FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1963
1963 - 2248.PDF
SUPPLEMENT TO FLIGHT International JULY 1963 Air-Cushion Vehicles DESIGN COMPONENTS • APPLICATIONS COMING DOWN THETRACK at 350 m.p.h. in this issue 2 International News 4 Thames Hoverbus 6 Bell SKMR-1 skimmer Hydro- 12 The Cockerell Papers- Part 5 15 Letters 16 Industry Witor-in-Chief Maurice A. Smith DFC Mitor H. F. King MBE echnical Editor W. T. Gunston 'roduction Editor Roy Casey Managing Director H. N. Priaulx MBE OLUME 3 NUMBER 13 iffe Transport Publications Ltd orset House, Stamford Street, London SE1 •tePhone: Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137) •legutms: Flightpres London Telex inu^i subscriptions om= 18s. Overseas 18s. Canada and USA $3 * Offices 10 ( orporation Street, Coventry «P;one: Coventry 25210 ng Edward House, New Street, Birmingham 2 'eP-one: Midland 7191 J' Dwuisgate, Manchester 3 «P')one: Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595 Bu; fianan Street, Glasgow CI tepiione: Central 1265/6 v * V ork, N.Y. <>mas Skinner & Company (Publishers) Ltd B 'oadway 6 'epiiune: Digby 9-1197 Ihffe Transport Publications Ltd 1963. ™ .ion to reproduce illustrations and eem-St can H 8ranted on'y under written d* Vu .Brief extracts or comments may be uc itn due acknowledgement. DURING A RECENT DISCUSSION at Northwestern University, Illinois, a sociologist and a political scientist remarked that a citizen of Baltimore might spend one or two hours getting to the new Dulles Airport in Vir ginia, another forty-five minutes in flight to Idlewild, and a final hour to Manhattan; and they commented: "A super-speed railroad, like the ones being built in Japan, could cover the same distance in less time and at less cost." They might have looked further ahead to air-cushion vehicles oper ating along special tracks—hover- cars or hover-railcars as they are known in Great Britain, or Levacars to give them the appellation bestowed by the Ford Motor Company, which has done a great deal of work on a similar project in the USA. In a paper earlier this year Mr W. J. Eggington, of Vickers-Armstrongs, said that it was estimated that the hovercar would compare very favour ably with all current vehicles, and would require rather less than half the power of an aircraft at a given speed and for a given number of passengers. He was constrained to add, however: "If this were the whole story there would be no question about the future of the hovercar. Unfortunately, whereas the aircraft is operating from established air ports and the railway train on exist ing railway track, there is no suitable track available for the hovercar. A hovercar operator would have to purchase a considerable amount of land and stand the cost of building the track. If the cost of the track can be kept down to £100,000 per mile and written off over a period of 50 years, the estimated direct operating cost is only about f d per passenger mile, which is an extremely attractive figure. If, however, the track cost is written off over 25 years and is £500,000 per mile, then the direct operating cost would rise to some thing like 2|d." This figure, said Mr Eggington, is rather marginal in com parison with present costs. Meanwhile, this highly attractive mode of public transport is being closely studied by the Technical Group of Hovercraft Development Ltd. Various forms of propulsion are being considered, including the linear induction motor under in vestigation at Manchester Univer sity. A scale model test track has already been built at Hythe. One obvious application would be over a Channel bridge, and in a recent letter to this journal Mr C. S. Cockerell foresaw that in about 20 years' time, when traffic had built up sufficiently to warrant a fixed facility, the bridge would be built to carry all types of surface transport, including hover-railcars. The speed of a tracked ACV has generally been quoted as 300 m.p.h., but in a recent pronouncement Mr Cockerell put it at "300 knots or more"—and that means 350 m.p.h. The runaway train came down the track (the song reminds us) because the air brake didn't hold; and cer tainly some very secure pneumatic system must be devised for the air support of entire trains running at over 300 knots. But that this may become commonplace within ten to twenty years is not the least san guine prospect for air-cushion tech nology.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
