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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 2236.PDF
PLIGHT International, 26 December 1963 Letters Letters for these columns are welcomed, though "Flight Inter national" does not necessarily endorse the views expressed. Name and address should be given, not necessarily for publication in full. Brief letters will have a better chance of early publication. Built-in Accidents SIR,—Civil Aviation Information Circular 95/1963 sets out in amended form recommended procedures for under taking training in single-engined flying of twin-engined aircraft. Among the special points to which attention is drawn are the facts that "to make sure that switches and fuel cocks are operated in the correct sense, i.e., moved to ON and not OFF. It should be especially noted that switches do not always operate in the same sense; some are UP for ON, and others DOWN." It really is astonishing that such flight safety hazards con tinue to be perpetrated and accepted by designer, certi fication authority and operator alike. As an example of the built-in accident, the adjacent location of fuel cock and heater control operating in the opposite sense caused at least one inadvertent landing on the Bristol Sycamore helicopter. Although as a member of an equipment manufacturing company I realize that there may be instances where it is impossible to achieve standardization of cockpit control operation, there is much that could be done in this field. Surely it is time that a positive agreement in the direction of electrical switch operation should be reached andstandard- ized on all types of civil and military aircraft. So long as such agreement is lacking, so long will there be a potentially high hazard for faulty operation by a genuinely confused crew. As usual in today's aeronautical melee, it is not the technical problems which cause difficulty, but the adminis trative ones. Farnham Royal, Bucks p. A. HEARNE [UP for ON is universally accepted now, even in the RAF, but old equipment may still not conform. Britain has for long held out against the Continental preference for UP for ON in domestic switching as well.—Ed] Non-IR Pilots for Airways? SIR,—I would like to refer to Mr E. W. Clapshaw's letter in Flight International for September 12, 1963. I would have replied earlier but initially I waited to see whether any other correspondent might call for further information regarding Mr Clapshaw's assertion that one may fly along an airway provided one has the airway frequency and visibility adequate for map reading. In the meantime I have telephoned the Pinner telephone number quoted in Mr Clapshaw's letter and requested con firmation of this facility to fly along airways; that is, as a PPL holder without an IFR rating, but with an aircraft equipped with the necessary aids. I have spoken to several officials at Pinner and I have been promised written con firmation, or rebuttal, of the assertion. Despite the promises, however, I have not received any written answer. I would, therefore, be grateful if Mr Clapshaw would be kind enough to indicate where he has read that the indicated use of airways is available to pilots of light aircraft who have not an IFR rating. It is a sore point with me that the lower levels of airways are not available to PPL holders. There are instances where it is advantageous to fly at the lower levels of some airways in order to obtain a satisfactory terrain clearance. There are very, very many instances when it is an advantage to fly at, say, 5,000ft along the lower level of an airway and 1035 be VMC on top. even if the VMC on top ruling is not officially any longer operative. I have for a long time felt that the special VFR clearances that one can obtain, de pending of course upon traffic conditions, should be applic able to airways which, to my interpretation, come into the general classification of controlled air space. I would be pleased to see any comments in your columns from Mr Clapshaw or other readers who may be in a position to quote chapter and verse on whether or not such flights can be made. Birmingham 9 E. F. ALLCHIN Soviet Rocket Tests SIR,—Mr Gatland's article "Moon Race—on or off?" Flight International, November 14) calls for a definition of the term "penultimate stage." It seems to me that in Mr Gatland's opinion a dummy final stage of a three-stage launching rocket changeable into a four-stage vehicle should be called a penultimate stage. In other words, a final stage is a penultimate stage if it suits his purpose. Since the Soviet Union never revealed what happened with the final stages of their rockets tested over the Pacific, we should turn for clues to eye-witnesses who saw objects burst into flame in the atmosphere near the impact areas. One of these witnesses, I recall, was the pilot of a Qantas airliner. An account of what he saw was published at the time by Australian newspapers. This is a fine subject for an exchange of views between Mr Gatland and the author of Flight International's annual missile reviews, who last year began to separate the real from the unreal, the visible from the invisible. Rotterdam, Netherlands J. A. REDEKER A Plea for the Lifting Body SIR,—I only recently came across your September 12 article "The M-2 Flies" and I would like to comment on the remark "the M-2 has only a marginal bearing on today's aeroplanes." While the M-2 has only a marginal bearing on the orthodox conventional designs it is most significant in that it proves the lifting-body theory first reduced to practice by Texan Vincent Justus Burnelli in 1921. The Burnelli lifting-body principle of design calls for the embodiment of a lifting-body fuselage with appendages for appropriate stability and control grouped in such a manner as to maintain closest possible conformity to the ideal ellipse, only varying for mission application. This practice was employed in eight different Burnelli airplanes and one Burnelli-type glider between 1921 and 1946 and each vehicle proved to be highly successful and superior to its conventional counterpart. Burnelli never achieved mass production on any of his aircraft, but the reasons were non-technical in nature and reflect what will probably go down in history as America's greatest aviation tragedy. The facts are that today's transport aeroplanes are inherently unsafe, uneconomical and lack utility. Com petent analysis will show that modern Burnelli aircraft place approximately 60 per cent of the aircraft structural weight around the passengers and divorce the powerplants and landing gear from close proximity to the fuel tanks. Spanwise loading is assured. These features, coupled with take-off and landing speeds of 60-70kt, make for the near ultimate in safety. Simultaneously, for any given power, the Burnelli will provide improved cruising speeds while offering vastly increased payload, volume, floor area and truck-level loading facilities. Though the air transport industry's basic needs are still in the subsonic area the supersonic and hypersonic arena points a demanding finger at the Burnelli lifting-body principle of design. As early as 1959 Dr R. R. Jamison of Bristol Siddeley made the profound observation: "Current jet liners already flew as fast as possible without incurring the severe drag penalties associated with transonic flight with conventional airframes. In effect, designers were up against what was virtually a discontinuity in aerodynamics."
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