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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0438.PDF
446 FLIGHT, 6 April 1961 SPORT AND BUSINESS Private View BY P.P.O. SOME people like flying, some like sailing. Airmanship andseamanship seem to call for very much the same qualitiesof mind and character. If you fly for fun, you have the choice of gliding or power flying.It is difficult to keep a business appointment in a glider, but it is the greatest fun. Power flying, pleasurable to a lesser degree unless youfly something light and sporting like a Turbulent or a Nipper, does at least sometimes allow you to believe it when you tell yourselfyou are doing it for the time it saves. People who sail, with or without the assistance of a motor, ormotor at sea, with or without the assistance of sails, make no claim that their hobby is for any purpose other than pleasure and health.Francis Chichester, significantly a member of the Royal Aero Club as well as of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, made no claim that hissingle-handed crossing of the Atlantic was for any other purpose but for health, to gratify a desire, and to appeal to his ratherexceptional sense of humour. So it is of no little interest that an attempt is being made to form aSeaplane Club, led by such stalwarts as Lankester Parker, Chris- topher Paul and Francis Chichester. It could well be the answer forthose who love the air and the sea. Flying a seaplane, 1 am told, is rather more difficult, especially when it comes to landing and takingoff, than a land plane. And "boots'" do reduce the performance of the ordinary light aircraft. But its attractions make one's mouthwater. In the good old days Shorts and Saunders-Roe found no difficulty in designing and making an aeroplane with both wheelsand floats. One of the problems of yachting these days is to get to your boatat a weekend, and to get home afterwards, and still leave a piece of weekend in the middle. With an aeroplane things are usuallygreatly simplified, and cruising grounds which are normally only possible during the annual holidays become within reach allthrough the summer. But everything turns on landing grounds. Apart from the RoyalCorinthian at Burnham before the war, I know of no yacht club that has near it a landing ground close enough to the sea forpractical purposes. The RAF is unco-operative, especially at weekends. Ipswich is probably the best, but what a chance for aflying club to start a yacht station, or a yacht club a flying field! And what a halcyon weekend a member of the Seaplane Club mighthave if he could land his light aeroplane within easy reach of the seaplane base, and spend his spare time sailing. Apart from theaddition of a few dancing girls if you are inclined that way, you could scarcely ask for more. • • • Notam No 51 is going to give private pilots something to thinkabout—if they can understand it. It appears to mean that, apart from entrance funnels into and the circuits of Fair Oaks, Denhamand White Waltham, the whole of the London Control Zone, which covers over 250 square miles of the most valuable andimportant part of England from the ground to 11,000ft—about 2£ billion cubic yards of air—has been appropriated by the Ministryfor the benefit of one section of the community, i.e., those who travel by scheduled airlines. By what right they do this they do notexplain. To say, as they do, that private pilots may be allowed to cross the zone if they have radio, if the traffic permits, and if thecontroller happens to be in a good mood, does not alter the fact that an enormous area of airspace has been filched from the generalflying public. No doubt they excuse themselves on the grounds of safety.Private pilots would be perfectly happy to keep below 1,500ft and well away from London Airport so that airliners could take off, land, and get on their way without looking out at all, and still bequite safe. But the wretched private pilot is not considered at all, and his country's air, which 1 suppose he pays for like other tax-payers, is stolen from him for the doubtful benefit of the already subsidized national airlines. Yet, talk to the average airline captain. I know a number ofthem. Some fly light aeroplanes as a hobby and for relaxation. Not one of them will tell you that he has any serious worry aboutthe infinitesimal risk of colliding with a blind man flying a little aeroplane. Indeed, all the statistics prove that when you take off ona scheduled flight, whatever your chances may be of coming to a sticky end, they are certainly not affected by the risk of hitting alittle aeroplane. ' 'A member of the Seaplane Club might spend his spare time sailing. Recently I went on a trip to Australia, in the course of which wecircuited the globe, mostly in giant jet airliners. Any public anxiety, I noticed, apart from when the next meal was due, wascaused entirely by the strange noises set up by the flaps, the wheels going up and down, and the reverse thrust on landing. The publicinstinct, which I think was right, was that here was a highly stressed piece of machinery which might easily go wrong. We never saw alight aeroplane, and it never crossed our minds that we might. Elephants, I suppose, can be scared by fleas, but it is scarcelyup to our Ministry boys to pander to these fears, even if they exist, which I don't believe they do. On the legal question of the freedom of the air, and who owns it,no doubt it is a question which our jurists will be thinking about. I have a house and a bit of land in the London Control Zone. Do Ihave any rights to the air over them, I wonder? What a pity it all is. Those of us who fly regularly know thatthere is plenty of room for everybody in the air, and that we can all enjoy it and go about our business without interfering with orendangering our neighbours. All we need is a little common sense, tolerance, and knowledge of the job. NOW FLYING IN FRANCE is a novel home-built helicopterpowered by 65 h.p. Salmson engine. Main points of interest are that the rotor has no cyclic-pitch control, and that lateral control isby displacing the rotor centre sideways by tilting a parallelogram mounting. Fore-and-aft control is by fore-and-aft tilting of therotor axis. Collective pitch is presumably variable. Tail rotor pitch is also fixed, thrust variation being achieved by tilting the plane ofthe rotor on a horizontal axis. An indistinct photograph appears to show a multi-belt drive from the horizontally mounted engine tothe base of the main-rotor shaft, with a straight shaft from the rear of the engine to the tail rotor. The designers consider that single and two-seat versions, respectively with 90 h.p. and 110 h.p.engines, could be made quite cheaply. Gross weight of the present prototype is between 350 and 360kg. JAMES HAMILTON has been appointed chief flying instructorto the Herts and Essex Aero Club at Stapleford Aerodrome, in succession to Neville Browning. Mr Hamilton, formerly CFI ofLondon Aero Club at Panshanger, has 7,000 hours' flying experi- ence, including 5,000hr as an instructor. The Herts and Essex Aero Club has adopted as its motto a Latintranslation of the slogan "The Sky is our Playground" by the
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