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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0037.PDF
THURSDAY 11 JANUARY 1962 Number 2757 Volume 81 Editor-in-Chief ft U RICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. F. KING MBE Technical Editor W. T. GU NSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News 38 de Havilland D.H.121 Trident 41 Rationalize and Forget? 48 Straight and Level 51 Hustling 52 New Year Honours 54 Industry International 56 Sport and Business 59 Service Aviation 60 Missiles and Spaceflight 61 Letters 6 7 Air Commerce 68 •litre Transport Publications Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1. telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137). Telegrams Fhghtpres London Telex; Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5. CaBada and USA $10.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at New York, N.Y. Branch Offices Coventry: 8-10 Corpora tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham: King Edward House, New Street, 2; telephone Midland 7191. Man chester: 260 Deansgate 3; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 359a. Glasgow: 62 Buchanan Street CI; tele phone Central 1265-6. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner & Co (Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd, 1962. Permission to reproduce illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 Danger—Slush NOW that the slush season is upon us the Ministry of Aviation's safety experts have been warning operators about the hazards of taking off and braking in thawing snow and water. These hazards, it can be said without over-dramatization, are much greater than was assumed even a year ago. Perhaps half an inch of slush is now the limiting depth beyond which take-offs and landings would be imprudent. Last year the Ministry published a table of aircraft types indicating the slush depths in which take-offs were considered inadvisable (Flight, January 20, 1961, page 97); and American FA A tests with a Convair 880 at Atlantic City a few weeks ago suggest that slush drag is far higher than had been thought, particularly—a surprise, this—with bogie under carriages. Apparently it had been expected that the front wheels would clear a path for the pair behind; whereas, in fact, the spray impinging on the rear pair seems to increase, rather than diminish, drag. Also, spray from the nosewhcels produces more drag than had been expected. Taking an aircraft as a whole, it might not be an exaggeration to say that drag is 50 per cent higher than was formerly believed likely. It was also apparent from the 880 tests that "aquaplaning" caused braking distances to be perhaps as much as doubled; and a surprising discovery was that when speed is decreased (for example, after an aban doned take-off) aquaplaning continues down to quite a low speed. It is not easy to put a precise measure on the danger-depth of slush. Not only is it difficult to measure in itself (how in practice does one measure the depth of slush throughout the length of a two-mile runway ?); but it is also the case that the hazard varies with the type of aircraft. Nobody Knows What is needed is a long, perfectly flat runway which can be flooded to a variety of reasonably precise depths and used for experiments with a selection of aircraft types. It might have to be specially built and could cost as much as £|m; no decision to go ahead has yet been taken. Meanwhile the Ministry, it is said, is planning to conduct experiments on the long runway at RAE Bedford; and the installation of plastic dams to contain water at the desired depths is believed to be in hand. It is hoped that, perhaps by the end of February, experiments will start, first with a specially instrumented jet aircraft, and subsequently with transport types using the same instrument package. The conditions experienced may or may not prove representative; nobody yet knows. Is it not possible to use the facilities that are provided by nature herself? Though the situation is changing fast even as these words are written, it may well be that slush conditions will persist long enough at an airfield—say, Stansted—relatively little used and with a long and reasonably flat runway. If the Americans consider it worthwhile to go to the expense of laying 400 tons of man-made ice on a runway at Atlantic City (inci dentally in 70°F weather), could not the Ministry grasp the opportunity of experimenting with the real thing, which nature is providing free of charge? Of course, such tests would be at the mercy of the weather's fickle perversity, and could not easily be controlled. It may be that £Jm spent on a special runway will prove to be money well spent in the cause of safety. At any rate, warnings have gone out from the Ministry to the operators (incidentally, through the new and useful channel of the Flight Safety Committee) about the hazards which the Munich accident three years ago first highlighted.
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