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Aviation History
1935
1935 - 0856.PDF
4io FLIGHT. APRIL 18, 1935. supervision and inspection, if this should be deemed essential, and the only doubtful part would be the assembly. With carefully written instructions this risk should be very small. Incidentally, it is interesting to learn that the French Air Ministry has officially granted permission for Pous to be flown at recognised aero dromes when the ordinary traffic is not such as to cause any risk of mutual interference. So far the machine may not, apparently, be flown across country, not having a C. of A., but it is hoped that if the many examples now being built prove to be reasonably safe in the hands of amateurs, cross-country licences will be granted in the future. Labelled 1/tfITH some hesitation we venture a suggestion—- y y probably not so nOvel as we imagine—to those air craft manufacturers and operators who are setting themselves out to entertain and instruct the general public on Empire Air Day. While the question-asking proclivities of the schoolboy are proverbial, the timidity of his father, who would like to ask questions but daren't, is less universally recognised. Many people will go unsatisfied on a technical point which interests them simply because they lack the courage to say "that thing there" to their expert guide. Thus the obvious idea is to put your best aeroplane in a prominent place and hang it all over with cards and arrows saying exactly what every major component is called and what it does, and why. • '. The only risk would be that some people's machines might afterwards be put into service without the decora tions being removed, since they would look so much like part of the design. The Flying Slotsman ]~)IG things sometimes have very small beginnings. Is |j the Pou-du-Ciel such a beginning? The ques tion is prompted not so much by the way the " i\ew Aviation" (l'Aviation Nouvelle) is spreading in France, but by the appearance in the latest issue of the Handley Page Bulletin of an artist's impression of a " medium-size air liner" constructed on M. Henri Mignet's principle. The drawings are too good to miss, and they are repro duced below. Putting the engines on the rear wing would make for ,\ quiet cabin, but one wonders whether the statement made, i.e., that the Pou-du-Ciel is " nothing more nor less than a large-size Handley Page siot," would hold good with this spacing of the wing. It is interesting to see that the front wing is provided with a leading edge slot. Per haps the artist himself was a little doubtful of the slot effect obtained from his particular wing arrangement. If the. super-efficiency of the Mignet arrangement discovered at St. Cyr, as recorded in Flight last week, is actually proved to exist, and can be combined with the clean design of the Handlev Page Pou, aviation subsidies should soon become superfluous! What the'Handley Page com- pany thinks of the Mignet Pou-du-Ciel idea is indi cated by the following sentence from the Bulletin: Whether all these probabilities • will be realised and in what degree remains to be seen ; but it is already pos sible to say positively that the Flying Slot is one of the most interesting aeronautical conceptions of recent years. The truth sinks in but slowly. The first description ot the Pou-du-Ciel in the English language was published in Flight as long ago as September 20, 1934. What 13 more to the point is that if the Mignet wing arrangement is indeed a Flying Slot, does it infringe Mr. Handley Page's patents, and if so, what does he intend to do about it? Heavy royalties imposed on amateur-constructed Pons would be a real hardship. Airship Safety r O suffer one mild accident in some six hundred thousand miles is not a bad record, and the recent mishap to the Graf Zeppelin actually helps to prove the safety of the airship when in really capable hands. If a high-speed long-distance aeroplane had, through an error of judgment, touched a house while making a second landing circuit, the result would probably have been a complete catastrophe, and if structural failure had occurred in a large aeroplane, such as that which brought the Macon down into the Pacific, the result would have been equally catastrophic. The fact that a lighter-than-air machine can be difficult when on the airborne borderline is no more a reason for damning the type than the fact that an aeroplane is tricky near the stall can be a reason for refusing to build any more aeroplanes. Only the German crews have had a chance of becoming as experienced with this particular craft as the average airline pilot is with his machine, and the whole secret of rigid airship success lies in the degree of experience possessed by the commander and his crew. What shipping company would dare to entrust a new luxury liner to a captain who had been on shore for the past five years or more? - Air Route "Records" r HE glut of air route "records" made with the help of generous following or beam winds has had at least one good result—the lay Press has seen fit to give the air lines a little useful publicity. Unfortunately, the prospective air traveller may expect to travel habitually to Paris or to Rotterdam at this sort of speed, and will consequently clamour for higher cruising speeds, obtain able at great cost to all concerned. Nobody gave the times in the reverse direction. On the other hand, the French Government has made a good start with the first of their " Comets,", which are, one understands, to be put on the South American route. We do not often have the chance of showing the world that we can build commercial machines that are every bit as fast and much more economical than many boosted American designs. An overgrown Pou-du^Ciel—the drawings discussed in the column aoov«.
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