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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 1122.PDF
120 FLIGHT, 22 July l§o0 Sport and Business OSTIV is the world scientific and technical organization forgliding. One of its activities is the running of a congressat the same time and place as the World Gliding Cham- pionships, which take place in alternate years, and this year'scongress was held in Cologne last month. A total of 160 delegates from 17 countries attended the meeting,divided almost equally into those interested in technical matters (aerodynamics, structures, airworthiness and instruments) and thoseworking in meteorology. Among scientific congresses the OSTIV one is remarkable in that most delegates pay their own expenses.Although the development of soaring has contributed much to scientific knowledge, the contribution is not usually sufficientlydirect to persuade employers or organizations to defray delegates' expenses. The result is that OSTIV is essentially an amateurscientific organization. The Cologne congress lasted two weeks. The sessions wereheld in the fine, new conference halls of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and the delegates lived in nearby hotels. The glidingchampionships, four miles away, could be visited between sessions. The meeting opened with a ceremony in Cologne addressed bythe presidents of the German Aeronautical Society and Aero Club, the Burgomaster of Cologne and the Minister of Economy andTransport. The president of OSTIV responded and announced the award of the OSTIV Plaque for 1960 for the "most noteworthyscientific and technical contribution to the advancement of soaring flight." Five nominations had been received and, after longdeliberation, the OSTIV Board had chosen Boris Cijan of Jugo- slavia. Cijan has devoted more than 25 years to sailplane designand is best known for his Orao and Meteor sailplanes. His unfailing good humour and charm, often in the face of great personaldifficulties, have been of great assistance to OSTIV and its predecessor ISTUS. Typical of the interesting technical papers was one presented byDezso Gyorgyfalvy of Mississippi University. Working with the late August Raspet, he had flight-tested the new Phonix sailplane.The wing section had been designed by Dr Eppler of Stuttgart and flight tests revealed laminar boundary layers back to 90 percent on the top surface and 70 per cent on the lower, giving a glide ratio of 40 to 1. The stalling speed was only 30 m.p.h.(maximum lift coefficient 1.75 for the plain wing), so that this glass-fibre sandwich-built sailplane must be judged a success. British speakers included Peter Davey, inventor of the Crossfellelectric variometer. The rapid response of the resistance of a thermistor had enabled a variometer to be built which wasresponsive to a rate of climb of only six inches a second with a lag of only half a second. The value of this sensitivity and small kgto pilots seeking thermals is obvious. Another British paper by Beverley Shenstone on manpowered flight was of interest to sail-plane constructors because of the common need to find light structures and aerodynamic efficiency at low speed. It may w;]be that research on sailplanes in recent years has, for the first time, made manpowered flight a real possibility. This and other lectures'were greatly helped by the recent gift to OSTIV by Mr Shenstone of the latest Leitz slide projector. Airworthiness. Several sessions were devoted to the problem ofdrafting airworthiness recommendations for sailplanes of the standard (15-metre span) class. Four meetings in four countriesspread over two years seem to have been enough to secure inter- national agreement (this success contrasts with other aero-nautical legal struggles). It does not follow that the FAI will enforce these recommendations, but a code of practice acceptableto the major constructors may well be valuable. Meteorology. Most of the visitors to the meteorological sessionswere professionals but many are engaged in activities rather remote from gliding. The chairman, Dr Joachim P. Kiittner, is an eminentmeteorologist but is also the director of the American Project Mercury for putting a man into orbit about the Earth. He broughtwith him photographs transmitted from the weather satellite Tiros a few hundred miles up. We heard that thousands of photographswere already awaiting analysis and that the analysers were pray- ing for a fault to develop! Nevertheless the meteorologists con-centrated on learning from sailplane experience in mountain waves, and the jet streams linked with them, and in thermal up-currents. There were papers Lorn Great Britain by J. Findlater and C. E. Wallington of the Meteorological Office and by repre-sentatives of Imperial College. There seems to be reasonable agreement between wave theory and practice, but the mechanismof thermal convection still provokes plenty of argument. At the general conference of OSTIV members the followingwere elected for the period 1960-62: president, L. A. de Lange (The Netherlands); vice-president, Dr W. A. Eichenberger(Switzerland); board members, Dipl Ing J. Bojanowski (Poland), Dipl Ing B. J. Cijan (Jugoslavia), Dr W. B. Klemperer (USA),A. H. Yates (Britain), and H. Zacher (W. Germany). Finally, at the closing of the World Gliding Championships,the OSTIV jury which had been examining and flying twelve standard-class sailplanes for several days gave its 1960 award for"the sailplane being the best combination of cheapness, simplicity and efficiency" to the Standard Austria designed by Riidiger Kunz of Austria. ALAN YATES Left, general view at Newtownards, home of Ulster Flying Club. Types comprise Tiger Moths, Auster 5, Turbu- lent and Hornet Moth Right, Ulster Flying Club CFI and secretary Cyril Dash, with D. Kirkpatrick and friend Below left, one of the Ulster Club's Tiger Moths takes off from Newtownards Airport towards the town MEMBERSHIP of the Ulster Flying Club has increased from 30to 150 during the past five years. Based at Newtownards Airport, the scene of the photographs on this page, the club was foundedand is now subsidized by Short Bros & Harland Ltd of Belfast. The airport is situated only ten miles from Belfast but is clear ofcontrol zones and airways. The club fleet, comprising two Tiger Moths, an Auster 5 anda Proctor, operates at an average annual utilization of some 500 hours per aircraft. Chief flying instructor of the club is Cyril("Tubby") Dash, under whose supervision 84 members have obtained PPLs. Twelve of these members have joined Queen sUniversity Air Squadron, two have gained assistant instructor's certificates, eight have continued on to obtain CPLs and four havebecome pilots in the RAF and Royal Navy. Mr Dash also acts as club secretary, while the social facilities of the clubroom are runby the UFC Social Club. In the hangars are housed not only the club fleet and privately owned aircraft—nine club members have
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