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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 2139.PDF
4 AIRCRAFT ENGINEER FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD t FOUNDED 1909 Editor C. M. POULSEN Managing Editor G. GEOFFREY SMITH, M.B.E. Chief Photographer JOHN YOXALL Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices: DORSET HOUSE, STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.1 Telegrams : Truditur, Sedist, London. COVENTRY : 8-10, CORPORATION ST., Telegrams: Autocar, Coventry. Telephone: Coventry 5210. Telephone: Waterloo 3333 (35 lines). BIRMINGHAM, 2 : GUILDHALL BUILDINGS, NAVIGATION ST. Telegrams: Autopress, Birmingham, Telephone: Midland 297 1 (5 lines). MANCHESTER, 3 : 260, DEANSGATE, Telegrams: lliffe, Manchester. Telephone : Blackfriars 4412. GLASGOW, C.2 I 26B, RENFIELD ST., Telegrams! lliffe, Glasgow. Telephone: Central 4857. SUBSCRIPTION RATES : Home and Abroad : Year, £3 10. 6 months, Registered at the G.P.O. as a Newspaper. £1 10 6. 3 months, 15s. 3d. No. 1764. Vol. XLII. October 15th, 1942. The Outlook- Thursdays, One Shilling. Test Pilots O NCE again "Indicator" returns, in this issue, to the subject of test pilots and their status. A reader outlines, on our Correspondence page, what he thinks ought to be done in the matter; and from yet another reader, who does not wish his letter published but who does not object to being quoted, we have received certain views. This reader suggests that, as the job of a manufacturer's test pilot is to test proto types, he ought to be more than half of an aircraft designer; he should be of such status and experience that he can talk to senior officers of the R.A.F. on their own level, and ought to be paid about the same as an Air Commodore or an Air Vice-Marshal. "He must," this reader says, "stand well enough with the head of the firm to be able to stand up to the designer and the works manager and tell them where they are wrong." A Flight Lieutenant of the Reserve of Air Force Officers proposes (in our Correspondence columns) that the Society of British Aircraft Constructors and the Guild oi Air Pilots and Navigators should call a meeting of firms' test pilots, and possibly representatives from the Aircraft and Armament Experimental Establishment, to draft a grading of test pilots, rather in the manner of the Central Flying School. "Indicator," in his Topics of the Day, apparently would be content with a pool of test pilots from the subsidiaries and main firm of the large manufacturers, and thinks that this relatively simple remedy would ensure that no prototype got through without certain faults coming to light which might escape detection where only one or two pilots had tested the machine. All this is apt to convey the impression that our whole system of test-piloting needs overhaul, and that, because he is in the pay of the designing and producing firm, the tester of prototypes cannot be ruthless in the eradi cation of faults, irrespective of cost and consequences. To us it appears that such a state of affairs is very iar from existing. For one thing, the designing firm has its reputation to consider. And even putting the matter on no higher a plane than the financial, it is a whole lot cheaper to make even radical changes in the proto type stage than it is to make modifications once the production stage has been reached. Consequently there is every reason for "getting the bugs out" as early as possible. That is not to say that something could not and should not be done to improve what is already a reasonably satisfactory system, and we rather like the suggestion of an S.B.A.C./G.A.P.A.N. conference with the test pilots of the country. Round-about T HE old sage proclaimed that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line connecting the points, but it is rather curious how often in the evolution of the flying machine the indirect rather than the direct approach to a problem has proved the quickest route. Inventors were hard at work on the helicopter (that is to say, the direct-lift type of air- ciaft) at much about the same time that Wilbur and Orville Wright began to study flight by fixed-wing air craft (that is, the indirect way of getting lift). The Wrights succeeded, and the helicopter was side-tracked for years. How very indirect is the modern method of lifting people and goods into the air is not, perhaps, generally realised. We have become so accustomed as to take it for granted. The most direct form of flight is that represented by the rocket, in which the fuel is burnt
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