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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 1935.PDF
Air-Cushion Vehicle* FLIGHT International supplement, 25 June 1964 ". . . with increasing speed the dust was left behind . . ." Sun Glasses to Snow Goggles Contrasting Environments for VA-2 Trials TWO REPORTS of exceptional interest and value have been received from Vickers- Armstrongs (Engineers) Ltd. They con- cern the operation of the VA-2 in desert conditions and in the rigours of a Swedish winter, and they are reproduced here in full. DESERT TRIALS The 12-month period April 1963 to March 1964 has been a remarkable year for the Vickers Hovercraft VA-2, a year in which it has operated in a variety of environments at home and overseas. The year began on the River Danube at Ingolstadt, Germany, where VA-2 was demonstrated before an audience of senior NATO Officers, in conjunction with the Interservice Hovercraft Trials Unit (IHTU). The next location was Amsterdam, where, apart from the crowded waterway, an interesting feature was the daily run from the maintenance base through narrow gates, along a road and over a railway line. The next important entry in the diary records the fitment of Vickers flexible skirts, fol- lowed by their testing over land and water as a prelude to trials later in the year. This testing, in which the IHTU participated, was carried out first over a salting area on the south coast of England and then over a Service "obstacle course," cunningly arranged to envelop VA-2 in its own dust cloud. After the narrow and congested waters of the European demonstrations, and the confined areas of mud and dust at home, the time had come to move to less restricted and more challenging environments. The first of these was the Oresund, the channel between Malmo and Copenhagen. Here VA-2 was able to show its paces to a wide audience from all the Scandinavian countries, demonstrating not only the ease of transition between water and prepared slipway or, alternatively, sandy beaches, but also how journey-times could be cut by choosing a direct route without the problem of draught in shallow waters. All this has been reported previously, in one form or another. What has not so far been made known is in some ways even more important, since the two final trials of the year achieved something never before attempted, namely, opera- tions over desert and over ice. In the United Kingdom, it is very difficult to find sufficient room to man- oeuvre a high-speed Hovercraft on land. Valuable as the tests over the "obstacle course" in the summer had been, much more room was necessary if a more ambitious trial were to be attempted. Accordingly, and with generous help from various sources, VA-2 was tested in a wide area of hard-surface desert. Although the temperature (in the order of 70°F) was consistently warmer than on any previous trials, it was not high enough to constitute a hot-weather test. Instead, the primary aims were to investigate control problems overland, and to study the environmental effects on the machinery and the flexible skirts. The main area for the trial was a level plain with a hard surface covered by a thin layer of dust, and with occasional slight depressions, interspersed with patches of scrub and small rocks. The scrub, wiry and resilient like a pot- scourer, was about 18in high. There were miniature sand-dunes of similar height in places, but no real dunes in the normally accepted sense. Leaving the maintenance base on a daily run to the area, VA-2 would use its undercarriage in following a road, until the road petered out, when the wheels would be raised. As so often in the past, the wheels were an essential for close- quarter manoeuvring. Beyond the road lay an area where vehicles had churned up the surface into a thick layer of fi"e dust and sand. Even a slowly moving 84
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