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Aviation History
1932
1932 - 0214.PDF
FLIGHT, MARCH 4, 1932 AIRISA4S FROM! THE FOUR WINDS The Prince Flies to Hounds THE PRINCE OF WALES was out with the Grafton Hounds on February 26, and flew to the meet at Cul- worth Crossroads from Himley Hall. His A.D.C., Maj. Aird, followed him in another plane. After a good day's hunting the Prince called at Culworth House. On his departure by air he was given a hearty send off. Miss Sewell's Lone Flight PILOTING, unaccompanied, a D.H. " Gipsy Moth," Miss Irene Brooke Sewell left Gatwick Aerodrome on February 23 on a 3,500-mile flight to Transjordania. The flight is a pleasure one entirely, mainly to visit friends at Amman. She reached Le Bourget in the afternoon, but was held up there by bad weather until February 25, when she proceeded to Marseilles. Rome was reached on February 27, and after a stop of 20 min. she flew on to Naples. Here she was again held up by bad weather. The Flight to Capetown Now that the February moon has passed without a favourable opportunity having been found for Sqd. Ldr. Gayford and Fit. Lt. Bett to make a start in the Fairey (Napier) long-range monoplane on the attempt to fly non stop to Capetown, it is probable that the attempt will be postponed until the moon of November. February is con sidered the month in which the best average weather con ditions are likely to be met throughout the whole route. The spring and summer months of the Northern Hemi sphere are less suitable, as the pilots would be flying out of summer weather into autumn or winter weather. It is true that a flight during the March moon was at first con sidered, but the decision to wait for November is doubtless the most prudent, and therefore the wisest, course. Air Minister Flies from Geneva LORD LONDONDERRY, Secretary of State for Air, arrived at Croydon Aerodrome in the air liner Helena at 10.30 a.m. on February 25, having travelled from Geneva in 12 hr. Spartans in South Africa SKYWORK, LTD., have now finished their programme of joyriding in South Africa and both Mr. E. F. Ayre and Mr. C. F. Riley have returned to England. Mr. Ayre tells us that the three-seater Spartan proved itself an ideal aircraft for the country, and everywhere it amazed people by its performance. For example, at the beginning of the tour they had to send one machine to Kimberley to be tested for performance against all other well-known makes of aircraft. Now Kimberley is 4,000 ft. high, and the days chosen for the test were extremely hot ; more over, Mr. Ayre had hardly begun to know his machine, while his Hermes engine was brand new, having only just flown up from Capetown. It was, therefore, still stiff, and by no means giving its best. On the full load take-off he actually overloaded the machine by 175 lb., making in all 1,875, as in the rush he quite forgot to account for the petrol and oil. Despite this fact, however, the machine only took 242 metres to get off, while in the single-passenger test, with the machine loaded to 1,590 lb., the take-off run was only 120 metres, this being the lowest run of any machine. Throughout the tour, during which each machine did some 200 hr. flying and visited 32 towns in two months, not the slightest trouble was experienced with the machines or with the Hermes engines. The only difference to the three-seater Spartans usually seen over here was the fitting of semi-balloon Dunlop tyres, which Mr. Ayre found assisted greatly both for take-offs and landings at some of the aerodromes they had to visit. The following is the list of towns visited during the tour:—Capetown, Caledon, George, Oudtshoorn, Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown, King Williams Town, East London, Umtata, Pietermaritzburg, Durban, Ladysmith, Newcastle, Johannesburg, Witbank, Pretoria, Benoni, Johannesburg, Potchefstroom, Kroonstad, Bethlehem, Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Aliwal North, Queenstown, Cradock, Somerset East, Graaff Reinet, Beaufort West, Oudtshoorn, Mossel Bay, Capetown. Autogiro's Long-distance Flight A LONG-DISTANCE flight is shortly to be undertaken by F/O. John N. Young in a C.19 Mark IV two-seater Autogiro (100-h.p. Armstrong-Siddeley " Genet Major "), fitted with an extra fuel tank. He proposes to fly to Tanganyika, and possibly continue as far as the Cape. It is expected that a visit of an Autogiro to Africa will give rise to a considerable amount of interest, as the Autogiro Company have already received numerous en quiries from all parts of Africa concerning this type of machine. Curtiss " Hawks " for Turkey THE Turkish Government has signed a contract for the supply of 24 Curtiss-Wright " Hawk " military biplanes. Of these 18 will be sent from the United States and the rest will be constructed in Anatolia. Instrument Flying SIR PHILIP SASSOON stated, in reply to a question on February 24, that instruction in instrument flying was given at the Central Flying School with a view to the qualification of all flying instructors, and that the subject was being introduced into the course of initial flying train ing of all pilots. The number of pilots so far instructed was 122, and the number of aircraft equipped or being equipped for the work was 59. Tests on the Breda 33 THE advantages of the decimal system cannot be doubted, but one is somewhat tempted to look upon it with disfavour when, in working out conversions from metric to English to the accompaniment of numerous interruptions, the decimal point wanders off the paper! We need hardly draw attention to an obvious error, arising in this way, which crept into the paragraph published on page 164 of our issue of February 19 last, concerning Tests on the Breda 33, where it was stated that this machine could officially take a pay load of 8,850 lbs. This, of course, should have read 885 lbs.—will readers please note? Lead-Bronze Bearings IN connection with the summary of R. & M. No. 1424 published in THE AIRCRAFT ENGINEER last week, it will interest our readers to know that the lead-bronze bearings teferred to there are now being made in this country by the Napier and Rolls-Royce companies, largely as a result of research work on the subject carried out at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. PRINCE LEARNING TO FLY : Prince Lennart of Sweden is at present taking lessons in flying a " Puss Moth " at de Havilland's Hatfield aerodrome. He is here seen in front of the machine with his fiancee, Miss Karin Nissvandt. (FLIGHT Photo.) 198
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