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Aviation History
1936
1936 - 1048.PDF
ArRiL 23, 1936. - FLIGHT. 437 And this is merely one airport, hand- line in one day about as many passen gers as Victoria Station handles in ten minutes, and it requires 600 square miles of close control over competent professional pilots. There are only jo.ooo square miles in the whole popu lous area of England. You need only sixty-seven airports and the whole country is involved in similar condi tions. Obviously, the position will improve —technically. It has got to, if com mercial aviation is ever to establish itself as a reliable form of all-weather transport. On the other hand, as relia bility improves, so will traffic increase. We can foresee, therefore, a day when blind approach and landing are both possible and safe, but we must also foresee a day when, in order to maintain the normal flow of traffic in and out of a great airport without dislocation, the airway discipline under Q.B.I, con ditions will have to be far more rigorous than it is. Air craft will have to maintain height levels to far finer mar gins—say, 200 feet—and, on reaching a vertically funnel- shaped zone over their destination, to lose height in a pre scribed manner with unfaltering precision. Five minutes' grace may perhaps be permitted for a blind, as against a visual, approach and landing. The thing can be done and will be done, but how ? By the perfection of instruments we can already foresee, by the training of pilots to use them, by a highly skilled ground staff, and by constant, daily co-operation between the former and the latter. Rail and Sea Parallels And whatever may be the accuracy of the instruments and the skill of the personnel, we may be perfectly sure from what we know of other forms of organised transport that their effective value in practice will be about doubled by that last factor of habitual co-operation. Your amateur, therefore, even though a fine natural pilot and a radio enthusiast as well, will never be able to reach a factor of more than 50 per cent, of the prevailing effici ency on a busy airway. Take a man of reasonably quick intelligence, give him a six weeks' course in the theory and practice of block-signalling, and then put him in a main-line cabin on a Bank Holiday. Could he hope to equal the gentleman who left school at fourteen but has been signalling for twenty-five years? If you were master of a ship, making a port at night with a nasty cross-tide running, would you rather have to help you a senior wrangler, who knows all there is to know about navigation, °r a young man who has been at sea for eight years and can take three bearings, slip into the chartroom, plot them and give you a " fix "—all in the space of about two minutes? And how many amateurs, anyhow, are w*W &om8 to be fine natural pilots and radio enthusiasts? \e have no right to expect an aeroplane to become a fool proof vehicle. Even when it can land with no forward sPeed, it will still be a vehicle in which a fool can do an immoderate amount of murder. Neither can we expect 'nstrumcnts to become foolproof. However wonderful " , . . a foolproof blind-flying set, a foolproof two-way radio set, and somebody's ' Nonpareil ' radiaura installation consisting of eighty valves and about fifty armatures and whatnots ..." they may be, they will require reading and co-ordinating. The air-line pilot to day, by habit and practice sits happily in his seat confronted by an array of dials that would turn you or me dizzy. At the opposite end of the scale you have the young woman who had been flying behind a Gipsy Major engine for six months and force-landed one day in a panic because her oil-pressure gauge read " 40 " ; there will always be such people, and the more "popular" fly ing becomes, the more of them there will be. It may be argued that Q.B.I, condi tions are not always with us. True, but first they descend upon us without warning, and second we must remem ber that the faster the speed of aircraft the higher will be the standard of mini mum visibility required for uncontrolled movement. Machines at 210 m.p.h. will approach each other at the rate oi seven miles a minute, which on the existing Q.B.I, standard of 1,000 yards would give their respective pilots five seconds in which to become aware of each other (they might be looking at a petrol gauge!), to size up angles of approach, decide what to do and get their machines to do it—of course, without sideslipping the passengers' lunch into their laps. The " radiaura " will no doubt solve this little problem for you, but you observe that every problem requires yet another instrument and someone to keep that instrument in working order. The more complete our conquest oi the air, the more expensive it seems to become. By the time every aeroplane has, as a matter of course, a fool proof blind-flying set, a foolproof two-way radio set, somebody's "Nonpareil" radiaura installation, consisting of eighty valves and about fifty armatures and whatnots, and finally a whole spare engine and propeller thrown in for luck, the advent of cheap "popular" flying will be as far off as ever. Wanted—Loiv Minimum. Speeds Or so it would seem. However, my own personal view, for what it is worth, is that this approach to the problem is somewhat unreal, because I just don't believe that the man in the street will ever be found indulging in blind flying, super-cloud navigation and instrument landings. He just won't be bothered to study and keep abreast of the intricate regulations of the " Airway Code," and the various technical examinations, W/T licences, etc., that he will have to pass will seem to him far too much like work, and in most cases also beyond his competence. He will not get into the air in any numbers until he can fly in safety with one foot on the ground. When Mr. Cierva or somebody else gives him a cheap aeroplane with a speed range from 15 to 100 m.p.h. and a water-cooled motor, he will use it. In dirty weather he will fly low and he will fly slow. He will never hit an air liner because it will not be there for him to hit. His navigation will he mostly of the map-reading variety and, incidentally, his map will be plastered with "airport Zones" into which his entry will be strictly forbidden. Adding to Air Hire ET another machine, a D.II. Hornet Moth of the 1936 squart-tipped order, has been added to Air Hire's fleet, * now numbers six. The Hornet will be hired at a rate a day, including insurance cover, or at £4 4s. for Y «'hich ^lS°! three>ys or more. pan . einally, it may not be generally known that this com- or nnt'S |'rePared to hire any machine, whether on their fleet interest' r '°n^ Pe"0(is at special rates. Several firms are allows tl"" themselves quite seriously in this proposition, which -m to gauge the value of aircraft ownership. Mr. W. H. Mace Joins British Marine Aircraft I T is announced that Mr. W. H. Mace has joined the Board of Britisn Marine Aircraft, Ltd., as works director, and will be in charge of the new works now being creeled at Hamble, Southampton. Mr. Mace nas iieen for many years works manager of Hawker Aircraft, Ltd. Previously he was a member of the A.I.D., Air Ministry. His wide experience, especially in metal construction, should be of the utmost value in the production of the British Sikorsky S 42-A.
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