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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 0792.PDF
594 FLIGHT JUNE 3RD, 1948 boats, some people might be tempted to assume that he was indulging in a little wishful thinking. A perusal of his lecture, a summary of which we publish in this issue, soon dispels any such idea. He has examined most carefully the evolution of road, rail and sea trans- port, and in all cases the picture has been the same: the transport vehicle has grown in size to correspond with the volume of traffic, unless the size was limited by other considerations. In air transport, too, the tendency has been towards larger and larger aircraft, and in spite of the '' square- cube" law there does not appear to be a limit insight so far as the actual vehicle is concerned. There is, how- ever, another very definite limit in sight. Airports are already reaching astronomical figures in size and cost, and a stop will have to be called some time. One could challenge Mr. Gouge's contention by point- ing out that airport runways are governed not so much by size as by weight. The take-off run of an aircraft is determined by wing loading and power loading rather than by size. But the strength of runways needed is governed by the weight, and if size of aircraft is not to be increased, the volume of traffic can only be dealt with by increasing the frequency. This, in turn, will demand a greater number of runways, so we are thrown back once more on a rise in airport cost through more and heavier runways. A diagram from the lecture (Fig. 4 on p. 616) shows graphically how a vast sea area is readily available for flying boats in the Solent. It makes Heathrow look in- significant. Cost of the very large flying boats would, of course, be high. But as Mr. Gouge pointed out, the interest on the capital expenditure on the means of trans- port is reasonably small compared with other items in- volved, such as the " ancillaries." To us it appears that Mr. Gouge made out a very good case for the large flying boat as "th&wily craft which »an develop in size without an extree*jly high ancillarv cost." C^> CONTENTS Outlook - Fury Trainer - - - - - , • Society News - - - - - Here and There Civil Aviation News - Air Cruise - - - - Scandia Discussed - Size in Transport Radar Revealed Correspondence Service Aviation ------ Forthcoming Events, page 618. 593 595 597 598 600 603 607 614 617 618 619 Another Bone of Contention ? CONSIDERABLE speculation has been caused byLord Nathan's recent remark, in a speech to theCommonwealth Air Transport Council, that at the Geneva conference an item on the agenda is the proposal to delete Article 41 of the Chicago Convention. The manner in which the Minister of Civil Aviation made the statement was not very clear, and numerous interpretations were a natural result, including the very silly one that British manufacturers were asking for this deletion because new British aircraft could not comply with I.C.A.O. requirements. It is just the reverse. All the new British types being designed do comply. The position is that Article 41 laid it down that no aircraft would be granted a certificate of airworthiness after 1951 unless it complied with I.C.A.O. requirements. An exception was made in the case of older aircraft, which were given a new lease of life by being permitted to operate until 1954. The British view is that this is absurd, and that the only current types which benefit from the 1954 clause of Article 41 will be due for replacement anyway. TAKING THE STRAIN : The first of a series of Service trials have lately been completed at two R.A.F. airfields with the Vickers Valetta—the military version of the Viking. With an Airspeed Horsa glider in tow, the new Hercules-powered transport is seen well away after take-off.
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