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Aviation History
1912
1912 - 0806.PDF
j/ygfiT SEPTEMBER 7, 1912. EDITORIAL COMMENT. In a portion of last week's issue of FLIGHT ThC <1 th°UtS we were able t0 publish the awards in Honoured, connection with the Military Aeroplane Trials, and to that extent were able, even as a weekly newspaper, to provide our readers with public information simultaneously with its announcement by the modern hourly press. But, those who obtained their first news from FLIGHT and those who did nor, alike are long since aware of the recipients of the Government's prizes. They know that Cody won the first prize of ,£4,000 open to the world, and the first prize of ^1,000 reserved to British machines. They know that the French Dep. secured the second prize of ^2,000 open to the world and that there was no second British prize awarded, albeit the two Bristol monoplanes and the British Dep. secured a third prize of ^500 each. And, lastly, but by no means least, the Avro, the Maurice Farman, the two Hanriots, and the two Bleriots received their ^100 each in consolation for having submitted to all the tests. So, here, to the superficial mind, is the result of a month's labour in the wind and wet on Salisbury Plain ; here are the honours that the greatest aeroplane trials on record have produced. It would be less than human if there were other than much heartburning, and, as all men are human, the effect of the prize list is now an influence of the moment that overrules by its intensity much that later will be recognised as proper to a sensible point of view. That point of view is best taken up by the recollection that the honours must be allotted by an arbitrary scale such as bound those whose duty, and by no means easy task, it was to act as judges in this long drawn out event. Remember, it was a competition for prizes. The condi tions were known in advance, and, indeed, would-be participants made a great outcry that they should be told of them so that they might design accordingly. First and foremost, therefore, we must assume that the judges were in honour bound to abide by so many of the condi tions as were already fixed. One of them, for instance, was the necessity of climbing at the rate of not less than 200 ft. a minute. In this the Avro failed; no more need be said regarding its lack of honours, but in its honour much may be said, as is shown elsewhere. Its failure to do the climb is, according to the estimate of our Technical Editor, only represented by an absence of some six horse-power or so, a small matter that could easily be set right by the use of a more powerful engine, but which could not readily be changed on the machine as it stood. It was always pretty clear that the authorities set great store by climbing, and to have waived the minimum—as the judges had power to do had they so desired—would certainly have been to have conveyed a most misleading impression of what is regarded, for the time being, as a military necessity. Great credit is, for instance, due to the Avro for having, by sheer originality in design, afforded such thorough protection and ease of communication to the occupants of the machine; these advantages were considered to be desirable in the 10th clause of the original regulations, but the same clause specified for a wide range of view, and again, as at present designed, the Avro probably falls short of the essential minimum in this regard. We take the case of the Avro at some length, because it seems to us to be such an outstanding example of the situation, and because we can so honestly say of it that 806 it is a machine that went through the trials with all honour, even if in the end it failed to win a prize. It is a most promising design, as anyone who studies our technical articles elsewhere cannot fail to appreciate, and the businesslike manner in which those representing the firm coped with unexpected circumstances should do much to establish A. V. Roe and Co., once and for all, in the front rank of the British industry. Space prevents us from giving vent to an equally exten sive imagination as to the why and wherefore of the position of every other machine in the prize list, and indeed, it is scarcely our place to do so seeing that the Government will, presumably, be presented with an official report on the whole affair and will, let us sincerely hope, immediately authorise its publication. The im portance of these trials is not to be measured by the momentary significance of this or that machine having been awarded a hundred pounds or a thousand pounds, but rather is it to be gauged by the amount of helpful information that is therefrom forthcoming. To the best of our ability we have endeavoured to make good with the information so generously placed at our disposal, and, for that much, those who profit by it must thank the competitors and the officials who both whole-heartedly co-operated with us in our work. But, the immediate field of the aeroplane is in military service, and above all other considerations, scientific or otherwise, stands the desirability, nay necessity, of know ing more clearly what those independent men who acted as judges have .to say on the subject from their own point of view. This is of the utmost consequence to the avia tion world, and the Government certainly owes to the losers in the trials the publication of any report that may be made, just as much as it owes to the winners the payment of their prize money. It is important, and it is essential, to know this, because otherwise it is not possible properly to foresee the lines along which progressive firms may usefully develop their construction. Thus, for example, the Bleriots and the Hanriots and the Maurice Farman alike bring up an honourable rearguard. Both Hanriots were faster than any other machines in the trials; it follows, therefore, that even speed can be bought too dearly. Perhaps the outlook from these machines is not as complete as was desired, or perhaps some other consideration may be a predominating beam as seen by the military eye. Merely regarded as machines, the results of our calculations show that the Hanriot no less than the Dep. is a standard of modern monoplane efficiency. The Bleriot machines too, are, in themselves, such standard types that again it becomes a matter of concern to see what place they hold in the British military scale of utility. Their flying in the trials seemed to be in keeping with their design, and, being the lightest machines in themselves, they, not unnaturally, showed a high efficiency on the basis of useful load carried. Or again, take the Maurice Farman, a machine so safe at low speeds that it invites almost any beginner to play with it. That, too, from the military point of view is evidently not an over powering advantage when, as seems to evolve from our calculations, such large and lightly loaded wings form their own handicap in speed. Working thus upwards, it is not difficult to see the reasonableness of the third prize awards in the British section. A little more time spent on the design, a little
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