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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0147.PDF
FLIGHT, 31 January 1958 151 Straight and Level • Where lies Truth, if not at the bot-tom of her well? Leonard S. Hobbs, an engineer whom I respect very highlyindeed, and who is now chairman of United Aircraft, has taken some troubleto point out that Whittle was not neces- sarily first in the turbojet field; he isinclined to give the palm to the Ger- mans. Of the latter nation's gas-turbinemen the first in the field was von Ohain; he had his first engine running by March1937. The first Whittle unit, the U-l, was running the following month. But one could argue that both werepreceded by Lysholm, the famous Swedish turbine firm, who conductedextended gas-turbine trials during the late 1920s and ran a turbojet—intendedfor aircraft propulsion—in 1934. And, of course, there is always Rene Leduc. Suppose someone takes his couragein both hands and states flatly that Mr. X was the first man to run an air-craft jet-propulsion engine; I'd be delighted to prove that it was Mr. Y. • Everyone knows that more transportaircraft work capacity means more earn- ing capacity. But an awful lot of non-sense is written and spoken about the relationship of greater work capacity toeconomy. I have just been treated to a comparison between the work capacityof the new jets compared with the air- craft which they will replace—presum-ably aimed to indicate that, ipso facto, the big jets will earn much greaterprofits. Just because a vehicle produces more it doesn't mean that it produces it more cheaply. Nor is all that it produces necessarily sold. • When you don't know the real desig- nation of something, it's a good idea to identify it by a code name: hence NATO's names for the Russian aircraft of today. The same idea was used, suc- cessfully, in the Pacific in World War 2, when Japanese aircraft were given boys' names (fighters), girls' names (bombers) and so on. But the titles were never derogatory, unlike the U.S. appellations "Crate," "Fagot" and others. Perhaps cold wars make one ruder than a shoot- ing war. • Conversation with Canadian: — Self: "How did you find that T.C.A. Viscount?" Canadian: "Well, I didn't think it was all that quiet; I was sitting right by the props and I thought it was quite noisy. You know what I think—the Viscount's like the Volkswagen, everyone thinking it's terrific for no reason except that everyone else does." Self: "How do you start making everyone think you're terrific?" Canadian: "Um . . . yeah, well, I guess you just have to be that much better than anything else." • The designers of the Vickers VC.10and of the Bristol 200 have indepen- dently decided upon the T-tail. Thereare three reasons: (1) because it is the best scheme, (2) any other scheme wouldnot be as good, and (3) because—I now realize—of the beetle influence. The picture shows M. Charles deRouge, a French engineer, who has been studying the aerodynamic geometry of beetles—such as the one he is holding—with a view to improving the stability of aeroplanes. M. de Rouge is not fool-ing : he has been working on this project for 30 years. • Making models for high-speed tun-nels is a time-consuming job. In view of automatic control of machine tools—always just around the corner—how about punching out a set of cards ortape, or whatever it is, for the model, and getting the right shape straight off?Then you merely modify the tape to suit tunnel results, and finally insert asuitable scale-factor to make the full- size prototype. Later mods, are broughtin merely by posting a corrected length of tape to wherever the big skin millshappen to be. • Bob, an American friend of mine,recently came across a whole mass of his old cheque-stubs, and in no time losthimself in a sort of orgy of sentimen- tality. There was the stub for the chequethat paid for his first term at Aviation College (there are lots of those in theU.S.) . . . this one was for the peram- bulator for his first baby . . . and thisone was for a U.S. Army Air Corps mess bill. I had a similar experience last week.Looking for a book, I discovered one of my old "half-million" air maps—it wasmy own favourite, most-used, much- thumbed sheet. In no time I was livingit all again. There were all the names I had forgotten . . . and "10 deg 30 minW (1942) . . . hundreds of pencilled lines ... old signs, marginal notes, anno-tations galore—even a beloved coffee stain, dating from a very rough trip inan Anson. Take my advice, you pilots and navigators: never lose or destroyyour old maps. Grandchildren in 1987 will be even bigger sceptics than thoseof today. • Go into any technical office in theworld and this sort of thing happens: — Self: "What's that hole in the innerskin for?" Man Who Ought To Know: "Oh,er . . . can't remember offhand, but I seem to remember it was . . . um . . .perhaps I could drop you a line on that." The funny part is, of course, that afteryou've gone, the whole office have a panic-stricken search to try to find outwhat the hole was for; and nine times out of ten nobody can remember. Iknow one production item whose price was appreciably reduced by cutting outa pair of forged lugs, simply because nobody could remember what they werethere for. • One of the fundamental characteris-tics of the gas turbine is that it handles its working fluid (mostly air) at a greatrate. Air rushes in at the front, fuel is squirted in at the mid-point and hot gascomes out at the back. What's left inside? Just a trace of carbon. A roughcheck shows that only 0.00000001 per cent of the total throughput is left be-hind inside the engine as residue. Not worth worrying about? On the contrary,it can have a significant effect on engine performance. As a corollary to the above one canpoint out that the 0.00000001 per cent ratio is considerably upset by nuts andbolts coming in at the intake. Either they stay quietly inside the engine andmultiply the ratio by a few million, or most of the blading pours out of the jet-pipe; the result is then a negative quantity. • For the sake of readers in Italy itis worth correcting a wrong impression which a recent article in an Italian aero-nautical paper may have created. This impression is that "Project Vulcan,"American G.E.'s fast-firing aircraft gun (as fitted to the Lockheed F-104A), ismerely a revolver cannon like our Aden, America's M-39 or the pioneer Ger-man MG-213C. In fact, as far as recent fighter weapons are concerned, Vulcanis quite a new device. It has six barrels and operates on the familiar Gatling-gunprinciple. Nothing new under. . . ? • When your product is not selling too well, while that of your rival is, a morale- boosting free-lunchmanship ploy is to say: "Not only is there a market for both types, my dear chap, but there is even room for a third." ROGER BACON
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