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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 2093.PDF
JULY 21, I938- FLIGHT. 65 COMMERCIAL AVIATION (CONTINUED) : WORLD NEWS Russian Reopening LAST Monday the Moscow Air Express, which was operated intermittently and experimentally during .last season, was reopened. This service, which permits a two-day connection from London, is flown jointly between Stockholm, Riga, Velikije, Luki and Moscow by A.B. Aero-transport and Aero- fiot on weekdays in each direction. A.B.A. are using Junkers Ju 52s and Aeroflot are using a Douglas D.C.3. The service will run until October 15. Holland's New Civil Airport SOME weeks ago we published an unconfirmed report to the effect that, much to the Amsterdam Municipality's annoy ance, the Netherlands Government was to take over Schiphol and to lay out a new civil aerodrome. It appears that the plans for the new airport are, in fact, going through at a cost of about £1,700,000. The reasons are given as strategic. The new airport will lie within a few miles of the town of Leyderi. An Italian Disaster ON July 14 an Ala Littoria .flying-boat on the Rome-Sardinia service was lost about ninety miles from the Sardinian coast. In all twenty persons, including the crew of four, lost their lives, among the passengers being two sisters and a niece of General Valle, the Italian Under-Secretary of State for Air. The machine left Cagliari at 7.30 a.m. in the ordinary way, and the only present clue to the cause of the accident is that there was a heavy mist over the sea in the particular area at the time. The wreckage has, however, been recovered. K.L.M. Too MR. A. PLESMAN, the managing director of K.L.M., paid special tribute to the work of Imperial Airways and Qantas Empire Airways in a little speech which he made at the party given last Friday evening at the Dorchester to cele brate the arrival of the first Netherlands service from Australia. He also looked rather far into the future and said that the present eight-day schedule of K.L.M. and K.N.I.L.M. would, in three years' time, be reduced to three days—which, he ex plained, would be no more remarkable a reduction of travelling time than that which has been made during the last three years. If the present fleet used were flown continuously night and day this three-day schedule could even now be maintained. The machines, however, were not arranged with night accom modation for passengers and they would have to wait for larger machines (presumably the D.C.4 or big Boeing), with pressure cabins for high-altitude flying, before the three-day schedule could become a regular one. At present, also, not all the airports on the route were suitably equipped. Speaking of the British and Australian companies, Mr. Plesman said that they looked forward to a great future under the guidance of Sir John Reith and Mr. Hudson Fysh, and spoke of the all-up Air Mail Scheme as a colossal undertaking. At the Dorchester party the guests were given copies of Australian newspapers with illustrations both of the arrival of the first .Empire boat through service at Sydney and its depar ture from Southampton—the latter taken out by K.L.M.! H.E. the Netherlands Minister was there to receive important Australian guests. The Imperial Ballot R EPLYING to questions in the House last week, Capt. Bal four said that the results of the ballot taken by the Im perial Airways staff concerning the representation to be used showed a preference on the part of both the captains and the first officers for representation by the British Air Line Pilots Association. Among the captains twenty-one voted for a domestic com mittee and thirty-eight for B.A.L.P.A., while the first officers' section figures were ninety-one in favour of B.A.L.P.A. and four in favour of a domestic committee. Automatic Position-finding AN American transport pilot, Mr. H. Stark, who was re sponsible for the previously described airport orientator, has developed a position-finder, for use with radio beacons, which is of suitable size for convenient use by a pilot in the air. This instrument, which superficially resembles the old type of C.D.C., has three movable transparent discs in the frame, the uppermost disc carrying a replacement map show ing the position of the different beacons. This map is orien tated to the compass course being flown and bearings from two beacons or broadcast stations are then transferred to the other discs, which are marked with parallel lines, to give an intersection position which, it is claimed, is within five miles of the true one. Such an instrument in a simplified form should be useful to European transport pilots now that the authorities are going ahead with the idea of providing permanently operated omni-directional beacons working on the same frequency. The first three to go into action are those at Mitcham, Schiphol and Le Bourget. Composite Test AFTER a fuel consumption test flight of 2,040 miles last Thursday between Southampton and Foynes, out over the Atlantic, and over the South of England, Mercury, the upper unit of the Short-Mayo composite, returned to South ampton after being in the air for nearly twelve hours. The separation was made some time after 7 a.m. and the pilot, Capt. D. C. T. Bennett, who will make the first Atlantic flight in the machine, was accompanied by an Air Ministry observer and by the radio operator, Mr. A. J. Coster, who will be with him on the Atlantic flight. Tests, mainly on short-wave, were made with the Foynes station and with that at Bptwood, Newfoundland, while the machine was out over the Atlantic. Weather permitting, the machine was due to make the Atlantic crossing during last night and to-day (Thursday), and she was expected to be carrying half-a-ton of genuine freight in the way of news leels, photographs and papers. Incidentally, the engines which were substituted a few weeks ago for the Napier Rapier Vs in Mercury are of the series VI type, which are moderately, instead of fully, supercharged. The series VI engine is rated at 355/37° h-P- at 3.500 r.p.m. and 4,750ft., the maximum output being 380/395 h.p. at 4,000 r.p.m. and 6,000ft. Performance at moderate altitudes should be very considerably improved. COMMERCIAL CURTISS : A new thirty-passen ger monoplane is being built by the Curtiss Company, who presumably have had enough of seeing Douglas and Lockheed have everything their own way. This sketch shows the lay-out, particularly the fine shape of the fuselage.
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