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Aviation History
1931
1931 - 1143.PDF
FLIGHT, OCTOBER 23, 1931 AIRPCRT CROYDON y* F||—'HINGS are beginning to get very humdrum here,("•) HI and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find III anything of interest to write about week byweek. There has been a very large amount of joyriding this week ; this appears to become a morepopular pastime weekly. On one day alone Imperial Air- ways had " Heracles " and " Hanno " hard at it all theafternoon. " Heracles " was carrying the full comple- ment of 38, and " Hanno " 22. The latter has less seats,as it is one of the Eastern-type H.P.42's. Surrey Flying Services and Rollason Aviation Co. seemto be full up with school work, and one can see their re- spective " Moths," G-AACO, G-ABPC and G-EBSO upand down from about 9 a.m. until 5.30 p.m. incessantly, every day, including Sundays. British Air Transport is changing hands, and I under-stand the new directors are likely to launch out on a bigger scale than previously. Personal Flying Services have done several return tripsto Geneva lately with their Junker, while the Sikorsky has been stranded up in Scotland for several weeks past witha " dud " engine. Dick Godfrey is keeping it company there, and it is expected that by the time he gets backhere he will be unable to speak proper English, and is likely to get his name changed to Jock Godfrey. 1 hearthat K.L.M. are going to name all their machines after various birds, and the last letter of the registration mark-ing will be the first letter of the bird's name. For example, PH-AEZ will be named " Zwallow," or in English Swallow." This seems quite a good scheme, as whyshould not machines be named, the same as a ship? Im- perial Airways adopted this idea many years ago, andinside the company the machines are always referred to by name and not by the registration letters. Lord Amulree arrived from Paris on Friday, havingapparently been recalled to duty according to daily Press reports. The winter services are now in full swing, with a conse-quent reduction in the numbers of passengers carried. This is bound to be the case, as the actual number ofarrivals and departures is only about half what they are in the summer. Actually, for the number of servicesnow operating, passenger figures are well maintained. One looks forward with optimism to the time when airtransport will not be quite such a seasonable concern as it is at present.The traffic figures for the week were:—Passengers, 804 ; freight, 65 tons. P. B. NIGHT FLYING AT HESTON AST Sunday, October 18, the weather permitted.. night flying to be carried out at Heston in accord- ) ance with the programme already announced foreach week-end during October. A feature which had been particularly advertised for this night's show was aparachute drop by Capt. Stewart, whose parachute was to be illuminated. The illuminations, supplied by the Ever-Ready Co., Ltd., took the form of three small torches, two of which were affixed to Capt. Stewart's feet whilethe third was on the top of his head, all arranged so that their beams shone upwards in a manner whichit was hoped would make the parachute descent look very spectacular. Actually things did not go accord-ing to programme, and, although Capt. Stewart made his descent successfully and landed in the middle of the aero-drome, the connections between the batteries and the lamps unfortunately carried away at the instant of opening thechute, so we only saw the "three lights falling through space until they were extinguished at the moment of opening.In connection with this particular event, a friend we were talking to at the aerodrome who had attended a limitednumber of air pageants and other aerial displays, but who is not directly connected with aviation, asked us whyeverything at an aerodrome always seems to hang fire for so long. No show, it was averred, was ever brought off to time or in a snappy sort of manner. It is really rather unfortunate that people outside the aviation circle and who are, therefore, not likely to be very enthusiastic, should be put off by a lack of organisation, but we are bound to admit that in very many cases this particular person was entirely justified. Sunday was a case in point, for there was much delay both when taking off for the drop and also when picking up Capt. Stewart afterwards. We understand that Capt. Stewart will be making another attempt to illuminate the parachute at night, and we hope that on that occasion he will be more successful. It would be well if arrangements were made to prevent any possibility of the parachute descending on to the paraffin flares which are laid out for landing purposes ; there did not appear to be any on Sunday. The business in second-hand aircraft would appear to be one of the staple industries at Heston, for all the agents there are increasing their premises. We noticed that Brian, Lewis & Co. have made a large addition to their hangar by extending it forwards, and Henlys, Ltd., have also taken one of the new showrooms, in which they are displaying motor cars as well as aircraft. THE NEW MARTIN WIND INDICATOR : Built in the shape of an airship,this wind direction indicator is mounted on a drum with hydraulic damping so that it does not swing about to every little gust. A special device auto-matically returns the indicator to the direction of best run when there is no wind. The length is about 30 ft. The indicator illustrated has been erectedat Heston. (FLIGHT Photo.) 1073
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