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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 0411.PDF
FLIGHT International, 6 March I9i9 386a Straight and vel As FOR ME, I have never flown an aeroplane that hasn't previously been flown by somebody else. I am not that daft. 1 always feel grateful to the chap who has worked out all those speeds and flap settings and things that I just read off out of the handling notes. What is the check list for an aircraft that has never flown before? I suppose the Concorde pre-flight must have gone something like this: — Flying Controls Check for full and free movement, that drain holes are clear of water, and are you sure that the idea of electrical actuation is all right and that mechanical wouldn't be better? Engine Check oil level, no foreign bodies (or English mechanics) in intakes, and have a look at the rudder area to see if it will be enough in case one engine fails. Wings Check for wrinkles, leading edge dents, and the possible need for a canard foreplane, etc. etc. It's explained in the brochure — No I in a new series Inspired by the curious egg- shaped aeroplane in recent Eagle Aircraft Services ad vertisements, Mr Horace Smith of the ARB decided to make Your Actual Egg Aeroplane. The result is this eggcellent example of aero- modelling. I'm not sure that Mr Templeton would recom mend it for a C of A, nor can I see many hard-boiled airlines scrambling to buy it From the "Glasgow Evening Citizen," August 20, 1968 Andre Turcat, who will pilots gthe Anglo-British plane on itsg % first official test flight laterg • I was talking to an engineer in the British aircraft equipment industry the other day. An American engineer had recently asked him why he thought that British engineers were in general better than American engineers, and why so many British drained-brains had got to the top in USA. 1 have always suspected this to be true. 1 can think off-the-cuff of about a dozen Britons in top positions in US technology, but I would like to com pile a list. Please send me the names known to you—top jobs only, i.e., heads of de partments—and we'll see if we have enough pages in Flight for a. full list. Then we'll show it to Mr Benn so that he can include it in his next speech about what a simply splendid job the Ministry of Technology is doing. • Do you really believe it is' worth wasting more than five minutes asking the airlines whether they will want a particular sort of aeroplane? Even the really professional, trend- Four-seater B/er/ot which carried eight passengers aloft for eight minutes with M Lemartin at the—er, controls. I am not certain of the year—I suppose about 1910 setting operators don't know what they want until its built. Five years ago Mr Ansett told Flight that nobody would ever buy the F.28 (April 23, 1964, page 639). Last week he ordered two. • Amid the deafening roar of airline publicity about massive fare cuts to be offered on the Potters Bar-Keflavik route in the month of February between the hours of 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., with no men tion of the fact that scheduled fares have gone up 100 per cent or is it 200 per cent, harken unto the quiet sanity of Sir Anthony Milward, chairman of BEA. He says, and gad it's about time some body in the airline business said it: "While airlines continue to offer dis counted fares to attract more passengers they become more and more marginal operators . . . Carrying more and more passengers at lower and lower rates is not going to help anyone." But I want you to know that the in clusive-tour package-holiday business does help British businessmen and ex porters—because the prospect of ten days in Keflavik is such a tremendous incentive to their work. • Asked to give the reasons for the delayed first flight of the Concorde, Mr Benn listed: — Air-conditioning system, droop-nose mechanism, the electrical system, inertial navigation system, landing gear and brak ing system, powered flying controls, gas- turbine starter, flightiest instrumentation, and aircrew equipment. Such awful weather, too. jueHW-r- xfaovy.
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