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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0770.PDF
778 FLIGHT, 3 June i9 CORRESPONDENCE ... gone into service with a flight-deck crew which differed fromthat for which they were designed, perhaps one should have some sympathy with designers when cursing them for wrongly allocatedspace and instrument arrangement. Clearly, for quite a number of years on the routes under con-sideration the navigator will have to carry on with the present aids, plus perhaps Doppler and/or Dectra, and continuing hismonitoring and co-ordinating work. The tendency for over- publicized new aids not to come up to expectations in the hurly-burly of airline service must not be forgotten, ao far as a long- range fixing system is concerned, and until something new andreliable appears and can be internationally agreed upon, as an interim measure Consol stations at Cape Farewell, Keflavik, Ber-muda and on the Azores would be a great help—perhaps supple- mented, if and when available, by an improved Dectra system.Aid coverage on the Bermuda - London direct sector in daylight is at present very poor. The ATC problem is (as used to be said of the poor) alwayswith us, and few of us will quarrel with Mr Williams' strictures here. It is stated that the task of designing a new ATC system is"totally unsuited to government departments or to airlines." But who else but the servants of the governments and airlines havethe technical knowledge to produce anything that is even a basis to work on? Short of a 100 per cent accurate heading referenceDoppler cannot be used as a separation system because its errors are peculiar to each individual aircraft. In the case of Dectra itserrors tend to apply to all aircraft to a similar degree. It can be held that the separation minima considered necessary by ATCare governed by the accuracy—or lack of it—of the navigation of the operator having the lowest navigational standards. Some ofthem are believed to have standards tJhat are far too low and the view is held in some quarters that this trend is spreading. Mr Williams lays down a far-from-clear specification for a JuneJune June JuneJune June June June JuneJune JuneJune June JuneJune JuneJune JuneJune 3-4.4-12. 4-19. 5.5-6. 5-6. 5-6. 5-6. 6.6. 8.10. 11. 11-12.12. 12.12-18. 17-18.18-19. FORTHCOMING EVENTS RAeC: London-Cardiff Air Races, Rhoose Airport.Royal Air Force Gliding and Soaring Association: Glidinc Week.German Aero Club: World Gliding Championships, Buti weiler.Champagne Aero Club: International Rally, Rheims. Leinster Aero Club Rally.Frejus - St Raphael Aero Club: International Provenccr Wine Rally.Vichy Aero Club: International European Aviation Meeting. Alsace Aero Club: European Light Aircraft Meeting Strasbourg.RAFA Air Display, Hucknall, Nottingham. Women's Junior Air Corps: Flying Display, White Waltham.Kronfeld Club: Film on Antarctica Crossing. RAeS Rotcccraft Section: "Helicopter Vibration," b Dr J. P. Jones. College of Aeronautics, Cranfield: Public Open Day. AlsoCranfield Society a.g.m. and Dinner. Cholet Aero Club: Touring Aircraft Meeting.International Landing Contest, Brussels. Wolverhampton Aero Club: Competitions Day.International Institute of Welding: Annual Assembly in Liege. Lozere Aero Club: Rally, Mende-Brenoux.West Aero Club of France: 14th International Wine Rally, Angers. long-range navigation system to integrate with an ATC system.Agreed the need is there, but long experience leads me to think that he is crying for the Moon! The not-very-large international band of professional specialistnavigators whose self-developed techniques have helped to make possible the safe navigation of the millions of passengers on thelong oceanic and polar routes, virtually without recognition by both public and the air transport industry are not, I would imagine,unduly worried by the situation. Edgware, Middx EDWARD PALMER AUSTRALIA'S RAIN-MAKING EXPERIMENTS 'T'HE Australian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research•*• has officially announced that five years of rain-making experi- ments from CSIRO and RAAF aircraft conducted in the SnowyMountains area of South-East Australia have been "highly suc- cessful." The chairman, Dr F. G. White, states that Australianscientists have a "sure method" of increasing rainfall by the seeding of clouds with silver iodide from aircraft. This is the first official notice that the Australian system is nowproved. Experiments began in January 1947, when Dr E. Kraus (a Czech who flew with the RAF) and Patrick Squires (an Australianmeteorologist) made the first trial flights. Using a RAAF C-47, they generated their first rain on February 5, 1947. These testswere made with dry ice dropped into the clouds, but the CSIRO soon realized this was a dead-end experiment. Silver iodide insolution was used first in 1951 and has been employed ever since. The Radio Physics Division of CSIRO, which has been respon-sible for all this work, also used an Anson for some years, but late in 1957 they imported two Cessna 310 Bs. Dr E. G. Bowen, the branch head, reports that the experimentshave been successful in the Snowy Mountains area and also in the New England region of Northern New South Wales. Theinduced rainfall in the New England area has actually been greater than in the Snowy Mountains, but it has not yet been practicalto measure the increase there. In the Snowy area, the highest region on the Australian continent, the increase has been adefinite 15 per cent, according to Dr Bowen. In South Australia experiments had resulted in absolute failure, but in the DarlingDowns country of Queensland some success was reported, though measurement was not possible. The Snowy Mountains results had proved that an aircraft couldbe responsible for creating general rainfall over an area of 4,000 square miles under the right conditions. Rain would beginto fall within 30min of seeding. It would not stop until weather conditions altered. The news has been regarded as providential by Australian pas-toralists. If a continuous increase of 15 per cent of rainfall could be induced it could mean a profit of £3,000,000 a year. The Snowy Mountains area is already the centre of enormous hydro-electricdevelopment. The Water Research Foundation says that £3,000,000 would be secured from the greater electric poweroutput and the increased volume of water available for irrigation. The area is ideal for rain-making as it has the necessary weatherconditions, with plenty of the right type of cumulus cloud. These conditions also exist in the Northern Territory's Far North tropicalregion. It is possible that there the CSIRO system could extend the monsoon season. Western Queensland and New England aretwo other favourable areas. The value of these discoveries to Australia may be gauged bythe fact that when a bad drought occurs it can affect 80 per cent of the entire land mass. One single drought period early thiscentury halved the sheep population, which took 20 years to renew. The 1951 drought in Queensland alone cost that State £20,000,000in direct stock and produce losses. When the dry-ice experiments were successful in 1947, Aus-tralians jumped the gun with prophecies. It was then found that so much dry ice was needed for each acre of cloud that the wholething was impracticable. The_ US meanwhile had tried silver- iodide solution; this is burned in a flame to form crystals so smallthey look like a fog. It forms an artificial freezing medium. Rain falls from clouds when they cool enough, as we all know. Thisis a method of inducing that cooling process. The snag is that the method works only on high cumulus massesand these are only found in certain areas. They are unfortunately absent just where they are needed most—over the marginal desertareas, where sheep and wheat today share the thirsty country. Even a very small increase in annual rainfall in those areas, cover-ing perhaps a million square miles of the total 3,000,000, would have the most dramatic results on output. If CSIRO can develop rain-making to the point at which thewheat-sheep marginal areas can secure even a 10 per cent rise in annual rainfall, just another li-2in a year, production would bedoubled. That is an economic reward which could not be paralleled by any other use of aircraft anywhere else in the world. STANLEY BROGDEN HUCKNALL DISPLAY A VARIED programme has been arranged by the Eastern Areaof the RAFA for their sixth annual Whit Monday air display, being held at Hucknall Aerodrome, near Nottingham, on June 6.Items range from RAF and USAF participation to solo perform- ers, including Leon Biancotto in the Nord 3202 he is using forthis year's aerobatic competitions. The RAF "stars" will be the black Hawker Hunters of No 111 Sqn and USAF representationis to include F-100D Super Sabres, F-101A Voodoo and B-66B Destroyer. The airfield is open from 11 a.m. and joy-rides will beavailable before and after the display, which begins at 2 p.m. INTERAVIA'S BIG ANNUALN OW available is the 1960 edition of that classic work of refer-ence, Interavia ABC—the five-language (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish) annual publication of AICMA, theAssociation Internationale des Constructeurs de Materiel Aero- nautique. This world aviation directory, running to nearly 1,3008inX lliin pages, contains over 2,000 new entries, mainly in the field of electronics, and the publishers state that the whole workrepresents a 60 per cent revision of the 1959 edition. It is obtain- able at £4, including packing and postage, from Interavia (UnitedKingdom) Ltd., 149 Fleet Street, London EC4.
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