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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 2013.PDF
JULY 14, 1938. FLIGHT. 39 PRIVATE mm& Topics of the Day Bad Names O N several occasions I have alluded, perhaps wrath- fully, to the considerable conservatism of so many pilots, and of a few instructors in particular. At the same time I have given this peculiar state of affairs the blame for the fact that many aeroplanes have so easily been given bad names. Everybody remembers how gossip was built up, for instance, around the tapered Hornet, and it would not be difficult to think of two or three other machines of the same class which have been damned—if not without reason at least without fair reason. The latest victim is the Miles Magister. First we were told that it couldn't be recovered from a spin, and now we are told that one of its little ways is to "get fixed in an uncontrollable spiral dive." In order that there shall be no suggestion of bias, let two things be admitted straight away. The Magister is not similar in its characteristics to the erstwhile conventional trainer, and there is no reason why it should be. Sooner or later the pupils trained at Reserve schools will probably be expected to fly low-wing machines in which similar characteristics will be found. In fact, there is hardly a single new type going into service which is not a canti lever monoplane. If we are to be sentimental about a pupil's training difficulties, then we should logically be equally sentimental about his later difficulties with weapons like Hurricanes and Spitfires. The second point is that the Magister has not been with out fault. In its original form it could, in a certain very particular condition of loading, be stable in a spin. The loading condition was, however, very critical indeed, and was only discovered at Martlesham after the type had gone into production. Certain modifications were immediately made to the tail, which effectively cured the trouble. Now, after this spiral dive business, a change is, I believe, to be made in the rudder design. And if anyone wishes to throw a stone may I say that glasshouses are very, very brittle? Personal Experience AFTER no more than an hour's flying in the Magister I • was certainly not in a position, before last week, to say that this diving business was all nonsense, though in the course of that hour I had carried out most of the manoeuvres (without noticing anything in particular) which were supposed to bring this trouble in their train. More recently, filled with curiosity, primed with the facts and fortified with the moral support of a parachute and of Fit. Lt. Moir, the chief instructor at the P. and P. Reserve School, I went up in a Magister to try to simulate the conditions in which this alleged-to-be-stable diving characteristic becomes apparent. By the simple means of forgetting everything that I had been taught, the effect could certainly be reproduced, though its correction was so natural and obvious that I had the greatest possible psychological difficulty in letting the affair develop. The reason for the peculiarity, if such it can be called, is simple enough. With the engine off, the machine develops, like many others, a natural turn to the left which is, in the ordinary way, automatically corrected by light pressure on the right pedal. If one's feet are entirely removed from the rudder bar while the machine is gliding, the turn starts, some bank is built up> the effect of the rudder bias depresses the nose a little, and any attempt to pull the nose up merely tightens the turn, so that eventually the machine is flying in a steep spiral dive. The greater the backward pressure on the stick the steeper the spiral—an obvious effect of control use and the simple cause of quite a lot of the trouble which is experienced when flying under the hood in any machine. At any point during this steady building-up of gliding turn, opposite rudder is the corrective—and a perfectly natural one until, perhaps, the angle is so steep and the speed so high that recovery is not thought of in terms of rudder at all, but only in those of a wild endeavour to pull the nose up by means of the elevators, which are them selves making the turn. Surely when a machine is making a gliding turn to the left one's natural control movements for a return to level flight are right rudder and right stick. The effect can very easily be reproduced in any aeroplane simply by holding a little left rudder (or using the rudder bias gear, if fitted) during the glide and endeavouring to correct the steadily increasing turn and bank by the use of the elevator. 1 tried it myself a day or two later in another machine, and though the nose could, with difficulty, be brought up, the result was a full stall. Opposite aileron would stop the turn in this case—as it will in the Magister if you care to risk the spin-providing effect of aileron drag. But nobody would think of correcting a steep gliding turn by such measures alone unless the rudder was out of action. Primary Training STATED in so many words the whole thing may appear to be complicated, difficult and (still) even dangerous. But the correction is so natural and obvious that to describe the sequence of cause and effect is rather like starting to write a handbook on primary training for pilots. Curiously enough, I found the effect most difficult to reproduce after the very manoeuvres, spins and loops, which appear to have caused most of the trouble. Prob ably the fact that it was necessary to concentrate to some slight extent on such manoeuvres and, in particular, on the business of keeping the machine perfectly straight both during the loop and after the spin, made it difficult to remember to do the wrong thing—which is to stop making use of the rudder altogether. In the course of our bad flying exhibition the machine was forced down in a really steep dive while the rudder was left to itself. Even at an air speed of 180-200 m.p.h. the amount of rudder correction to stop the turning motion was very small and the pressure required only what might have been expected. If the spiral dive in its slowly reached later stages can be considered panic-making and strange to the novice pilot, the fact remains that the turn should, with normal flying training, never have been allowed to develop. I do not remember ever having been told that gliding turns could or should be stopped or reversed without the use of a reasonable amount of opposite rudder, if only to counteract the effects of plain aileron drag. The com bined rudder and stick movement are taught in the first hour of dual flying life, and later on the synchronised move ments are as instinctive as .those involved in riding a bicycle. INDICATOR,
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