FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1955
1955 - 1832.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2449 Vol 68 FRIDAY 30 DECEMBER 1955 Editor MAURICE A. SMITH D.F.C. and BAR Associate Editor H. F. KING M.B.E. Technical Editor W. T. GUNSTON Production Editor ROY CASEY Iliffe and Sons Ltd Dorset House Stamford Street London, S.E.I Telephone • Waterloo 3333 (60 lines) BRANCH OFFICES Coventry 8-10 Corporation Street Telephone • Coventry 5210 Birmingham 2 King Edward House, New Street Telephone • Midland 7191 (7 lines) Manchester 3 260 Deansgate Telephone • Blackfriars 4412 (3 lines)Deansgate 3595 (2 lines) Glasgow C.2 26B Renficld Street Telephone • Central 1265 (2 lines) Toronto 2, Ontario 74 College Street Telephone • Walnut 4-5361 New York 6, N.Y. Ill Broadway Telephone • Digby 9-1197 • SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Overseas • Twelve Months, £4 10s. US.A. and Canada, $14.00 In this issue 958 Test Tank Mk 2 961 A Standard for No. 201 Sqn. 954 Two-Dimensional Flight? 966 Building a Radar Chain 968 Handling the Herald 969 The Edgar Percival P.9 973 Trying Out the D.H.C. Otter 975 Classics of Aviation Literature 976 Widgeon and Whirlwind Field and Farm JT HE traditionally extolled lot of the farmer's boy—to plough and sow, to reap and mow—is a poor range of accomplishment in terms of modern needs. Indeed, the whole pastoral scene has changed in recent times to something akin to a military operation, with an armoury of new vehicles and devices—not least the aeroplane—being brought to bear in support of the rudimentary implements of yore. In some thirty years the numbers of agricultural aircraft have swelled to a five-figure total, with over 7,000 serving in the U.S.A. alone, while their range of usefulness has broadened into new spheres of achievement and promise. Principal among these is crop-treatment—the dusting or spraying of crops with powders or liquids to control or extirpate insect or vegetable pests; and next is pest control, whereby the pestilential breeding areas are sprayed from the air with liquids or powders. Seeding and top-dressing, survey and surveillance, fire-fighting, afforestation, the dropping of fencing, fodder or poison bait, and the protection of valuable crops against frost are already commonplace under- takings, while national peculiarities of terrain or fauna are promoting less wide- spread if more romantic applications. Thus, in New Zealand the wild-deer shooters, who range through the mountainous districts curbing the great herds, are maintained with necessities and simple comforts; and, in Canada, marauding coyotes are picked off by marksmen flying a few feet above the prairie snow and firing from open cockpits or doorless cabins. The Implements While adaptations of standard light and medium machines preponderate for the present in agricultural pursuits, the call for specialization (sounded loud and clear byH.R.H.the Duke of Edinburgh in his Commonwealth and Empire Lecture last year) is beginning to receive a due response. Aircraft designed and developed not only for the farm, but in the closest collaboration with the farmer himself, are now reality in this country as well as overseas; indeed, the newest and most promising of all are the Auster Agricola and Edgar Percival P.9, both of which were briefly introduced in these pages on December 16th. The latter is more fully described in this issue. So promising, in fact, is the potential market for these machines', especially for top-dressing work in New Zealand, that until the actual emergence of the prototypes the responsible companies maintained a silence so rigid that less was known of design characteristics than of forthcoming inter- cepters and bombers. Now the wraps are off. The new contenders are preparing for the rough-and-tumble life, and the makers have released their jealously protected secrets to agriculturists at large. To assess the merits of the new machines would at this stage be premature; but the specifications are eloquent in themselves. Evidence is abundant that each was designed with imagination and with full understanding of the opera- tional problems involved, and each is backed with lengthy experience of overseas markets. Equally gratifying, both are one hundred per cent private ventures, planned in a businesslike manner, with an eye strictly to business, and without benefit of grant or subsidy—planned, in fact, in the belief that the world, and the British Commonwealth especially, has need of such equipment, and that great things lies ahead for the right aeroplanes in the right jobs. But though the Agricola and P.9 are the first Commonwealth aircraft to have been planned from the outset for farm-work, they are not the first to have been specifically tailored for Commonwealth service. It was of the de Havilland Canada Beaver that the Duke observed that, when it was first mooted, the makers took trouble to find out exactly what the bush pilots of Canada really wanted, and throughout its develooment their opinions, their exoerience and criticisms were sought and used. The secret of success, he remarked, seemed to be the very closest co-operation between the makers and operators. Counsel, it would appear, that did not pass unheeded.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
