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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 1513.PDF
MAY 26, 1938. FLIGHT. 517 COMMERCIAL AVIATION MID-WING : The New AmericanBennett monoplane, which may be considered as a small transport orluxury private-owner type, is interest- ing particularly because it is of mid-wing design and because it is of all wood construction. The engines ofthe prototype are Jacobs with Hamilton controllables, and the engine cowlingsare unique in that there is no obvious gap between them and the nacelles.After its first test flight this machine was landed on its belly without struc-tural damage. THE WEEK AT CROYDON "A. Viator's" Weekly Causerie on Transport Affairs at London's Terminal and Elsewhere GREAT fun is expected to be obtained by all out ofThe Highways Development Survey recently issuedby the Stationery Office. Even Croydon Airport is promised a direct motor road which will reduce the time between the Metropolis and the Airport to twenty minutes. It depends, of course, on what you mean by the Metro- polis, for before now coach travellers, within sound of Bow bells, road drills, cement mixers and other urban noises, have thought themselves in London, as indeed they actually were. It is always better to travel hopefully by road than to arrive, but it's not much fun being within three minutes of your London terminus and then sitting in a traffic jam whilst your hair slowly whitens and the girl (for whom you new across at such speed) gets a job as a stewardess on a ship, does three trips round the world and finally marries the first mate. Perhaps things will improve when the new road is ready, but the scheme is a thirty-year one, and if Works and Buildings have any say in the matter Croydon will only come up for consideration at the end of the twenty-ninth year, just when they are appointing a committee to enquire why the whole scheme is twenty years behind schedule. The Committee will naturally be warned against pre- cipitate decisions and there we shall be for another twenty years or so. Anyone of my age at Croydon will feel about as optimistic of seeing the thing through as a recruit, enlisting in the Hundred Years' War for the duration, must have felt about attending peace celebrations and drawing his pension afterwards. Average Speeds Still, don't let me discourage you. The Survey says that a twenty-minute road journey will increase the average speed of air liners between London and Paris from 160 to 200 m.p.h. It would be difficult to increase the average speed of some air liners which stand still or have a faintly perceptible retrograde movement when confronted with a really hearty breeze. Three travellers, one an American millionaire, came along to OUey Air Service during last w*eek and said they sort of wanted to spend a month flying around Europe. After placing themselves in Olley's hands they quit worry- ing and bought large supplies of chew gum and post cards, whilst Capt. Midgeley, their pilot, worked out an itinerary for them. When they saw it, all they said was, "Let's go," and went. North Eastern Airways have found the London-Glasgow line remarkably good since the Exhibition has been on. They have just taken on a fifth Rapide and have, as well, four Couriers and two Envoys. On Saturday fifteen members of the French police force came over, by Imperial Airways curiously enough, to visit Scotland Yard and study British police methods—which probably would not do in France, anyway. Perhaps this highly suspicious movement of troops was responsible for the extraordinary week-end legislation which suddenly required travellers to a certain country to obtain all sorts of passport visas and so forth. So sudden was this that if we had done anything of the sort it would have been called a panic measure. Anyway, it literally caught some travellers " in the air." When they left here nobody knew anything about it, but when they arrived at their destination or halted in the country concerned on their way through they found that they had infringed this brand new regulation. So good for a country's tourist traffic and so encouraging to business visitors, don't you think? Another so helpful thing about a week-end stunt of this nature is that it is done when the Embassy concerned with the issue of all this rubber stampery is firmly closed for business purposes. I'm told that the balloon barrage is to be on show on Empire Air Day at Cardington. Air line pilots might be well advised to go and have a good look at it, so that they will know what they are tangled up with when they meet bits of it floating free and dragging thousands of feet of steel cable. I must say, though, that the Cardington Bo- peep Corps has kept its flock in fairly good order recently. The Auxiliary Air Force machine which recently landed at Biggin Hill in error for Kenley and was reported missing, has created some uneasiness in lay minds. The pilot and passenger apparently never knew which aerodrome they had put in at, until informed hours and hours later by the B.B.C. People are asking whether air line pilots don't do the same thing. The answer is, of course, that some confusion might arise any time between, say, Prague and Peebles, Aberdeen and Amsterdam, Hanover and Hooton or Zlin and Zetland. Passengers, forty, of them, might wake up next morning in their hotel and flatly refuse to believe the waiter, despite his native birth, when he assured them that this was not Berlin but definitely Bootle. . Sab-ArcticA PRIVATE company has been founded at Akureyri, in Ice- land, to operate an airline between that city and the capi- tal, Reykjavik. The company has purchased a four-se,ater Waco floatplane, and it is understood that the Government will send a sufficient portion of inland mail over this route to make the service pay. Well-intentioned Advice FOLLOWING a Notice dealing with different conditions inwhich violent air disturbances are found, the Air Ministry has continued the good work by publishing a Notice to Airmen,explaining the need for great care in the setting and reading of altimeters. It is suggested that they should always be adjustedto give heights above sea level except, of course, when an approach is being made into an aerodrome. Then the altimeterwould naturally be set to the barometric pressure prevailing. The Notice suggests a complete procedure which should bea useful guide at least to those pilots who are comparatively new to the business of transport flying. The suggestions arefollowed by an example involving a flight from Renfrew to Gravesend using altimeters both with and without pressurescales.
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