FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0953.PDF
FLIGHT, 12 July 1957 53 FROM THE CLUBS SURREY Flying dub are organizing an At Home at Croydonon Sunday next, July 14. The programme, which is being arranged by the Association of British Aero Clubs to welcomevisiting pilots of the Central Aero dub of Czechoslovakia, will include a display of aerobatics over the airport. Activities areexpected to begin at 2.30 p.m. HPHIS weekend (July 12-14) will be a particularly active one for-•- clubs in several parts of the country. In addition to the National Air Race meeting at Baginton Aerodrome, Coventry(today and tomorrow, July 12-13), and the Surrey Club event reported above, other functions are planned at Fair Oaks, Sher-burn, Sywell and Wolverhampton. On Saturday, July 13, the resident clubs at Fair Oaks are holding a lunch patrol and AtHome; similar At Homes are being organized on Sunday, July 14, by the Yorkshire Aero Club at Sherburn-in-Elmet, the Northamp-tonshire Aero Club at Sywell and the Wolverhampton Aero dub at Wolverhampton Aerodrome. '"THE Works Flying dub of Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft), Ltd.,•*- at Hum is now moving into the second half of its second year of operation with 16 members under training. Increasing facul-ties are being provided for those who have obtained P.P.L.s. Urging members to make the most of their subsidized flying time,the dub's newsletter warns its readers that "the committee are plotting a graph which shows extremely accurately the rate atwhich flying training is proceeding." "CULL flying facilities seven days per week are now offered by the*^ Midland Aero dub at Elmdon. Residential accommodation at the aerodrome is also available for student pilots during training.Two Tiger Moths and one Autocrat are operated by the club; members' privately owned machines include a Proctor V and aFairchild Argus. As part of the club's current development pro- gramme, arrangements are being made for flying training up toC.P.L. standard. Instructors at the club, which offers a standing invitation to visitors from other clubs to call in at the clubhouse atElmdon, are Messrs. E. Bradley, F. Walters and R. Smith. A RMSTRONG SIDDELEY Flying Club, operators of Tipsy**• Trainer G-AFSC, are considering the possibility of acquiring a second aircraft. Auster D, Tiger Moth, Tipsy and C.P.Emeraude are being studied. The club's monthly newsletter, edited by C. G. Jaynes and Ruth Sully, now sports a new and distinctivecover. CERVING and ex-Service members of the R.A.F. visiting the*-* Birkenhead district for the Grand Prix d'Europe at Aintree on July 20 will be welcome at the premises of the Royal AirForces Association Motor dub at Alton House, Shrewsbury Road, Oxton, Birkenhead. This is about one mile from theBirkenhead entrance to the Mersey Tunnel; entertainment and refreshments will be available until 10.30 p.m. Akrobats by name and oerobatic by nature: a team of three Z/in 2.226 Akrobats, seen over Oiomouc with hAiloslav Prikryl in the inverted lead. This pilot and these machines are among the Czecho- slovak entries for the Lockheed Trophy aerobatic contest at Coventry. XTEXT week's issue of Flight will contain a number of special^ feature articles on different aspects of gliding, as a foretaste to our coverage of the National Gliding Championships atLasham (July 27-August 5). This year's Nationals are believed to be the largest gliding meeting to be held anywhere in theworld, with more than 70 sailplanes entered to date. Flight articles next week will include a history of British gliding, a pilot'sdescription (with cutaway drawing) of the Slingsby T.42 Eagle two-seater, and accounts of gliding on the Continent, in additionto full advance details of the championships at Lasham. LASHAM Gliding Centre was the scene of an ambitious gliding* feature in the B.B.C. television programme Now on July 3. The sequence included a first glider solo by Raymond Baxter in aSlingsby T-21B, interviews with a number of Lasham pilots, and a varied flying programme (televised from the ground and from aBJLA. helicopter in the air). CHINESE AGRICULTURAL FLYING (Continued from page 40) emulsion, involving altogether over 167 hr flying in 1,207 sorties.Signalling for marking the flight path was done in three ways: by man-carried flags, by flags planted on the ground and by smokesignals. The first was preferable because the flags could be moved about to guide the machine so as to leave no patch undusted.Flags had to be set up where the terrain was difficult of access owing to ditches or other obstacles and smoke signals were onlyused in morning light when flags were difficult to see. A flag code was worked out with a white flag signal for the release of theinsecticide, a red flag to stop it and crossed flags to send the aircraft back for another load. Under conditions with no wind or only a light breeze, the Po-2dusted a width of 100 to 120ft or sprayed a width of 60 to 90ft. A cross-wind was most helpful because it carried the dust andspray farmer and wider and left no seam between the lanes. The best wind seemed to be that at three to six m.p.h. for dusting andthree to seven m.p.h. for spraying. Unless hard-pressed for time, flying was called off when the wind was over eight m.p.h. The dis-tribution of dusts was found to be even, especially when they were dry and fine. An innovation to our dusting installation was the insertion of aplate covering up the lower part of the nozzle duct, which brought a spiral action to bear on the dust. The stream whirling from sucha nozzle would wash the dusts up to both the face and back of the leaves, that from an ordinary nozzle leaving the backs untouched.In spraying, the droplets after release from the apertures were finely atomized and numbered as many as 1,596 per cm3. As a result,every mou received an average of 1.5 to 1.75 kg of 1.5 per cent benzine hexachloride, and 2.3 kg of 25 per cent DDT suitablydiluted. Checks in the field and on insects brought in for observationshowed a 98 per cent mortality of tarnished plant bugs, 95 per cent of bollworms, 88 per cent of leaf hoppers and 86 per cent ofsnout beetles. Parathion dusting from the air killed 99 per cent of the red spiders. At the end of the year, after cotton had beenharvested and sold, the co-operatives reported a net profit of 240,450 jenminpi [a jenminpi=abt. l/6th of a £] from increasedyields of air-dusted crops, after paying the expenses of the operation. Top-dressing of fertilizer on wheat in a trial operation in 1955also brought about an increase of 38.6 catties [2 catties equal 1 kg] in yield per mou, but it has not yet been in productiveoperation. The work done so far is of course only a mite of a job in termsof the colossal requirements of a nation embarked on reconstruc- tion. But we are on the track and an encouraging beginning hasbeen made. It can readily be seen that without the co-operative farms there could be no agricultural flying in China. The smallfarms of individual peasants would never warrant aerial dusting or spraying and the hotchpotch of different crops grown on themwould also render it impractical. Looked at another way, agri- cultural flying is also a very convincing emissary for co-operativefanning, showing the peasants what benefit it brings. The quest for more super- and sub-surface resources and the quickeneddevelopment of industrialization in China are resulting in increased demands for airwork flying and our once scarcely air-mindedpeople are convinced of its value.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
