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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0287.PDF
1 March 1957 289 Southern Rhodesia now has an airport to match the Federation's bustling commerce and prosperity. Here—in a photograph by "Holiday and Travel Magazine," Salisbury—is the new terminal building at Salisbury, the opening of which is referred to below. SALISBURY'S NEW AIRPORT SALISBURY Airport's new £400,000 terminal building wasofficially opened on February 5, six months after the airport was first used by airline traffic. During those six months, Salisburyhas been the busiest African airport south of the Equator. There are an average of about 120 arrivals and departures duringthe hours of daylight. Since July 1956 133,816 passengers and 10,225 civil aircraft have passed through, and in the peak period—June and July—20,000 passengers a month are expected—5,000 more than through Jan Smuts, Johannesburg. Scheduled airlineswhich are at present using the airport are B.O.A.C., S.A.A., U.A.T., Central African Airways, Hunting-Clan, Airwork and D.E.T.A.(the Mozambique airline) and Alitalia are expected to operate through the airport later this month. Airline staff, who for the past six months have been obligedto process passengers in a hangar converted into temporary traffic offices and freight sheds, now have capacious offices in the newterminal building. Passengers and public have the benefit of well- appointed lounges, a cocktail bar and restaurant, and a terrace onthe first floor from which they can watch arrivals and departures. The controllers are particularly well catered for; the tower—whichis 55ft 6in above the apron—has many specialist features, including pitched glazing (see the Flight photograph in our February 1issue) and a separate air-conditioning plant. The main 8,612ft runway has excellent approaches and could ifrequired be extended to 14,000ft. Navigational aids are of the most modern type; in addition to V.D.F. and M.F. beacons,Decca 424 aerodrome control radar was installed on February 1. V.O.R. will soon be added to the existing navaids, and will beavailable for B.O.A.C.'s Britannias, which begin their scheduled flights through Salisbury this month. COLLISION-WARNING SETBACK "COLLOWING publication by Collins Radio Inc. of the initial-•- engineering specification for a collision-warning device for civil aircraft (outlined in Flight, November 30, 1956) there have beensome rather surprising developments. Collins had at that time some 10 million dollars worth of advance orders for the equipmenton hand and were working on a frequency-modulated continuous- wave radio using Doppler effect, while both Bendix and Hughes—other competitors for the supply of proximity-warning indicators to the eager civil market—were working on pulse radar systems. At the end of1956 it began to be apparent that cer-tain problems might prove insurmount-able. ' Bendix had already called atten-tion to these when Collins announcedthat their own approach was notfeasible and that they would have tofollow a different mm, * **•«*««•§•»••»«»»«*« Seen of New Delhi after inspecting a B.O.A.C. Britannia, which was on a prov- ing flight to Sydney, are Mr. A. K. Chanda, Comptroller and Auditor-General of India, and Air Marshal S. Mukerjee, O.B.E.. I.A.F. Chief of Air Staff. line of approach; they even went so far as to release their pros-pective customers from all commitments. Hughes soon afterwards reached the same conclusions and stopped work on their systemin January. The trend of opinion seems to be to base all hopes of collisionwarning over the U.S.A. on the tremendous A.T.C. radar cover- age planned for completion during the present three-year expan-sion programme. Nevertheless, the A.T.A. may now ask for the development of a better non-co-operative proximity-warning indi-cator based on the original stage 1 specification and, secondly, a co-operative system with provision for automatic collision avoid-ance. (A non-co-operative system is one that enables an aircraft to spot other aircraft whether they carried collision warning or not.) The serious doubts about the possibilities of operating thenow-abandoned P.W.I.s were the result of ground clutter below 10,000ft. This particularly affected Collins F.M./C.W. Anotherdifficulty was turbulence which upset the sensing of the Doppler effect and prevented positive identification of collision risk in asignificant fraction of cases. Pulse Doppler could overcome ground clutter, but an adequate system would at present be too expensive,heavy and complex; P.W.I, aerial systems might weigh up to 100 1b.The U.S.A.F. are also interested in a P.W.I., but they require operation at closing speeds of about Mach 4 and for this aco-operative system is imperative. In any case, one of the major problems with this type of equipment is to achieve a universalcoverage, and it is estimated that some five or ten years will elapse before 50 per cent of all aircraft are equipped, thus offeringa reasonable degree of collision protection. YORK MALTA ACCIDENT QUERIES THE committee of inquiry set up to investigate the accident toYork G-ANSY in Malta last February attributed the cause to an error of judgment by the pilot, who—with all the passengersand crew—perished in the crash. The port outer engine failed soon after take-off from Luqa in gusty weather, and the pilotwas unable to clear the high ground on the track being flown. Various aspects of the inquiry, and the performance of theYork under the conditions prevailing (it was pointed out that the aircraft had seen considerable service) have been questioned bythe British Air Line Pilots' Association, who have expressed themselves dissatisfied with the judgment of the committee. They ask in particular "How was the Court so sure that thepropeller feathering mechanism of No. 1 engine functioned correctly?" . . . "Would the aircraft have been capable of three-engined performance if No. 1 propeller had not been feathered?" . . . "Was it correct to say that the boost gauge should haveindicated conclusively that no power was being derived from this engine?" The Association have some doubts that the York, under theconditions prevailing at Malta, would have shown a satisfactory performance on three engines, and they hold that the possibili-ties of propeller malfunctioning (the propeller was found by the accident investigators to be unfeathered) had been glossed over.They cited a known case of inexplicable malfunctioning of a similar feathering installation and another case where a defective Recent photographs of the Twin Pioneer reveal marked simpli- fication of the wing- to - undercarriage attachment struts. In these self-explanatory sketches the old arrangement is shown beneath the new one. Weight remains the sams, but drag has been reduced.
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