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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 1357.PDF
MAY 20, 1937. FLIGHT. 511 WEATHER OR NO IT was some time since I had had an opportunity of seeing the "works" of transport flying in the worst possible weather condi tions, and when the opportunity occurred of making a trip in the control cabin of the D.H.86B, used by Wrightways on their early morn ing newspaper and freight service 10 Paris, I jumped at it for various good reasons. In the first place, minor changes are always being made in the technique of bad- weather radio operation, and this particular 86B is one of the most fully equipped machines in service at the present time in this country ; in the second place I was to fly with Mr. J. W. Duggan, who has had a long experience cf this particular service. With him, as it happened, was Mr. G. Brownrigg, who has also had a great deal of experience as a radio operator on the same service. They certainly work together in a way which suggests telepathy ; actually, it is merely the result of long experience. Although the weather was quite normally bad—we saw the ground for perhaps ten minutes or a quarter of an hour in all during the three-hour trip—there was never for a moment any suggestion of fuss or excitement such as is usually associated with the idea of long periods of instru ment flying. The 86B, in fact, flies itself very satisfac torily, and if both the pilot and the radio operator know exactly where they are all the time there should be no reason for panic or melodrama. This particular machine is fitted, so far as radio is concerned, with R.T.E. material, With the Early Morning Newspapers to Paris : Modern Methods for Modern Conditions : Some Thoughts on Safer Transport Flying By H. A. TAYLOR including normal two-way equip ment with the R.T.E. fixed-wave control panel, a rotating loop with homing indicator, and an ultra- short-wave receiver and indicator panel. Unfortunately for my curi osity, the machine had recently been modified and neither the loop nor the short-wave equipment was in proper working order ; in any case, Croydon's beacon had elected to fade out on the previous evening. Later, I shall have more to say about such matters. We were due to leave Croydon at 5.15 a.m., but a mail machine, in ward bound from Cologne, was due at any moment, and the start was delayed until we heard that this machine had, in fact, been advised to return until conditions improved. The weather report gave the visi bility at Croydon as 600 metres and the cloud height as 60 metres; elsewhere over here the visibility was nil, though at Beauvais it was given as 4 km. and at Le Bourget as 10 km., so we had nothing very much to worry about once we were across the Channel. Weather reports, are proverbially pessimistic in any case ; however, when the machine was coming through the cloud base near Paris this base was given at 1,200 m., while, in fact, our corrected altimeter reading was 100 m.—evidently the thick lower layer had not been noted! On the whole, the Continental met. people are generally considered to be slightly superior to our own. At 6.15 we took off (as an American pilot once said to his tired co-pilot, " Where did you get that ' we' stuff? "
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