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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0125.PDF
FLIGHT International, 25 January 1962 125 Q£) Straight and Le v THE National Aeronautical Corpora tion of Ambler, Pennsylvania, better known as Narco, has built up an impressive record of design and production of small radios for light aircraft. One of their best-known units is the Omnigator VHF com/nav radio; and Narco decided to give away the 20,000th Omnigator free when it came off the production line last year. The lucky buyer would only know he had the 20,000th unit when he sent his secretly marked guarantee card back to the factory—but he has never sent it. Somebody, somewhere, does not know that Narco are holding $1,099 for him. Apparently less than a third of the people buying Narco radios send in their guarantee card and avail themselves of the free service to which it entitles them. But the point that intrigues me most is that no less than 20,000 of these Omnigators have now been built and delivered to the light aircraft market. • A company in Connecticut tells me how stainless-steel O-rings have been found much better than those of another type in the Viscounts of United Air Lines. It seems that "The problem involved the sealing of the crankcase breather outlet connection . . ." I had always admired Rolls-Royce for beating the world with the Dart turboprop, but I had never previously suspected that it was really a camouflaged piston engine. • It takes time for a pilot to react to, and take action on, an audible or visual emergency warning in the cockpit—about 12 seconds, according to Northrop scien tists. So they set about devising a warning that would make B-58 Hustler pilots quicker off the mark. The pilot will hear an attractive girl's voice in his headset, telling him he is in trouble. If he is in more than one kind of trouble, her voice will tell him about the most serious one first. Reaction time is cut by 75 per cent, to three seconds. If the girl's voice is too attractive, I suppose, reaction time could be at least double, if not infinite. • Top marks to Luton Corporation for the way it is selling its airport to the air transport industry. A new British indepen dent airline, Euravia, has decided to make its base at this municipally-owned airport 30 miles north of London, and KLM has decided to use it as a London alternate for Viscounts. Full marks, too, to Liverpool Corpora tion, for the way it is promoting and at tracting business to its municipally-owned airport: "Imagination, foresight and enter prise are making Liverpool Airport the most Parking on the George Washington Memorial Highway near Arlington, Va, is of course an offence; but you can do it if you are in a US Army Vertol H-21 which has engine trouble. Now if they'd laid out this highway a few yards more to the right it wouldn't have had to park in such a crazy place. Passing thought of passing sedan: Where is everybody1. efficient airport in the North-West" de clares a newspaper advertisement. Coventry, too, is issuing attractive bro chures on its civic airport, saying: "It is the aim of the corporation to provide all the amenities usually associated with an airport and to encourage its increased usage." Meanwhile, at London Gatwick, at least two British independents I know of are being made to feel that the provision of office accommodation and hangarage is a special concession. A foreign airline, Trans- Atlantic, has packed up and departed in disgust, and BEA and Air France are to discontinue Paris services from Gatwick. All those dreadful don't-do-this, don't-do- that notices to passengers still haven't been torn down; and the observation deck on top of the pier—potential revenue—is still barred to the public. Gatwick last year achieved the financial miracle of losing £lm on revenues of £|m. And Britain's state-owned airports as a whole, if you look at their finances closely, lost not £4m as declared, but more like double. I hope the day is not too far off when all Britain's airports are promoted as imagin atively as those at Luton, Liverpool and Coventry, and that the customers will be made to feel welcome at every British airport. • Sir Matthew Slattery, chairman of BOAC, makes very few public statements; the few that he does make, therefore, are obviously well worth considering. He said in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, last week that there would be no appreciable drop in air fares for at least another ten years. This was because competition was forcing major -airlines to introduce larger and faster aircraft too quickly. And by 1970, he said, BOAC would be forced to introduce supersonic airliners. Everything that Sir Matthew says is only too likely to prove right. But should we just shrug off these lunatic things as in evitable? Ought not we all to be saying— even if we fear otherwise—that there will and must be fare cuts, that there will not and must not be supersonics until sub- sonics are thoroughly digested ? If BOAC's traffic increases each year by 15 per cent, the corporation will still find itself with a surplus in 1966-67 of 12 Boeing 707s or ten Super VClOs. How many surplus aircraft will there be if a 15 percent growth is not achieved, which it may not be without appreciable fare cuts? For Your Aerodynamics Notebook # From a brochure about the Cessna 210: "Its high wing puts the 210's center of lift above its center of gravity. The benefits inevitably follow. Illustrate this for your self: pick up a pail full ofwater by the handle. It's easy to carry without spilling . . . because the center of lift (the handle) is above the center of gravity (the contents of the pail). "The same principle applies in airplane design. That's why your 210 is designed with a high-stability wing. So you can ride in the stabilized 'comfort zone' below the center of lift ... so that you can sit in the shade and see the scenery below instead of sitting in the sun and looking at the wing. It's nature's design—ask any bird!" Ask any Cessna 310. ROGER BACON
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