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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 2220.PDF
</ FLIGHT AUGUST 4, 1938. HERE and THERE (CONTINUED) A TWIN-ENGINED ALTAIR : Yes, really. The power plant (as may be seen in the photograph on the right) consists of two inverted Menascos geared to one airscrew. Either engine may be taken out of gear if trouble occurs. The machine has been constructed by the Vega Airplane Company, a Lockheed subsidiary. Guide to Ground Engineers THE second volume of the Air Ministry's Airivorthiness Handbook for Civil Aircraft has now been published. This deals exhaustively with inspection—the first one covered design—and is obtainable from H.M. Stationery Office, at 7s. od. It is in robust loose-leaf form so that the steady flow of necessary amendments may be satisfactorily incorporated as they come along month by month. Soaring Award for Mr Philip Wills THE Gold Badge for soaring flight, for which flights of 300 km. (186.4 miles) distance and 3,000m. (9,847.5ft.) altitude must be made, has been awarded to Mr. Philip A. Wills by the International Commission for the Study of Motor- less Flight. Mr. Wills fulfilled the conditions by taking his Minimoa sailplane 209 miles from Heston to St. Austell on THE MOST POWERFUL "NINE" ? : The Wright G.ioo Cyclone, which gives 1,100 h.p. for take-off and which powers the new Douglas D.C.3S (illustrated last week) ordered by K.L.M. This model may be equipped with a two-speed suoercharger. April 30, and to a height of 10,080 feet from Dunstable Downs on June 5 this year. He receives No. 3 in the international series, No. 1 having gone to Heini Dittmar, the German pilot who won the international soaring contest at the Wasserkuppe last year. When the Germans began to develop gliding after the Great War there was only one type of gliding certificate, which they bestowed on anybody who could do a straight glide of 30 seconds duration. The present C certificate, given for a soaring flight of over 5 minutes without loss of height, was instituted in 1923, and the Silver C in 1931. Mr. Wills was the second British pilot to receive the Silver C, for which soaring flights of 50 km. distance, 1,000m. climb and 5 hours duration have to be made. He was awarded No. 45 in 1934. There are now 845 Silver C pilots in the world, including 30 British, while C certificates number tens of thousands and A badges run into six figures. How long will the new Gold Badge remain the highest award obtainable by sailplane pilots, and what new feats of wizardry- will be required of them when the time comes to replace it by a platinum or diamond medal ? For Plug Testing A NEW sparking plug testing equipment, which, though primarily made for motor engineering use, is claimed to be equally suitable for aero engine work, has been produced by Runbaken Electrical Products. The " True-test " system is ingenious, providing as it does a visual reproduction of the spark of the plug under test. It is stated that oscillations picked up at the plug terminal charge, a condenser of carefully predetermined capacity. The condenser, an inductance coil and a spark gap, are in series- parallel connection and so balanced as to pick up the precise resonance of the oscillations across the spark gap. To discharge, the impulses have two alternative routes, (a) across the spark gap in a sealed glass discharge tube; (b) across the wound inductance. If the current is of the correct frequency the first path is taken, and the correctly firing plug is indicated to the observer looking through the eye-piece as a continuous brilliant stream of sparks across the gap. H. tor any reason, the plug is not functioning properly, the correct frequency conditions no longer exist, and the discharge passes by way of the inductance in preference to crossing the spark gap; it thus becomes visually non-existent, or, in other words, indicates a "miss." A descriptive folder is obtainable on application to Run baken Electrical Products, 13-15, Liverpool Road, Deansgaie. Manchester 3.
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