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Aviation History
1954
1954 - 1988.PDF
AIRCRAFT ENGINEER First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded 1909 No. 2372 Vol.66. FRIDAY, 9 JULY 1954 ED/TOR MAURICE A. SMITH, D.F.C. ASSISTANT EDITOR •. F. KING, M.B.E. AT ED/TOR JOHN YOXALL •pitorial. Advertising and Publishing Offices: RSET HOUSE, AMFORD STREET, NDON, S.E.1. grams, Flightpres, Sedist, London. ephone, Waterloo 3333 (60 lines). ch Offices: VENTRY 0, Corporation Street. Telegrams, Autocar, Coventry. Wmephone, Coventry 5210. BIRMINGHAM, 2 King Edward House, ^B|ew Street. Telegrams, Autopress, Birmingham. Telephone, Midland 7191 (7 lines). MANCHESTER, 3 260, Deansgate. Telegrams, lliffe, Manchester. "Telephone, Blackfriars 4412 (3 lines). Deansgate 3S95 (2 lines). GLASGOW, C.2. Mb Renfield Street. gQtegrams, Itiffe, Glasgow. Telephone, Central 126S (2 lines). SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Overseas: Twelve months £4 10s. U.S.A. and Canada, $14.00. il THIS ISSUE Weapons on West Down 36 •tomic Power - ... 39 The Avro 504 .... 41 Instrument-panel E Developments ... 45 Meeting National del'Air 47 Trans-Pacific .... 50 •artin Matador - gamecock and Peregrine B at Home .... - 52 61 Fixes—or in a Fix? ONE hears less about automatic flight than was the case four or five years ago, in spite of die fact mat in several branches of aviation the knowledge and the state of the art have advanced very considerably. No one has attempted to emulate the achievement of the C-54 Skymaster which in September 1947 flew the North Atlantic from Stephenville, Newfoundland, to Brize Norton in Oxfordshire where it landed un aided by the human "co-pilots." Captain T. J. Wells of the All-Weather Flying Division, U.S.A.F. Air Materiel Command, had only to line the aircraft up on the runway for take-off and to apply the brakes at the end of the landing run many hours later. This flight might fairly be described as a worthwhile stunt. In some ways commercial aviation has drawn ahead of military practice in the matter of automatic approaches, and the linking-up of the automatic pilot with a standard approach aid is becoming an accepted procedure. This very week K.L.M. is laying claim to being the first European airline to employ automatic approach equipment in the form of an approach coupler which feeds signals from the radio approach system direct to the automatic pilot. A statement from the company indicates that hitherto the descent from 5,000ft had to be carried out manually, "a procedure which called for very quick reaction on the part of the pilot." K.L.M. machines were among the first to be fitted with Zero Readers. Even so, in the field of entirely automatic flight (including landing) military aircraft will almost certainly continue to pave the way. The possibility of a civil airliner with a load of passengers flying automatically with no more than a machine-minder for crew seems remote enough now, but perhaps it will come one day. It is but a few years since voices were loudly raised against even the thought of a ground controller, using nothing but radar "blips" for guidance, instruct ing a pilot in the air how to bring his aircraft down in instrument flight conditions. Today more than 90 per cent of civil instrument approaches are G.C.A. aided. Serious talk of unmanned military aircraft started many years ago, and the days of the manned fighter have on many occasions since the war been prematurely numbered. It seems that piloted intercepters will be with us for some while to come, in spite of guided-missile and guidance-mechanism developments. So long as aircraft are man-flown the knowledge of one's exact position in the air is advantageous throughout a flight and essential during parts of it. Certain features of piloted flight in bad weather and at night are obviously common to all branches of flying: for example, the need to get down safely at the destination or an alternative airfield and to keep an accurate check on one's track and position along it. A large number of accidents—the majority, even—have stemmed from crew or instrument shortcomings under these broad headings. As a result many approach, landing and navigation aids have been devised. Much work remains to be done; but there is a risk that more complicated and more numerous devices will lead to reduced overall reliability and increased chance of human error. A crew is much better off in this respect than the solo pilot of a fighter. With currently used aids and conventional plotting, aircraft on occasions still hit mountains, land at the wrong airfield and ditch unnecessarily. Jet fighters are destroyed because pilots lose track of their position and run out of fuel before they can re-orientate them selves and land at the nearest base. We would suggest that the need for a single simple continuous and independent position-fixing instrument whose presentation requires the minimum interpretative effort and no mental calculation on the part of the pilot has not yet been fully met. For the larger aircraft, with two or more crew, a chart-type presentation may be one of the best answers; for the fighter pilot one step further may be preferable. A pilot knowing his position must next calculate his course for home; thus a direction pointer and distance indication, automatically tuned to the nearest of several preselected airfields, may be all he needs, and even all he has time for, or the cockpit space to accommodate. These requirements present no new technical problems. There are several widely used and well known devices. In addition Qantas already use a simple and very accurate Australian D.M.E.; and, incidentally, car radios in America are made automatically to tune in on the best station in the area in which they are travelling.
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