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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0728.PDF
FLIGHT International, 16 May 1963 701 bility of founding a South African aircraft industry." They added that they were prepared to vest the world rights of the aircraft, on a royalty basis, in the South African company. The group's sales director, Mr J. L. Dracopoli, was in Cape Town recently with Mr G. A. Wardlaw, a local industrialist, who has spent two months in England studying the project. Dornier's One-man Helicopter A complete surprise from Dornier is the announcement and public flight demonstra tion of their Do32 collapsible, tip-driven, one-man helicopter, for which the company claim they already have an airworthiness certificate. It has been developed entirely as a private venture and is offered for civil and military applications in all forms of surveillance, communications and rescue work. It is simple to fly, has excellent autorotational characteristics and can be folded into a container 12ft 6in long, which could be built as a car trailer. Powerplant is the BMW 6012L small turbine, using any of a wide variety of fuels, and driving a centrifugal air gener ator. This supplies compressed air by flexible tubing to a rotary seal beneath the rotor hub and thence by further flexible pipes to the blades. These is no anti- torque system and no mechanical transmis sion as such. Blade attachment is by swivel shafts and flexible metal straps which provide flapping and pitch-change freedom, without drag hinges or snubbers. The com pressed air de-ices the blades. Hanging cyclic stick and normal collective lever are accompanied by rudder pedals operating an aerodynamic rudder in line with the turbine exhaust, and a twist grip to control fuel cut-off and ground idling as well as flight power. Over- speeding can be used to achieve jump take- offs and to use residual energy. The "dead man's curve" envelope is greatly stretched by good autorotational characteristics conferred by a high-energy rotor system with high-lift blades and r.p.m. freedom. Up to five seconds may elapse before collective pitch must be reduced following engine failure. Rotor head design greatly reduces control forces, though lateral control stiffens-up at high speeds, as in fixed-wing flight. The engine is cranked up to self-sustaining speed of 13,500 r.p.m. by manual handle. Assembly from the folded condition takes five minutes. Dornier suggest an ingenious training system whereby a central air generator is connected to several tethered Do32s with a single instructor. Principal data are: rotor diameter, 24ft 7in; fuselage length, 10ft 6in; landing skid track, 6ft 8in; empty weight, 3221b; normal gross weight. 5961b; jump-start gross weight, 7071b; cruising speed, 62 m.p.h.; climb at 37 m.p.h., 788ft/min; cruising range,56 miles; endurance, 50min. Mrs Miller Makes History Mrs Betty Miller landed her Piper Apache at Brisbane on May 12, completing the final stage of her 7,400-mile Pacific flight which began at San Francisco on April 30 (this page, last week). She thus becomes the first woman to make the west- east solo crossing. D.H. 125 Tank Test Since November last year a test fuselage of the D.H. 125 executive jet has been under trial in de Havilland's tank at Hatfield, and it has now emerged with satisfactory results after the equivalent of something like 20,000 flights—two flights a day for 30 years— double the minimum design life. In each test cycle in the tank the take-off loads, pressurization, decompression, gust loads and landing stresses were simulated, and at carefully calculated intervals static tests were imposed up to the maximum figures ever likely to be experienced in flight. Theodore von Karman We record with regret that Dr Theodore von Karman, an aerodynamicist by discipline, and perhaps the greatest scientist the world of aeronautics has known, died on May 7. Born in Hungary in 1881, Dr von Karman went to the United States in 1926 as consul tant for the then newly formed Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Laboratory, of which he became the first director. Ten years later he took American citizenship. During the war years he was chief scientific adviser to the United States Army Air Force, and he Dr Von Karman Surprise Package from Dornier is the Do3Z one-man tip-drive helicopter powered by a BMW 60/2L turbocompressor (see news item). Layout of the air-duct transmission can be seen at right became first chairman of the USAF Scien tific Advisory Board. In 1942 he founded Aerojet-General, one of the world's leading rocket firms, and remained on its advisory board. In 1952 he was instrumental in founding the NATO Advisory Group for Aeronautical Research and Development (AGARD), and was its chairman and president. Associated for many years with the International Astronautical Federation, Dr von Karman played a leading part in the creation of the Federation's International Academy of Astronautics, which came into being at the IAF Congress in Stockholm in 1960. More recently, he was connected with the formation of Astronautics Found ation Inc, an organization intended to pro vide funds for senior scientists and engineers to attend astronautical conferences. In February this year (Flight International, March 7), Dr von Karman received the first National Medal of Science awarded by the US. This was presented to him by President Kennedy for "leadership in science and engineering basic to aeronautics, for distinguished counsel to the armed services, and for promoting international co operation in science and engineering." "George" Bulman We record with regret that Gp Capt P. W. S. ("George") Bulman, CBE, MC, AFC, FRAes, formerly chief test pilot of Hawker Aircraft Ltd and, until his retirement from the aircraft industry in 1945, a director of the company, died on May 6 aged 67. His flying career started in the First World War, during which he was awarded the Military Cross when with No 3 Sqn, RFC. He held a permanent commission after the war and was a Service test pilot, in 1919 joining RAE Farnborough. He was one of the few pilots to fly the Brennan helicopter of 1922, won the Groves Prize for aeronautical research in 1924 and the Daily Mail Light Aeroplane Competition of 1926; but his greatest work was done with Hawker Aircraft, which he joined (when it was H. G. Hawker Engineering Co) in 1925. For 20 years he worked closely with Sir Sydney Camm when the latter was the company's chief designer and in 1935 flew the prototype Hurricane. During the Second World War he was temporarily seconded (1941-42) as Head of the Test Branch, British Air Commission in Wash ington. John Yoxall writes: I first met "George" at the Light 'Plane Competition at Lympne in October 1923, in which he was flying the little Hurricane monoplane entered by the RAE Aero Club. There had been some fuel-
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