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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 1536.PDF
624 FLIGHT, 18 October 19f CORRESPONDENCE The Editor of "Flight" is not necessarily in agreement with the views expressed by correspondents in these columns; the names and addresses of the writers, not for publication in detail, must in all cases accompany letters. Vital Statistics of a TwinI AST week Flight, outlining developments in business flying,J was of great interest to me, and I thought your readers might like to know something about the economics of the Miles Gemini3A that has done such sterling work for Lee Refrigeration, Ltd., including a sales tour earlier this year of 21 countries in Europeand North Africa. The Gemini was the fourth in a line of progressively biggerexecutive aircraft operated by the firm, and has recently been replaced by an Avro 19, to be fitted as a flying showroom [picture,page 492, Flight, September 20]. During the last 12 months, the Gemini flew some 200 hr andthe cost to the firm was surprisingly low, just over £11 2s an hr, or 1/6 an air mile. The fact that Lee have their own airstripadjoining the factory, so avoiding hangarage and transport costs, doubtless helped to achieve this result. In addition, the Lee pilotis actually a refrigeration technician and undertakes flying duties as an offshoot of his main work. His cost to the firm as a pilotis therefore only £1 a flying hour. Other expenses for the year were insurance, £365; fuel, £525; maintenance, landings, etc.,£1,140, giving a total of £2,230. With only 200 hr flown there was little depreciation to takeinto account. Had Lee flown their normal 500 hr, however, depre- ciation would probably have been in the region of £1,000. Butoffset against this would naturally be a greater spread-over of fixed costs such as insurance, in effect reducing the cost of flyingthe Gemini to about £9 6s an hr. In any event, the directors do not weigh the cost where theiraircraft is concerned—prestige value and convenience are far more important. As Air. Frank Purley, our export director, says (hewill shortly be going on the first sales tour with the Avro 19): "Were the cost twice as much, it would still be worth it." Bognor Regis, Sussex. R. E. STEVENS, Public Relations Officer, Lee Refrigeration, Ltd. The Technician and his StatusI CAN only quote, in reply to the anonymous "Twelve AircraftTechnicians" and the thirteenth "Another Aircraft Technician" some lines written by the first Marquis of Montrose. They are: —"He either fears his fate too much Or his deserts are small,That dare not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all."Brighton, Sussex. J. LAURENCE PRITCHARD. A.O.P.A. on the Big Fix AN excellent summary, your leading article "Navigation's Big•**• Fix" in the September 6 Flight. First, though, one quick correction. In your fourth paragraph you say: ". . . but in themilitary/civil partnership the armed forces remained dominant and V.O.R., as a point-source aid, was their favourite. . . ." Notso; the V.O.R. has always been the civil favourite primarily. In the interest of attempting to establish a so-called Common System,the military also concurred. But the original V.O.R./D.M.E. was essentially a civil concept, and was carried forward and installedby our civil authorities. Once we prised the much-abused military-security lid off thehistory of what transpired within the military after the V.O.R./ D.M.E. system has been agreed to, we found our Navy had beenworking on a highly specialized device for the sole purpose of doing a better job of getting carrier-based aircraft back to thecarriers. This was to be the successor to YE or YG or whatever it was called [YG—Ed.]. But when the military engineers gotto studying this Navy system, they saw other possibilities they could design into it. This was Tacan, essentially as we know ittoday. After that, the U.S. Air Force decided it liked the Navy device, and from that point on the V.O.R./D.M.E. system, whichthe American taxpayers had already bought and paid for, was doomed. As you've no doubt noted, A.O.P.A. is especially concernedover the point you yourself have made: that the system in the U.S. now must accommodate both non-tactical and tactical mili-tary aviation. Personally, I regard this change in the original ground rules (a change forced through by our military duringthe Tacan controversy) as perhaps the most damaging single blow to civil aviation in this decade, more damaging than the Tacanfiasco itself. Civil aviation here—and throughout the world, if the U.S. has any strong voice in I.C.A.O.—now is irrevocablytied to the merest whim of the military. And our military are already talking glowingly of Doppler and inertial-guidance system i,the latest developments in the state of the air navigation art. Our Common System concept in the U.S. has been a fallacyalmost from the day the term was invented. The original ide.:'. of course, was to invest public funds in just one basic system 10serve all users of the airspace. The best we can say for the term is that it was invented for reasons of political expediency. Thatwas back in the 1940s, and look what we have in the U.S. at this very moment: low-frequency four-course ranges, non-directionalbeacons, V.O.R.s, civil D.M.E.s (the doomed version), Tacans, Vortacs (one Tacan plus a V.O.R.) and radars. Then, of course,the Common System also is supposed to include landing aids. So we have an ever-increasing number of G.C.A.s, right alongwith a large number of I.L.S.s (which do the same job as G.C.A., but not so well). And so on and on. In reality, the Common System is more like the Great ElectronicStew, with the military forever throwing some new ingredient into the pot. To say that this is giving the American taxpayerindigestion is putting it mildly. The only practical solution—and undoubtedly the most economi-cal in the long run—is clearly and positively to separate the military from the civil. Then the military should be told that, whateversystem they think they can get the money for, must be a system that enables them to fly prescribed airways accurately, and makeposition reports when and where they're told to make them. Thus the basically civil air traffic control system can control theflow of both civil and military traffic together, while the military use whatever new-fangled system happens to serve their purposeat the moment. Washington D.C. MAX KARANT,Vice-president, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Map Riddle from World War IF OR some time past I have been collecting material for thehistory of No. 112 (Shark) Squadron, and amongst the interest- ing things that have been located is a patrol map used by asquadron pilot in the First World War. There are some puzzling features about it and I would be veryinterested to hear from anyone who can explain the following additions to the map (the map itself is an Ordnance Surveyiin/mile, 1912 edition of London and S.E. England). There is a black line drawn from the centre of the Thamesestuary (Shingles Bank) to Thames Haven, thence to a point between Croydon and Coulsdon, then to Cranbrook in Kent, andfinally finishing up bisecting Hastings. I assume that this may be the "patrol area." Within this area (which is roughly the county of Kent) thefollowing airfields are marked in differing colours: Lympne (two concentric circles, red outer, blue inner); Lydd (two concentriccircles, red outer, yellow inner); Detling, Throwley and Bekes- bourne (red); South Ash, Kingshill, Marden, Frinstead, Pluckley.Swingfield and Broad Salts (yellow); Pett, Rye, Leigh Green, All Hallows and Broomfield (blue); and Biggin Hill, Wye and Dover(uncoloured). There is one odd one, Sole Street, marked as a pecked circle and uncoloured. At Hunton there is an uncolouredcircle drawn in blue ink, which is the same way that the airfields outside the "patrol area" are marked—Barnham, Rochford, StowMaries, Brentwood, Joyce Green, Sutton's Farm, Plumstead- Hainault Farm, Chingford, Croydon, Debden, Northolt, Twick-enham, Coulsdon, Chiddingstone and Newhaven. The following places have been underlined in red ink withnumerals added alongside: Dover (6), Lympne (7), Rye (8), Calais (9), Maidstone (10), Chiddingstone (11), Hounslow (12),Joyce Green (13), Debden (14), Brentwood (15), Maldon (16), The Naze (17) and the Girdler Lightship (18). Finally, two "Ground Signal Stations" are marked, one at Pettand the other just outside Margate, and at Harrietsham there is a small rectangle with HQ5 (or HQS) and a triangle. R.A.F. Little Rissington, Glos. R. A. BROWN, Flight Lieutenant. IN BRIEF Mr. Dennis Rush (96 Russell Street, Middlesbrough, Yorks'is hon. secretary of The Tees-side U.F.O. Research Group, a body of interested persons formed to study the phenomena oiUnidentified Flying Objects. Regretting the fact that no official information on the subject has so far been released in this country-he appeals to aircrews (in particular) for evidence.
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