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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0123.PDF
FLIGHT, 27 January 1961 123 Straight and Level A READER sends me the follow- /% ing cutting from The Middlesex J- •*- Chronicle for January 13 with :he comment: "We are regularly treated ;r- correspondence in this paper from the Noise Abatement Society, but I do feel that this one has reached the height of absurdity." Signed by Mr John Connell, hon secretary of the society, it reads:— "Sir,—Professor Powell, i/c Investiga-tions, California University, has proved that engine noise and vibration causesnumerous cracks in the fuselage and loosens rivets in the middle and rear ofjet aircraft. For this reason first-class compartments have been switched to theforward part. "This adds weight to our argument thatplanes should be banned from flying over cities and major airports removed to thecoast; even second-class rivets dropped from 5,OOOft reach the speed of a bulletat ground level! "Note from our statistical department—120,000,000 rivets pass over London daily! "Yours, etc" • A notice in the London Airport North terminal proclaims: — "ONLY TWA HAS CARRIED 2,158,773 JET PASSENGERS MORE THAN ANY OTHER WORLD AIRLINE." TWA, as I know full well, is a very careful airline indeed. But not so care- ful that it remembered to insert a full stop after the word "passengers." • Just announced by AeroneuroticsInc, a small but aggressive new com- pany, is a method of feeding spacepilots in weightless zero g conditions. An extract of snail juice is added to con-centrated food pastes to make them crawl down the pilot's throat undertheir own power. Another product is an especially heavy pep pill which,lodged in the pilot's tonsilectomy scar tissue during orbital flight, will dropdown into his stomach as soon as the rst effects of earth's gravity are felt,IUS arousing him from his boredom to '•' there's one thing that keeps iiettins: in the way of aviation it's trees. Look at the trouble -«r John Zimmerman and his passenger found themselves in when one got in their Piper's way recently in a park at Peoria, Illinois. As for the C-133— ««'1L here's one practising for I lie forthcoming Grand National:|t - Aintree. The Americans -Wdently don't intend to let the Russians have it all their own way, Mrs Topham concentrate on the re-entry problems.Of interest to conventional aviation, another new product by Aeroneuroticsis a collision - warning presentation known as Eye-Winkamatic 670. Thisis a system based on feather-like elements which tickle the right or leftside of the eyeballs to make the pilot look in the appropriate direction to seeanother aircraft on a collision course. The natural sense of operation is, ofcourse, that the eyeball turns away from the direction of origin of the tickle. Theeyes are clamped open to prevent blink- ing and are wiped by an artificial nyloneyelid at predetermined intervals. • Jersey Airlines, introducing theHandley Page Herald in a full-page advertisement in a travel paper, des-cribe these aircraft as "high perform- ance turbojets." Well, at least they don't describe theHerald as supersonic. But how about the claim on the same page that "morethan half of all passengers flying by UK independent airlines on schedulednights over domestic routes now go by Jersey Airlines"? I shall be interestedto see the 1960 statistics, because the figure was less than one third in 1959. And the claim that "nearly a quarterof all passengers flying by UK inde- pendent airlines on scheduled flightsover international routes go by Jersey Airlines"? Here again the I960 figureswill be interesting, because I make it only 12 per cent in 1959. Anyway, good luck to Jersey Airlinesand may their claims come true. • "When the first Air-India 707 wasflown to Seattle for [tail controls] modifications the Boeing company wasnot only impressed with the operational standards but also remarked that theAir-India Boeing was the cleanest and best maintained aircraft that Boeinghad received for modifications."—Mr J. R. D. Tata, chairman of Air-India. STRAIGHT AND LEVEL An Announcement A READERSHIP survey recentlytarried out by a firm of aviationmarket research consultants has pro- duced remarkable statistical evidenceof the steadily increasing importance and influence of Straight and Level inworld aviation affairs. According to this expert analysis,each copy of Straight and Level is read by 11.3 people. Altogether some853,000 questionnaires were sent out, and from the 16 replies received—arepresentative cross-section of Straight and Level's readership—it was esti-mated that 73.2 per cent of readers are overseas, with about the same per-centage in the UK. In each group, 82.5 per cent are inthe air transport industry, 82.5 per cent are in the missiles and space busi-ness, 78.3 per cent are in aircraft and engine industries, 73.9 per cent are inthe Ministries and Services, and 65.2 per cent are in the fruit and linoleummarketing industries. All are high- ranking executives who can influencethe future of YOUR product. Asked for their views on the signi-ficance of these figures, particularly lor Straight and Level's readers andadvertisers, 77.3 per cent of Flight staff members replied '"don't know." • You remember that among my col-lection of "fogey words" recently I included Heathrow—as the name usedby a certain type of person when refer- ring to London Airport. I noted thatsuch people weren't necessarily old fogies. A few days afterwards the Ministerof Aviation, Mr Peter Thorneycroft, decreed that henceforth London Air-port should be known as London (Heathrow) Airport. • From an advertisement in thePersonal columns of The Times, December 28, 1960: — "Italy. Very fast English typistrequired for busy Rome office. Know- ledge of aviation desirable . . ." ROGER BACON
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