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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0012.PDF
2 FLIGHT. JANUARY 7, 1937. The £100 Aeroplane O N the Correspondence page (p. 16) we publish a letter from a Flight reader who is typical of very large numbers of aviation enthusiasts to whom the absence of really cheap aeroplanes is a source of never-ending wonder. They very naturally look at the present-day cheap motor car, with its pressed- steel bodywork, its steel frame chassis which carries a great deal of relatively complicated mechanism such as engine, clutch, gear box, propeller-shaft, differential and so forth, and its comparative luxurious interior, complete with much "navigational" equipment, and thev ask themselves why it is that as soon as a man wants to get into the air, even on the simplest contraption of plywood and linen fabric, he has to paj" three or four times as much for the privilege. The question is quite natural. On the face of it, there is no reason why this state of affairs should persist. Goodness knows that plywood and fabric are cheap enough in all conscience. Then why, in the name of commonsense, should the putting together of these two materials always mean high cost? Our correspondent points out that an engine can now be bought for about £55, and asks why a small light airframe cannot be built for £45, and the whole outfit sold for £100. He forgets that, to begin with, the engine is cheap because it is a motor car engine manu factured in enormous numbers, of which a minute per centage are side tracked into the aviation industry. The cost of designing the engine, building the first lew ex perimental units, testing them, " getting the bugs out of them" and generally developing them to a stage of perfection good enough for car work, had, by the time it came to be used in light aeroplanes, been spread over thousands of units. With the airframe itself the position is that it has not been produced under similar conditions. If it had, it would probably, by now, have a metal monocoque fuselage, and wings of simple metal construction needing a minimum of riveting or other forms of assembly. There are but two ways in which a small aeroplane can be made very cheaply: either by being built by amateurs, who do not count the cost of the time they put into the work, or by being produced in quantities comparable with those in which motor cars are turned out. It was not until Mr. W. R. Morris (now Lord Nuffield) spent thousands in building large factories and equipping them with costly machinery that he was able to bring the price of his cars down to the level which made them famous. While cars are turned out in small quantities they must be comparatively expensive. Unless some wealthy person or company decides to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling in a factory and to produce thousands of aeroplanes by real mass-production methods, there is little chance of reduc ing the price to anything like the £100 level. And it would require a great deal of courage to do that. There is no sort of guarantee that the market would absorb these thousands of machines. For one thing, learning t«> iiy well is far more difficult, and takes much longer, than learning to drive a car, and the amount of utility service which can be got out of an aeroplane is far smaller than that which is expected and accepted without question from almost any sort of a car. So, all you enthusiasts, we are sure you see the point. Or don't you? THE MOUNT OF TEMPTATION : The wilderness of Jud*a, where once Elijah and John the Baptist lived the lives of hermits, is a grim and folding tract of country. In this picture three Harts pass lightly b? the traditS scene of the lemptation, but it is no place for the airman's ideal of " happy landings."
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