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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0544.PDF
206 FLIGHT. MARCH 4, 1^7. Not the airport of the future which our contributor visual ises, but one which is rapidly be coming actual fact—the new Le Bourget, the terminal building of which is nearing completion. AIRPORT TRENDS Will the Passenger Aerodrome of the Future Have Uni-directional Landing Betzveen Air Screens " ? By GRAHAM DAWBARN THE repetition of detailed requirements for airpcrts can become tedious. Detailed particulars as to obstruction angles, landing ground dimensions, gradients, heights of hangar doors, functions and arrangements of rooms in a terminal building; the exact furnishing of a control tower ; lists of medical requirements, and so on, taken from the last edition of pamphlet 55 ; all these and more have so often been analysed. With, I hope, the indulgence of the Editor I have shirked my mission and give no facts at all. I do give one idea. I hope it will be provocative. The future of the air is on the ground. This has, no doubt, been said many times before. Air development has reached a stage when it cannot be twisted into a joke. Aircraft can now be designed to cross any ocean; to give practical guarantee against failure; and to cruise at a speed which, given ground organisation, would bring any two points of the world within three days of each other. It will overcome all danger of ice formation; it will fly satisfactorily at all normal altitudes; its size, comfort, speed and quiet will still further improve; its fuel and engines will give ever increas ing efficiency. Into the Future The vital problems of the future lie on the ground. The first is control, the second is the certainty of all-weather operation —or, more precisely, all-weather landings. Both problems have to a limited extent been already tackled. In each case a partial solution is apparent. The air is used for numerous purposes. For private flying, for joy rides, for survey work, for archseology, exploration, spraying crops, for the study of animal life, for forest preser vation and fire-fighting, and for the transportation of pas sengers and freight. In like manner the sea has been used for private sailing, for "joy" cruises, for exploration, cable laying, for fishing, and for the transportation of passengers and freight. The most important of these is the last. So will it be in the air. I anticipate the time not far distant when the air will be almost entirely reserved for the professional air pilot and his crew, who will carry out the serious and regular duties of conveying passengers and goods—but primarily passengers— from one point of the earth's surface to another. No aircraft will start on any journey without full and exact knowledge of the precise route on which it will travel. So far as space is concerned there is no true parallel to the air. The best comparison is the sea. The road is the worst; any comparison between air and road is useless and vicious. For space compare air and sea; for time (or "journey units") compare air and rail. The suburban rail journey occupies half an hour; the short rail journey two hours, the longer rail journey four hours, and the night journey ten to twelve hours. The rail journeys across Canada or the United States of America take four days. ' The "suburban" air journey occupying half an hour will take you 100 miles; from London, the "short" journey of two hours will take you to Hanover, Frankfurt, Lyons or Bordeaux; the "longer" journey of four hours to Stockholm, Vienna, Rome or Majorca and the night journey to Baku on the Caspian Sea, to Egypt, pretty well to the Gold Coast, or across the Atlantic. Accommodation in the air will be similar to the accom modation given in the corresponding "time category" in railway trains. Aircraft may normally carry up to 200 pas sengers and weigh up to 200 or 300 tons—approaching the weight of a main-line express train. Now what of airport requirements ? The original demands of the Air Ministry were for "all- way " fields. Runs in all directions of 800 yards were considered superlative. • The layman constantly foresaw smaller fields— the expert foresaw and demanded larger ones. "All direc tions" became "eight directions," and 800 yards became 1,000 yards. In theory, however, the landing ground still re mained a disc. A disc with hunks cut out of it, perhaps, but still a disc. The Fog Influence Then came the epoch-making idea:'fog landing. The Air Ministry had to formulate some requirements so it formulated one run 1.300 yards long by first 600 yards, and shortly after wards 400 yards wide. The disc became an ellipse. It be came in actual fact all sorts of curious shapes, but the proper theoretical shape was, and is, an ellipse. The logical outcome of this move is for aircraft to tend to land and take-off along the main axis in fog, snow, heavy rain, low cloud and in still or fairly still weather. In fact, to land and take-off along the main axis under all conditions except definite cross-wind. . But airports must still be laid out to cater for multi-direc- tional landings. The same old bugbear exists against tidy and economical planning. It is humanly impossible to design an zone an airport complete with traffic centre which can flea with perfect efficiency witli traffic arriving or departing at any instant from or to anv point of the compass. 'What is the final answer? It is a uni-directional lanciing coupled with—if I may coin an ugly word— the " breaf~air\ At the end of its "journey the ocean liner passes throUS breakwaters into harbour where, untroubled by storms a currents, it moves ponderousiv, but with delicate assurance
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