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Aviation History
1936
1936 - 2281.PDF
d FLIGHT. AUGUST 20, 1935 TONS BY AIR The Amazing Work Done by Air Transport in New Guinea : Some of the Problems Involved : Why Certain Types are Preferred By BRUCE FOSTER, B.C.E., D.I.C. DURING 1935, eighteen million pounds of freight was carried by air in New Guinea. In figures it looks like this: — 18,000,000 lb. Or if it is tons which conveys the magnitude better, eight thousand is the figure, and thirty-six aeroplanes did the job, so they must have averaged some 220 tons apiece. Two hundred and twenty tons of cars, cows, hydraulic dredges, pipelines, and—gold. That is what all the fuss is about. All this activity in aerial transport is merely to obtain gold from the ground. Gold, which, refined, will, except for the little in our teeth and fountain-pen nibs, be secure and untouched in the vaults of the banks, whence it will no doubt cause to be emanated that magic aura which allows us to handle our few pound notes without losing confidence therein. There are several air transport companies operating in the gold country of north-east New Guinea, and of these Guinea Airways is probably the best known. Their head quarters are at Lae, and they operate to all the well-known places, such as Wau, Buolo, Salamana, and to all the lesser-known places as well. The company transports just anything by air so long as it can be got into an aeroplane. A person in the interior has a new motor car sent from Sydney by ship to Lae; it is then loaded, com- Bovine airmindedness : Un loading a bull and a cow from one of the G.31S at Wau aerodrome. The ad vantages of low- wing all-metal con struction are made quite obvious. Half a ton or so : This photograph gives an idea of the method used for stowin« freight in one of the G.A. Junkers it is actually being loaded at Lae for transport to the Bulolo goldfields. The size of the loading hatch is noteworthy. plete, into an aeroplane for transport over the 10,000 ft. mountains. Most cars will just go down through the Junkers' hatch when laid on their side, but the Ford is just too big, and it is necessary to separ ate the chassis and body for loading. Lae aerodrome, being on the coast, is at sea-level, but Mt. Hazen is at 6,500 ft., and is the highest aerodrome used. The condition of aerodromes and landing grounds varies from very good to very bad. Many of them are on steep grades —1 in 4 is the worst!—and frequently only consist of a narrow strip of ground on which the grass may have been cut down —or it may not. Ramu, at an altitude of 4,000 ft., has a runway only 50 yards wide and 370 yards long (a Junkers carry ing one ton can be landed on this, but 400 lb. is the maximum load for take-off). The pilots must land on strips such as these with heavily loaded machines in, perhaps, a cross-wind of 25 m.p.h., and on most aerodromes the difficulties of land ing are increased by the fact that Nature only allows one try. On some of the aerodromes the pilots have to disregard wind direction entirely and always land uphill, even though this may be downwind. Guinea Airways has a staff of eleven pilots. The total white staff is ninety, and 250 natives are employed. The pilots average about 900 hours per year each, and they are all 5,000-hour men. Flying is very seriously inter fered with by rain in the wet season from July to Novem ber. Wet aerodromes make landings dangerous, and excessive cloud in the mountains forces pilots back ; for Guinea Airways discourages blind-flying by its pilots. There are very good reasons for this, for to vanquish the high mountains with a heavily loaded machine it is sometimes necessary to use the passes, and one does not navigate mountain passes with blind-flying instruments, particu larly passes which are so narrow that one cannot turn back after entering them. The alterna tive of going right over the clouds may be impossible as they may extend up to 19,000 ft., which is higher than the ceiling of most of the fully loaded machines. The
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