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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 2111.PDF
OCTOBER 24TH, 1946. " Indicator " Discusses Topics of the Day FLIGHT 437 In Search of Safety Radio as an Aid, Not an Arbiter ; Improving Aircraft Characteristics in Critical Conditions : Eventual Automatics ? MY simple faith in the likely unreality of all scientifictheorizing—which has stood me in good stead fora number of years—received its first serious set- back when the experimental atomic bomb actually ex- ploded, according to plan, somewhere in Mexico. It seemed then that the proton-nucleus-neutron story, which I'd always imagined to be merely a pretty picture of matter designed to satisfy the mathematical physicists' theories, had, after all, approximated to the truth. What is more, the little chaps did as they were told— to the discomfiture of a public conscience which had grown progressively accustomed to sticking people full of arrows, filling them with lead from Maxim guns, and even showering them with cookies and incendiaries in the course of various wars of one kind and another, but which always became a little tender when new unpleasantness appeared. With some reason, perhaps, too; at least the arrows and bullets were aimed at particular individuals and not in- discriminately at entire communities. Too Much Faith But, if we have found by experiment as well as by cal- culation that the earth is an oblate spheroid, and that there is something odd about the behaviour of the air at sonic and supersonic speeds, I cannot feel that we should put our trust too blindly in scientific pronouncements. If only because even the objectively thinking scientific boys have their prejudices and their fanaticisms just as, unfortunately enough, the rest of us. Nor are they neces- sarily right. Even in the year 1946 prototype aircraft by no means fly always according to the prognostications of the technicians, and scientific aids to navigation may pro- duce astonishingly incorrect results—or even no results at all if the sun happens to be suffering from spotted fever. In airline operation, particularly, faith in the value of scientific aids should be tempered by a reasonable degree of cynical suspicion so that no surprise is felt, or frightful situation produced, if the aids simply fail to do any aiding just when they are most needed. Instrument let-downs are all very well when there is another chap there who can see everything quite well, or if conditions are good enough to make a visual arrival finally possible if every- thing fades out, or if the control personnel go to the can- teen for tea. Not So Easy And when everything is working properly QDMs canbe most surprisingly wrong, S.B.A. indications can be quite difficult to follow, and cathode-ray screen pictures are not^ays the beautifully clear-cut affairs that are imagined y the general public. Meanwhile, the air may be terriblyrough and the aircraft itself may handle, in such condi- tions, rather like an inebriated cow when the flaps aredown and at approach speeds and powers. Even in this late period of scientific development—labelled by someenthusiastic sub-editor as the atomic age—the aircraft captain has an awful lot on his hands and is never sopleased as when the world opens up again in front and he can go back finally to a little visual and bottom-sense fly-ing after a long and worried struggle with science. Not that I will go as far as to agree with an old-timerfriend of mine who always used to say that '' radio is a damn good invention—so Jong as one knows where one isall the time." Neither crew nor passengers want to stick around for ever at sea level with trees flashing past the wing-tips, but the good old visual reactions are the best and the most reliable when it really comes to the poin.t. I remember once, in pre-war years, how everyone used to complain because a certain Continental airline's pilots used to fly at ground level in bad weather and to be decidedly dashing in their arrivals. But the fact was that this air- line concern's safety record was surprisingly good until, forced by competition and a growing faith in scientific navigation, their flying tactics became more modern. With people's customary passion for taking sides, and for announcing everything as being either black or white— because it is much simpler and more emotionally satis- fying that way—I shall no doubt be accused of being a total reactionary and be labelled accordingly as one of the very last of the dyed-in-the-wool no-see-no-fly people. While I confess to a mild conviction that flying would be very much safer, even in these advanced days, if such a rule could be kept—at least within reason and below, say, an actual height of a thousand feet—it would hardly be possible to run useful air services of any kind in these conditions. Radio and radar aids are as much a part of modern flying as constant-speed airscrews and blowers. But I insist that, until they are very much more reliable and unequivocal than they are to-day, they should still be treated as aids and not as final arbiters in navigation. Approach Labours I must say that the position might be different if theaverage aircraft happened to be a little more able to look after itself during the most difficult part of any bad-weatherrun—the final stages. Most aircraft are quite rigidly stable and fly along more or less on rails at their cruising speeds,but are inclined to be somewhat less positive in their movements and control reactions at lower speeds and par-ticularly when the flaps are down. And that is just the moment when it would be immensely helpful if, even inrough conditions, the outfit could be left to itself, the rate of descent being adjusted comfortably on the power.During a visual descent it is difficult enough to be reliably accurate in one's judgment of speed and height over thelast stages of an approach—simply because air conditions and the aircraft's characteristics tend to vaiy the actualrate of descent so markedly. But it is an even more con- centrated fight if the handling is a little odd and the wholejob is being done on instruments and some not very clearly defined radio indications. When wns eventually get round to the business of pro-ducing these five-hnndred-mile-an-hour turbine transports, I hope that the most special attention will be paid duringdevelopment work to the building-in of really good low- speed characteristics. What is wanted is an aircraft which,however high its natural approach speed may be, is good and stable and positively controllable at that speed, andwhich shows no appreciable changes of trim either when the flaps are lowered or when the boost is varied. Thecaptain will then be able to devote his entire attention to the work of holding it on the correct approach path in-stead of finding himself continually harassed by the need for taking corrective measures in order to keep the air-craft's speed and attitude constant. With the knowledge that the immediately post-take-offand the final-approach periods are by far the most dan- gerous in all flying conditions, an aircraft's qualities should,during these periods, be the most faultless. The things should, even in the roughest conditions, go off and comein as if they are sliding along some well-greased rails.
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