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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0071.PDF
JANUARY 14, 1937. FLIGHT. 25 The Outlooks Putting on the Screw T~) EADERS of that excellent French aviation journal, tK Les Ailes, will have noticed that for several weeks— in fact, for a couple of months—the leading articles have been signed "Interim" in place of the familiar " G. H." The first issue of the New Year gives the explana tion. The French Air Ministry has been trying to muzzle Les Ailes, and Monsieur Georges Houard, its Editor-in- Chief, "isn't having any." No, he has not been slung into the Bastille. Nothing quite so crude as that. But the French Air Minister objected to M. Houard's out spoken comments on the folly of a nationalised aircraft industry, and attempted to get the articles stopped, first by inviting Les Ailes, through a person highly placed in the French aeronautical industry, to break off the publica tion of the articles criticising the nationalisation, and secondly by direct intervention, instructing three industrial firms to cancel the advertising contract placed with the journal in connection with the Paris Aero Show. M. Houard points out that all this happened while he and his staff were in the middle of getting out their Paris Show numbers, and thus had their hands very full. In order not to give a false appearance of submitting to the French Air Ministry's high-handed action, M. Houard withdrew his signature from the journal until such time as he could explain the position to his readers. This he has now done, and British friends of Les Ailes, of whom there are many, will certainly feel that Georges Houar.i has come off better than the French Air Minister. Les Ailes has always impressed us as being scrupulously fair and unbiased, and it never fails to give full credit 11 British achievements when it considers such credit justi fied. That has not always been a popular policy in France, but it has increased the respect of British readers for the journal. They will now certainly applaud Georges Houard for his fight for the freedom of the Press. Automatic Landings "\JOW that the ultra-short-wave blind approach system / V has come to stay and that flying is being carried out, often at night, in much worse weather than was previously considered to be safe, the time appears to have come for a re-consideration of. the old "land ing stick " idea. For flying-boat operation, at least, some sort of semi-automatic landing device might save a num ber of minor and major mishaps. x ( The principle is simple enough—involving a trailing stick " which, on contact with the ground, would cause the control column to be eased back, or at least indicate contact to the pilot—but the actual details are less easy to visualise. Obviously, any servo-manufactured move ment would need to vary in intensity according to the speed of the machine, would not be permitted to continue unassisted after an altitude of level flight had been attained, and must be capable of being overridden bv the pilot. This was actually the case with the R.A.E. outfit. Last year a transport pilot told a member of our staff hat m very bad weather he occasionally used his trailing aerial to indicate the height of the machine over a stretch °t water which had to be covered on the wav into a certain airport. . Any pilot knows that it is possible to glide very flatly n. ° tne ground without damaging the machine and even, with careful attention to speed, without causing more than ree nr four gentle bounces—provided that the machine on /Ait has no very violent low-speed characteristics. The '' land ing stick " might eliminate all but one of the bounces and, if designed for the purpose, could be a comfort to the pilot during a blind approach. It is better to lose your landing stick '' and to damage a chimney pot (or carry away some telegraph wires) than to fly right into all the paraphernalia of'urban existence. A Question of Capacity / T is customary, in discussing the efficiency of aero engines, to compare them on a weight-power basis, but in these days this ratio gives little indication of the true worth of an engine, for small over-all dimensions are becoming more vital. Assessment in power-capacity terms is becoming increav ingly popular, and the perusal of a few figures for out put per litre can produce some severe jolts. For example, the new Renaults are generally taken as the finest examples of engines delivering high outputs for small swept volumes. Now, the special unit with widen it is proposed to recapture the world's landplane speed record is, admittedly, quite a brilliant achievement, devel oping, as it does, about 450 h.p. for a capacity of 8 litres, which works out at rather more than 56 h.p. per litre. Yet the power per litre taken from the Rolls-Royce " R" of 1931 was about 62 h.p., and from an ordinary Service type Napier Dagger III about 48 h.p., which latter figure is roughly double that for the inverted vee-twelve Renault being specified for certain French prototypes. As a matter of interest, the Merlin gives better than 39 h.p. per litre and the latest Pegasus about 34 h.p. The First Spin AW extremely interesting article on spinning, in the ^j January issue of the Journal of the R.Ae.S., raises the question about who was the first man to spin. The author, Mr. James B. Taylor, states that as far .is he knows, M. Pegoud (the famous French pilot who in troduced the loop and balf-bunt on a Bleriot monoplane at Brooklands in September-October, 1913) was the first to do a deliberate spin, and that the first pilot to carry out real experiments was Major F. W. Gooden, in 1916. Mr. Taylor may be (and probably is) right in crediting Pegoud with being the first to spin deliberately. He is held by many not to have actually been the first to loop, it being thought that a Russian pilot was the first to do so; incidentally incurring the strong displeasure of his superior officers thereby. Be that as it may, there is little doubt that the first involuntary spin was done by Lt. Parke, R.N., on an Avro biplane over Salisbury Plain during the Military Trials of 1912. At that time the word "spin " had not been applied to the manoeuvre, but there is no doubt that Parke's so- called "dive" was, in fact, a spin. Radio Rationalisation r O all who are interested in the regularity and safety of air services it has been obvious that the area control and radio system would eventually need to be rationalised. The system has worked well from the earliest days, but the appearance of new airports with their own radio stations has made the necessary co-ordination more and more difficult for control officers, radio operators, and pilots. As an example of the kind of difficulty that has to be faced, the case of Gatwick might be cited. This airport
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