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Aviation History
1924
1924 - 0611.PDF
SEPTEMBER 25, 1924 THE AVRO " AVIS." SOME CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAILS : 1, the very beautifully-made wing flap gear. Rotation of the worm gear raises the longitudinal shaft, and with it the crank joined to the two wing flap cranks. The result is that both ailerons are depressed. Shafts, etc., work in ball bearings. 2 shows how a parallel movement is imparted to the stirrups of the front foot bar. In 3 is shown, cut through to show the construction, the foot of the inter-plane I-strut. Note the unusual bracing, with struts running diagonally to the spars and a tie-rod from front to rear spar. 4 shows the rib construction and attachment to tubular leading edge, and 5 an aileron and its attachment to the Duralumin torque tube. <•><$><$><*> THE SHORT LIGHT MONOPLANE (No. 8) Bristol " Cherub " Engine THE "very pretty monoplane entered by Short Brothers of Rochester is already known to readers of FLIGHT, a description and a full-page scale drawing having been published in our issue of July 24, 1924. The machine is a. " normal " (i.e., neither " high-wing " nor " low-wing ") monoplane two-seater, fitted with Bristol " Cherub " engine. From the accompanying illustrations it will be seen that the machine is of exceptionally clean lines, the photographs particularly illustrating this point. Aerodynamically, there fore, the machine should be very efficient, and the estimated performance figures published in our previous article will in all probability be considerably improved upon during actual flying tests. Constructionallv the machine is of more than usual interest on account of the all-metal fuselage, which incorporates features similar to those of the famous Short " Silver Streak " and " Springbok " larger aeroplanes. This form of con struction, which has not been developed as rapidly as it might have been on account of the Air Ministry's objection to the use of Duralumin in aircraft construction, is remarkably simple, and certainly appears to provide a " cleaner" structure, with a minimum of parts, than the more usual forms of metal construction. Fundamentally, the Short method of fuselage construction (and the same principles are now being applied to flying boat hull construction) consists in making the outer skin or covering part of the stress-resisting structure. The skin, of sheet Duralmin, is applied in short panels which wrap 611 mm around the fuselage contour (of elliptical cross-section) and is attached to " L "-section rings or formers lying in a transverse vertical plane. The fact that it is impossible, without beating or some other form of shaping, to bend sheet material around a sphere, although it bends, of course, readily around a cylinder, necessarily means that the Short fuselage is not really in the form of a smooth curve, longi tudinally, but is in a series of straight lines. The angle which adjacent straight lines make with each other are, however, so flat that to all intents and purposes the outward form is a curve. Where a sharp change in the direction of the curve occurs the covering sheets are kept very narrow, as indicated in the general arrangement drawings, while a gentle curve allows of using wider sheets. The sheets are riveted to the " L "-section formers, and, in order to stiffen the skin against compression loads, " V "-section stringers are riveted to the skin between the rings or formers. These stringers do not, however, run through from end to end, as in a flying boat, for instance, but are interrupted at the formers. Owing to the curvature of the fuselage, which already by itself stiffens the skin considerably against compression loads, the fact that the stringers are not con tinuous probably does not matter in the slightest, and the resultant simplicity of construction would appear to be well worth, if necessary, a little extra thickness in the skin. Certainly we have never, in any country, seen a fuselage structure more free from projections, bracing and other encumbrances than that of the Short " Satellite." Whether
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