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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 0013.PDF
JANUARY 3RD, 1946 FLIGHT 1 866 ... AND . ALL THAT/ Records of aeronautical patents as farback as 1815 can be found on the shelves of the Society's spaciouslibrary. others, and the increasing importance of the papers readbefore the Society, all played their part in making the organisation more widely known, and a rise in membershipfollowed. The figure is now over 5,000, excluding the branch membership, which is about the same number. For some years before the recent war one of the Society'smost popular activities was the annual Flying Garden Party, which attracted many thousands of members andtheir friends, and enabled constructors to show the latest types of aircraft. The War Years In 1939 the Society took over the new headquarters atNo. 4, Hamilton Place. The Council had prepared con- siderable schemes for wider activities, all of which hadto be dropped on the outbreak of war. Among them was an International Aeronautical Congress, which was to lasta week, and for which many lectures had been arranged. The Society's premises suffered heavy damage frombombing on seven different occasions, but at no time did it prove necessary to vacate them. Due to a number of causes, such as secrecy and the cen-sorship, it was not possible to arrange the usual sessions of lectures, although the Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecturewas read on its appointed day throughout the war, includ- ing that memorable day in May, 1940, when the fall ofFrance was taking place and the invasion of England seemed likely. A number of secret meetings were held during the warto bring together the fruits of experience of the various R.A.F. Commands and the Fleet Air Arm and the- work ofdesigners and producers in the industry. They proved to -the most successful and useful meetings of any in the'history of the Society. A number of secret committees were appointed to whichno reference could be made at the time. Two of them, the Stressed Skin Committee and the Aerodynamics Commit-tee, were specially concerned, with the help of the S.B.A.C. and M.A.P., in the issue of data sheets for the industry.These sheets were of such a high standard that a consider- able number of sets were asked for by the N.A.C.A. to dis-tribute to the American industry. It is hoped shortly to make these sheets available to all. One of the interesting side-lines of the work of the Societyduring the war was the arranging for the Associate Fellow- ship examinations to be held on board ship, in many centresabroad, and in prisoner of war camps. In the five years more than 600 candidates took the examination. In recent months the Council have had under considera-tion an expansion of the Society's activities in many direc- tions. Many of the necessary facilities are still notavailable, but as they become so the Society hopes to go rapidly along the road which was temporarily blocked bysix years of war. These notes on the Society have necessarily been brief,from sheer considerations of space. But if a familiar old question is asked—'' What do members of the Society'/o? "—there is still space for the reply, which is that not one aircraft or aircraft engine designed and built in GreatBritain in recer.t years but has behind it a member of the Society; every British fighter and bomber and reconnais-sance and training machine of the war owes its conception to a member of the Society; and every civil aircraft nowon the stocks can make the same claim. The Royal Aeronautical Society has travelled a long andhard road since 1866, but it has been worth it for the bright vision which now lies ahead. R.A.E. IGNITION RESEARCH TWO interesting experiments in the ignition field were amongthe numerous exhibits of aircraft electrical equipment forming the subject of j^et another Farnborough exhibitionwhich, orgnnised by MA.P. and the R.A.E., concluded recently. One was a high-frequency ignition system designed by theR.A.E. to overcome plug fouling. Used in conjunction with a. modified magneto, a compact frequency converter—virtuallya conventional W/T spark transmitter—changes the usual z Kc, low-frequoncy-magneto ignition to something of theorder of 1 Me. Demonstrated in comparison with a conven- tional system, it continued to produce efficient sparking whena resistance was placed in the circuit which could—and did— cause entire failure of ignition by a normal magneto. The other development was designed to overcome the well-known difficulty of electrical leakage in distributors at high altitudes; such leakages, by bridging insulator surfaces withcarbon, may sometimes cause complete ignition failure on descent to a lower altitude. By a simple and purely mechanical modification of the distri-butor design, the leakage, when it does take place, expends itself harmlessly over the gap to the "previous" cylinder,i.e., the one which has just fired and which is therefore on the exhaust stroke. Demonstrated in a chamber exhausted tothe equivalent pressure height of 35,000ft., the distributor sparked normally; at 45,000ft. leakage began to take placeover the designed channel; ami it was not until 50,000ft. that random sparking occurred.
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