FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1962
1962 - 1923.PDF
FLIGHT International, 6 September 1962 in which their equipment may be called upon to operate. With an airline flying scheduled routes, these extremes are fairly predict able; with Service users, less so. The equipment has to be capable of withstanding changes. Further, a piece of equipment may vary according to the user's requirements; for example, there are 11 variants of the fighter-type dinghy. All this involves a great deal of design work—"we lean very heavily on the design side," says Mr Edwards—and a lot of looking ahead. There is always a time- lag with export orders; according to Mr Edwards, it can take up to three years to negotiate a contract, and even up to the very last minute things may go wrong. He recalled a visit to Finland, and recently Egyptian visitors have been to Godalming: one of the R.F.D. slogans is "Covers the World." The company's cable address is "Airships, Godalming," recalling the days when R.F.D. made barrage balloons. Its activities have come a long way since then, and its list of overseas companies—in Europe, Africa, Austral asia and America—demonstrates the worldwide nature of the company's market and the significance of its place among the air craft industry's exporters. India, Japan and the Continent There is sharp realization at Dowty Rotol of the importance of exports, which account for about one-third of the company's output. Apart from these direct exports to foreign customers, many Dowty Rotol products go abroad in British aircraft sold to foreign air forces and airlines. The sales director, Mr C. J. Wegerif, recently visited the United States, which with Europe is the hottest market for the company's products; and an all-out drive is being made to increase business on the Continent—"putting steam on Germany," as Mr Wegerif put it in a pleasantly mixed meta phor. How is this being done, and what are its prospects of success ? Judging by Dowty's overseas achievements so far, they should be good. In India, Dowty undercarriages are being used on the HF- 24s built by Hindustan Aircraft; years ago, in fact, the Indians were offered a licence to manufacture Dowty equipment. In Japan, there is Dowty equipment on the YS-11. Egypt takes a small amount of Dowty products and possibly will take more. In France, sales are difficult; certainly on military aircraft the French have hitherto tended to use only their own equipment. In addition, as in other countries, the purchase of aircraft products is often guided by political rather than technological considera tions. Germany is Dowty's best market on the Continent, and one thing that makes it so is the presence of a good agent. Such good agents are often technically trained (perhaps at Dowty Rotol) because of the technical nature of the products which they have to sell; but their main function is to provide an introductory and political service, seeing that the right people are contacted in the Federal Ministry of Defence and elsewhere. Dowty then follow up with technical information by their own service engineers. The Germans get along well with the company and have a high regard for Dowty products. In Canada and the United States the Dowty Rotol organization is much bigger, with agents and companies, because of the scale of business involved in such a large market and because of the amount of Dowty equipment in use by American and Canadian concerns, for example on Vickers Viscounts and Vanguards and Grumman Gulfstreams and Fairchild Friendships. Without exports, Dowty Rotol could not survive on their present scale of 5,000 employees; and the future of the aircraft industry in the UK is uncertain enough for all the more urgent emphasis to be placed on the export field. Does the British Government do all it can to foster abroad the products of Britain's aircraft industry? Top executives of Dowty Rotol talk with envy of US Government overseas officials who are virtually salesmen for the American aircraft industry's products. Certainly, British officials are getting better informed about what Britain's industry has to offer, but there still does not seem to be any determined policy about making it known and helping to sell it. Exporting is a continuous business—"you've got to keep at it every day abroad," as a director of Dowty Exports Ltd, Mr H. Newport, put it. It's partly a question of having the right sort of intelligence service, knowing what is going on in other countries 411 Loading a Rolls-Royce Conway into a &0AC freighter. Engines now form Britain's biggest aircraft industry export and having the right sort of equipment there—at the right price —when it is required. Conscious of the major importance of exports, Dowty Rotol have for years had a separate exports com pany; and they possess the technological equipment in their special ized field to back up their sales with first-class products and ser vicing facilities as part of the after-sales service. Ejection Seat Success Story A US Navy commander was in the sales manager's office, visiting the Higher Denham headquarters of Martin-Baker Aircraft for consultation about an ejection seat modification. On a wall in the managing director's office was a coloured drawing showing a historic runway-level ejection at Patuxent River, Maryland, in August 1957. These two occurrences are not unconnected, since it was following the Patuxent River ejection that the then US Secretary of the Navy ordered that all US Navy aircraft should be equipped with Martin-Baker seats, as up to that date a 94 per cent casualty rate had been registered in USN low-level ejections. This big order, coming as it did at a time of cut-back in the British air craft industry, helped to set Martin-Baker on the high road of suc cess which now brings them in a vast annual export business, accounting for well over half the company's annual output; so it can be seen that here is another concern which could not exist with out exporting. Martin-Baker are to equip the first 100 F-l 10s which are being supplied to the United States Air Force, and it may be that this will lead to a larger order. They are "in" on the Dassault Balzac and Hawker P. 1127, and it may well be that their seats will be ordered for the P. 1154. Recently, the company received an enquiry from Indonesia about ejection seats for Mig-ils! Heading Martin-Baker Aircraft is a tough, white-haired little Irishman called James Martin who gets to his office by 8 o'clock in the morning and often doesn't leave it until 9 o'clock at night. Those superbly engineered seats which have now saved getting on for 600 lives, and in which Martin-Baker make everything except the parachute, are his pride and joy, and he runs the 1,000-man firm which makes them with a paternal dictatorship that embraces everything from design work to costing and publicity. James Martin keeps an eye on everything that goes on; his office is very much that of a working managing director, its walls lined with testimonials (like the Patuxent River drawing) and diplomas, the shelves and tables covered with parts, drawings, notes and calculations. When the US Navy had made their big decision about Martin- Baker equipment, the Higher Denham premises were snowed-under with USN fuselages for which they had to adapt seats in the shortest possible time. This was achieved by working Saturdays, Sundays
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
