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Aviation History
1911
1911 - 0685.PDF
CORRESPONDENCE,. %• The name and address of the writer not necessarily for publication) MOST in all cases accompany letters intended fo> insertion or containing queries. Correspondents communicating with regard to letters which they have read in FLIGHT, would much facilitate ready reference by quoting the number of each such letter. Naval Officers and Aviation. [1282] I should be very grateful indeed if you could kindly inform me, through the medium of your columns, whether there is any opportunity for Naval officers to learn enough of flying to obtain the certificate at a reasonably small cost. I am sure there are a number of officers like myself, who would be only too glad to have the opportunity of learning, but whose somewhat scanty pay absolutely debars from paying the ,£50 usually required for the course of instruction. We get of course no assistance from the Admiralty, either in time, money, or opportunity, but I, for one, would be happy to devote my ordinary leave to a course of instruction, were it within my means. I understand that two aeroplanes have been presented to the nation for the use of the Navy, but is it possible for officers to receive instruction in their use, who have not the wherewithal to pay the £$0 usually required by most of the flying schools ? SINBAD. Biplane versus Monoplane. [1283] With reference to the much debated question of biplane or monoplane might I draw attention to a little point in which the former may posiibly hold an advantage over the latter. In the case of a monoplane, in order to obtain sufficient ground clearance for the propeller, it is essential to use a much higher MONOPLANE: qf^ou^D uiwt landing chassis than, from theoretical considerations, is desirable. Owing to the position of the centre of gravity, the landing chassis must be constructed very stoutly in order to cope with landing shocks. A biplane, with the centre of gravity on a level with the lower plane, and the propeller placed half-way up the gap as in the Wright machine, can be fitted with a very light and simple landing chassis. A certain amount of strut work is necessary to connect the two planes although there is no apparent reason why this should not be reduced to a minimum as in the Breguet and Bristol racing biplanes, and it remains to be seen whether the total weight and head resistance of such struts and connections, together with the small landing chassis, can successfully combat the arrangement now used on monoplanes. It seems that the large biplane with the propeller practically on a line with a lower plane and lifting tail will, within a few months, cease to exist as anything more than a school machine. C.G = Centre of Gravity. Dover. CHAS. LEE. Aeroplanes in Military Warfare. [1284] May I encroach on the hospitality of your columns by thanking Mr. Vessey and D. H. T. for the trouble they have taken in criticising my article on the aeroplane in warfare, and at the same time endeavour as best I can to answer them. The method that occurred to me of keeping the tube vertical was to mount it on a universal joint, and fix on it a small gyroscope. It may interest Mr. T. to know that the sketch was not to scale. I presume that the military aviator will be armed with a map on which contours are shown, and would be much obliged to Mr. T. if he would work out for me to three significant figures the difference between V3008 and v/3ooo. I have never had the misfortune of having a lyddite shell explode on top of me, but I believe, on the authority of several officers who have been present on such an occasion, that the shell undergoes something which strongly resembles Mr. T.'s " atomic disintegration." I must humbly apologise for my error in muddling up the air-speed with the land-speed, but confess I cannot see the objection to obtaining the latter by the following somewhat obvious method. Let the aviator mark through his telescope some prominent object, such as a church spire, and "follow" it with his telescope, his fellow passenger, if there is one, noticing the angle the telescope makes with the vertical before and after, a time o. Then if a, a' are the angles, v — — (tan o — tan o'), and tan 8 becomes — (tan a — tan a'). t 4a Experience alone could tell the best value to take for o, and when that is found, the barometer could be eraduted with — divisions. 40 Mr. T. has solved for us the side-wind problem, so I think that provided a gust does not strike the machine as the bomb is being dropped, a fair degree of accuracy could be obtained. Finally I may state that the apparatus was by no means meant as a solution to the problem, but merely as an improvement on the present crude methods of knocking the ends out of a biscuit tin and aiming through that. O. D. ATKINSON. Vortex Principle of Flight. [1285] Mr. Cooper's theories are old, and have failed not only to explain the flight of the fly but to satisfy even one of the conditions of the problem. I thoroughly tested them nine years ago. It is just those years of experience that have made me cautious about accepting anything without submitting it to every possible test, and that not once but again and again. If Mr. Cooper can give a full and complete explana tion of the flight of the fly, illustrated by diagrams, I shall be happy to criticise it. T. A. DRING. The Clarke Propeller. [1286] In answer to Mr. Wilson's letter 1265, my pro peller, which gave 81-6 per cent, efficiency, was an II ft. 6 in. diameter 4-bladed one. Whether or not it was tested against others of " precisely equal diameters, &c," I cannot say, but there is no reason why it should have been, as the efficiency of a propeller not being a comparative result obtained by testing in heats one with another, the values for various propellers, whether of equal diameters, pitches, &c, or not, can be compared from the individual results. I may mention that I do not have access to results of tests carried out by Messrs. Vickers, Ltd., except, of course, to those made for me. Kingston-on-Thames. T. W. K. CLARKE. Strapping-in Pilots. [1287] With reference to Icarus' letter in FLIGHT on July 22nd, I cannot say that I agree with his views concerning the accident to Lieut. Princeteau. He seems to think that it condemns the idea of strapping-in the pilot, but this is not necessarily the case, for if the pilot had been wearing one of the patent easily-detachable belts he would have been able to escape. In my opinion a pilot is in by far the safest position on a machine when he is sitting behind the engine with a safety elastic belt. If he cannot have the engine in front then he is safest if he does not strap himself in at all. Shoreham. W. A. C. MORGAN. Steering by Tail-Twisting. [1288] It will interest the various persons who have recently rediscovered this principle to hear that in 1908 Mr. Holroyd Smith, in opening the discussion on a paper read by Mr. Herbert Chatly before the Society of Engineers, commented on the use of the tail for steering by crows and other birds, and made the following state ment (I quote from the transactions):—" He had given an experi mental illustration of this in his lecture of over thirty years ago. At the rear of his double plane glider he had a little horizontal rudder, and by simply twisting it to right or left, and without altering the set of the planes, the glider could be made to turn in any desired direction." Kingston-on-Thames. DONALD EASDALE. 687
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