wanted
to fly," said Elinor Smith Sullivan in 1927. "After Lindbergh" was the flight of the Spirit
of St. Louis, Charles A. Lindbergh's historic 33.5-hour flight from New York's Roosevelt
Field to LeBourget Aerodrome outside Paris, on May 20 and 21, 1927.
Like Smith Sullivan, herself the youngest licensed pilot in the world at age 16 in 1927,
Lindbergh and others had been testing the limits of the "aeroplane" for many years, ever
since the events in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, in 1903 when Orville Wright flew for
12 seconds and 120 feet. Lindbergh had been flying since 1923, having previously been
a wing walker, parachutist, and aircraft mechanic. Lindbergh soloed in May 1923 in a
Curtiss Jenny he had bought for $500. He was a barnstormer, became a flight instructor,
and was one of the first to fly mail across the country.
In 1919, two British aviators had flown an Atlantic crossing-from New Brunswick,
Canada, to Ireland-prompting Augustus Post, the secretary of the Aero Club of America,
to propose to New York hotelier Raymond Orteig the awarding of a prize for an American
aviator to fly the transatlantic route nonstop. By 1924, several attempts had been made,
but none successfully. Orteig reinstated the prize in 1927, and 25-year-old Lindbergh convinced Ryan Airlines to build him a monoplane for $10,580 (the lowest bidder).
Taking off from Roosevelt Field at 7:52 a.m., Lindbergh had 450 gallons of fuel aboard,
stared at a blank black wall in front of him while seated in a wicker chair, and had no
means of communication. The 3,600-mile flight took him 10,000 feet in the clouds and
as low as 10 feet above waves on the ocean. When he landed at 10:22 p.m. outside Paris,
he could not see the throngs of people waiting to greet him. More than 150,000 people
swarmed the young pilot, and aviation was never the same.
"People were behaving as though Lindbergh had walked on water, not flown over it,"
biographer A. Scott Berg would write some 70 years later.
Excerpted from Freedom to Fly: AOPA and the History of General Aviation in America,
published by AOPA on the occasion of its eightieth anniversary. You can buy the book here:
www.aopa.org/freedomtoflybook

46 | AOPA PILOT April 2019

http://www.sigtronics.com http://www.aopa.org/freedomtoflybook

AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2019