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Aviation History
1950
1950 - 0664.PDF
430 FLIGHT, 6 April 1950 FAREWELL to RATCLIFFE Leicestershire Ae'ro Club Holds a " House-cooling " Display and Dance TO mark their departure from RatcMe Airfield to anotherlocation—probably to be Rearsby—the Leicestershire AeroClub held a final flying display on March 25th. The weather,unlike that of the rest of the week, could not have been better, theTe being about three-eighths cloud at 4,000ft, and by about3 p.m. all thirty of the visiting aircraft had arrived. The fly- ing displays, which were all, with one exception, aerobatic,were of the highest order. The first contribution was by a V.R. Tiger Moth in the hands of F/L. A. Bullman, who did,among other things, some of the finest slow rolls seen for a long time. Next man off was Ranald Porteous, for crazyflying in an Autocrat fitted with the Goodyear cross-wind landing gear, which in the course of the demonstration wasshown off to very good effect. The third item, an aerobatics-cum-crop-dusting display, wasgiven by Mr. Leatham with an appropriately equipped Auto- crat; many people commented on the large amount of dustingpowder that the Aust-er managed to carry—a supply which seemed to be almost inexhaustible. Next came the demon-stration of the Auster Autocar given by Porteous, who pro- ceeded to make it do almost everytbing that the Moth had done,and just as well! The finalishow was also given by Porteous, but this time on his Miles M.18, which seemed to have theperformance and handling qualities of a fighter. At 4.30 p.m. all visiting pilots were called together for The crop-dusting Auster which impressed the crowd. Ratcliffe's familiar spider-leg control tower is visible in the background. - briefing for the grand Jinale, which was to be a mass formationflight of all available aircraft over Leicester. At 4.45 the six- teen aircraft taking part commenced to take oil, and tlievreturned by way of Rearsby some 30 minutes later. The day was rounded-off by a dance in the club-house, very wellattended by about 300 members and their friends. A HUNDRED YEARS of METEOROLOGY IN the Centenary Number of Weather (published by the RoyalMeteorological Society), Sir Nelson Johnson, K.C.B., D.Sc., Director of the Meteorological Office, draws attention to some milestones in a century of meteorology (the Society's centenary fell due on April 3rd). The long-standing international aspect of the science is illustrated by the fact that as early as 1853 Lt. Maury, U.S.N., called an international conference in Brussels to lay the foundations for the international ship- reported weather observations. At about this time, gale warn- ings by electric telegraph were instituted for the west coasts of Europe. One of the leading sponsors of this latter innova- tion was Admiral Fitzroy, who invented the term "forecast" and, by trying to foretell the weather, took the first plunge into the sea of comment which has surrounded weather fore- casts ever since. The value of ballooning as a means of obtaining upper-air observations was quickly realized by meteorologists when thesport was in vogue in mid-Victorian times, and Glaisher, Super- intendent of Greenwich Observatory, is reputed to have reached .a height of 11 km. Meteorological knowledge advanced considerably as the yearspassed, and the existence of the stratosphere was discovered at the turn of the century and explained ten years later. It wasnot until about 1920, however, that Bjerknes produced his frontal theory on which modern forecasting is based. Thefirst radio-sonde reading was successfully obtained in 1927, and the measurement of winds above cloud layers was provedpossible by radar methods in 1937. Sir Nelson indicates that with an increase in upper-airobservations, and computing machines to interpret them, weather forecasting in the future may show a great change intechnique. COMETS in PRODUCTION—an ENCOURAGING PICTURE from HATFIELD ; Flight " photograph. The second and Uniu cie hdvnmtiu Comets ^uie first ano secono production aircraft) are well on the way towards ^TfJctJiULJO ^ assembly shop at Hatfield. No. 06002 (the second for the M.o.S.), seen here in the background, is the further advanced"oftne two *, and is expected to fly in the late summer or early autumn of this year. Fuselages of several others are taking shape. f,
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