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Aviation History
1913
1913 - 0095.PDF
JANUARY 25, 19.13. I/iJGHf] FOLLOWING on my remarks recently relating to MM. Sommer and Robert Esnault 1'elterie retiring from the aviation industry, there is, according to rumours, another firm in France whose machines, one cannot help noticing, employ steel almost exclusively as a medium of construction, that does not find itself in particularly good circumstances just at the present. I do not pretend to know a great deal more about what are the best materials to use for aeroplane construction than any ordinary mortal who has donned overalls, and who has done his share of practical aeroplane construction, but the question immediately occurs : " Are all-steel machines wanted yet?" Then take the machines that have been the most popular during the past year. It is rather striking to notice that they have been the machines that have been constructed of a judicious mixture of wood and steel, with rather more wood than steel. This is only touching on one factor that appeals to me as being one that has gone against some firms achieving the success that might have been theirs. With other French firms in mind, I ask myself: "Have they given sufficient attention to what their War Department requires ? " In my mind at the moment are two French firms whose machines are not as serviceable as they might be, for the main reason that the landing chassis employed in both cases is too delicate to stand up to really hard work. One of these machines, too, does not show all that is required of it in the way of "holding the air." Yet, as far as I have gathered from reports, the firms in question have not made any serious efforts to remedy these faults up to the present. According to reports, one of these firms is very " hard up" at the moment, and the other has been given another six months' existence. • • • The word " taube," which in German literally means "pigeon" and was originally used to indicate the Rumpler, or German-built Etrich machine, has come into general use in Germany to indicate a war aeroplane in the same way that the word "avion" has been adopted in France. Mr. A. V. Roe's frequent motor cycle jaunts between London and Manchester have apparently brought home to him very strongly the failings of the motor cycle at the present time, so much so that he has designed a novel form of two-wheeled vehicle in which the driver is almost totally enclosed by a streamline body. In the design, which was published recently in one of our motor cycling contemporaries, two small wheels, one on either side of the rear wheel, are arranged so that they may be raised clear of the ground when once a start has been obtained. Conversely, in pulling up, they may be lowered to steady the machine. It is likely that they would also come in useful if the vehicle showed a tendency to skid at any time. • • • It is not difficult to trace the effects of aeroplane designing in the drawings of this little bi-car that Mr. A. V. Roe has conceived. The steering wheel is in every way similar to the control of the 35-h.p. Green- Avro biplane that was so successful, and the steering is operated by stranded steel cable. I understand that Mr. A. V. Roe is having one of these machines built, and, when tests have brought the vehicle to the stage 077- M^U^\ 0: /O ,#ec MR C GRAHAME-WHITE RECUPERATING.—The photograph, which he has sent us from St. Morltz, shows bim steering his crew round a banked turn on the bobsleigh run. 95
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