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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 0826.PDF
828 FLIGHT. AUGUST 16, 1934. have a first-class or a second-class aerodrome. The pro- posed body might draw up a plan, c.nd then could give an assurance that a certain town was on that plan, but what would that assurance be worth? Natural develop- ment might easily falsify the hopes raised by that plan, and we believe that it is to natural develop- ment that we must look if ever our inland airways are to be a success. That more ground facilities in the way of wireless and meteorological information are badly needed we agree ; but that doss not prove the need of a new body to pro- vide and administer them. Special funds at the disposal of the Civil Aviation Directorate of the Air Ministry could accomplish all that is needed without the compli- cation of new machinery and consequent new expense. The attitude of the London Chamber of Commerce seems to be, " Any plan is better than no plan. Here is one." A City of London MonsterT HE Loch Ness Monster has kept us interested most of the summer, but with the departure of the guns for the moors we must expect the giant gooseberry and the central London aerodrome once more to raise their heads. We have not been disappointed; a news agency has inform sS us that the City of London is busy with schemes for erecting an aerodrome in the neighbourhood of London Bridge which is to be 200 feet high and is to cost some £5,000,000. So shall most of the 40 minutes road journey from Croydon to London be saved. Everyone agrees that this 40 minutes on the road is too high a proportion of the travel time of an air journey; but is the central ele.vated aerodrome the best solution? Before long we shall see 50-seater and 100- seater aeroplanes constantly coming in to the London aerodrome (wherever it may be) with all seats filled. Are these monsters to land on the central London struc- ture, or are they to come down at Croydon, or else- where, and send their passengers in by autogiro? Or, as a third possibility, are all passenger aircraft to have rotating wings? We cannot visualise the large fixed- wing aeroplanes of the near future landing on the structure, and, if all the passengers have to be trans- ferred to autogiros, we may well wonder how much of that 40 minutes is actually going to be saved, and at what cost. We wonder also what is to happen in fog. Even with the best conceivable devices, groping one's way among the chimneys of London and landing on a sort of roof which must allow far less margin of error than is allowed at Croydon is hardly an attractive prospect. When we are invited to look ahead, as this scheme does invite us, we wonder whether the solution of ths problem may not be found in an amphibian autogiro. It has been decided that the landing of ordinary sea- planes on the Thames would cause undue interference with river traffic ; but the capabilities of an amphibian autogiro might perhaps lead to a reconsideration of that suggestion. Such aircraft would certainly not ask for much water room when landing, though they might require rather more when taking off before they "un- stuck." The idea is at the least attractive, and we think that the fathers of the City of London would do well to indulge in a little speculation as to the future before they launched into a five million pound scheme of the nature discussed above. Taking the suggestion a little more seriously, there are probably no insuperable technical difficulties, but in hard £ s. d. what would the landing fees have to be in order to pay the interest on the capital outlay? There will obviously be a limit on the number of air- craft which can be landed and taken off in a given period of time, and the revenue will have to come partly from that source. THE FIGHTING " PTERODACTYL " : Probably never before has a military type of aeroplanebeen produced in which a crew of two has been given such unrestricted fighting view and field of fire as in the new Westland-Hill " Pterodactyl V." This two-seater fighter is fitted with theRolls-Royce steam - cooled " Goshawk " engine of 600 h.p. or so, and should be a formidable opponent from a performance and a fighting point of view.
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