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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 2346.PDF
18 September 1959 ..;„..•.•„. .w; side bandstand" (Tuesday) and "director's inkpot" (Wednesday). For the second successive year some were disappointed at the absence of pilots' names in the display commentary—a criticism not of Oliver Stewart but of the S.B.A.C. itself. According to this philosophy, for example, we had just watched "a most pleasant display by the Aiglet." But it was perhaps of some relevance that Ranald Porteous happened to be sitting in the cock- pit at the time. . . . The Navy was now performing its LABS run in the opposite direction to that of Monday—but the bomb- burst stayed right were it was. Near the end of the main runway, towards Laffan's Plain, Flight was on hand to watch the preparations for the demonstration of the Short SC.l, which today was to form the final item on the programme. Hidden by trees from the enclosures, a special plat- form had been erected in a clearing by the Army for this purpose, but there had been insufficient time for a trial take-off to be made before the actual demonstration. Around the machine waited the company's maintenance and flight development men from Bedford, in white overalls and white shirtsleeves. On the plat- form the pilot, Tom Brooke-Smith, hot in his shiny new blue flying suit, was talking with Short directors Hugh Conway and David Keith-Lucas. Nearby were a sprinkling of private cars, fire-tender and crane, and the B.B.C. camera crew's Humber. The aircraft itself incorporated a fringe of ram-air intake gills on top of the fuselage at the forward end of the lift-engine bay, and a cluster of thermocouples around the lift-engine jetpipes beneath the fuselage. The jetpipe scuttles illustrated in Gordon Homer's sketch in Flight last week (the first illustration of the SC.l in its new form) had been removed. With Brooke-Smith in the cockpit and ready to go, the pro- pulsion engine (Rolls-Royce RB.108) was started first, after which air was bled from it to start the four RB.108s used for vertical lift. Chocks were removed, the undercarriage oleos lengthened as lift- power was increased, and the machine rose vertically into a brown cloud of dust, earth and grass blown up by the four tons of very hot thrust from the lift engines. The aircraft moved forward slowly, still carrying its own minia- ture dust-storm, towards the runway. Then, after covering only 200 yards, it made an abrupt landing. On reaching the machine we saw what appeared "to be a rug of coco-nut matting fixed on top of the main lift-engine intake grille above the fuselage. Hugh Conway was the first to realize what had happened— freshly cut grass had been blown up from the ground and, carried by the re-circulating air, had jammed in a solid mass completely covering the intake mesh. "This is one we didn't think of," he commented. Obviously this was a problem which would have been encoun- tered and dealt with had there been time for just one trial take-off :;.., ,._• ...,•_ 245 Three reasons why Farn- borough '59 will be especi- ally remembered: oppo- site, the transcendent flying of No. HI Squad- ron, Royal Air Force; below, the cross-over landing by Scimitars of No. 807 Squadron, Royal Navy; right, the SR-N1 Hovercraft—astonishing, promising, unique, British before the actual attempted display. Although no official com- ment was made it is believed that the pressure to rush the SC.l into an appearance at Farnborough came not so much from the company as from the Ministry of Supply. The transition trials of the SC.l at R.A.E. Bedford had been held up by the problem of nose-up pitching when flying in the speed range of 90-120 kt with lift engines running. This effect was greater than had initially been anticipated from wind-tunnel tests (although more-recent wind-tunnel tests had given a warn- ing indication of the problem), and the solution was believed to be to increase the available elevator angle. This modification had not yet been made, and therefore it was not planned to demon- strate transition at the S.B.A.C. show. Tom Brooke-Smith disclosed at Farnborough that the speed range from zero to 30 kt had been fully investigated at Bedford, and that, from the upper end of the scale, performance was fully satisfactory down to 120 kt. In the gap between 30 and 120 kt he had on occasion flown up to 70 kt and down to 90 kt. Although not mentioned by the company, the problem of the recirculation of hot air into the lift-engine intakes when the air- craft is hovering near the ground must also be a basic problem —whether or nor the air contains freshly cut grass. Uneven tem- perature distributions across the lift-engine intakes could con- ceivably cause a flame-out under certain conditions. Aircraft orders announced on Wednesday included the first executive Viscount 810—to Tennessee Gas Transmission Com- pany; and two Avro 748s for B.K.S. Air Transport. English Electric announced its new missile for the Army (reported in Flight last week); and news was given of Hovercraft developments. Mr. D. Hennessey, deputy managing director of the National Research and Development Corporation, and chairman of Hover- craft Developments Ltd., said that he would be visiting the U.S.A. soon with Mr. Christopher Cockerell, inventor of the Hovercraft,
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