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Aviation History
1977
1977 - 0067.PDF
FLIGHT International, 8 January 1977 61 Letters Ops advice for PPLs SIR—Edmund Bewley's suggestion for a private pilots' operations manual (Flight, December 25) could well be valuable for a flying club which oper ates only a small number of different aircraft types. Indeed, same clubs have them in the form of their pilots' order books. But I suspect that a manual intended for use by all pilots in the light-aviation world might turn out to be of little practical use when it was most needed. After all, the commercial operator's operations manual is specific to one type of air craft. For areas which are amenable to general advice the CAA issues an Aeronautical Information Circular. Recent examples include AIC 66/1976, dealing with aerodrome operating minima for private pilots, and 110/ 1976, dealing with the take-off, climb and landing performance of light general-aviation aircraft. Aeronauti cal Information Circulars are obtain able from the Aeronautical Informa tion Service (AIS1), Tolcarne Drive, Pinner, Middlesex HA5 2DU, and they can also be seen at virtually all aerodromes and flying clubs. We are always willing to consider ideas for new subjects for Circulars. Please send suggestions to me at this ad dress. Room 715/6, B. K. DREW Civil Aviation Authority, Aviation House, Kingsway, London WC2B 6NN Non-supercritical VariEze SIR—Your analysis of the Grumman Gulfstream III (Flight, December 4), is somewhat premature in implying that the supercritical technology of the GUI has been demonstrated by the Rutan VariEze. True, the Vari Eze has the Grumman design's Whit- comb winglets, but it does not use a supercritical wing. Even if it did, the Reynolds number and Mach ranges of the two are different. The VariEze could then only demonstrate the lower end of the Gulfstream Ill's speed range, but it was for improved cruise performance that supercritical technology was adopted by Grumman. The VariEze, an outstanding ex ample of aerodynamic efficiency, in corporated winglets for drag reduc tion. Its usefulness as a supercritical technology demonstrator, is however, somewhat limited. Savannah, RICHARD DEMEIS Georgia, USA Correspondence for this page should be addressed to the.Editor, Flight International, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LU, and marked "For Publication". Letters should preferably be no more than 300 words long. Letter of the week SIR—Your comments on the CAA statistics (Flight, December 11) proved how misleading and argu able figures can be. British Air Ferries appears to employ 50 per cent of all the lady pilots in the UK; our Caroline Frost must be 100 per cent of all the four-engined lady captains, as well as the youngest (and best looking) at just 26 years old; and glamorous Claire Roberts repre sents 50 per cent of our lady pilot total, and 33-3 per cent of the UK's tally of distaff first officers. To compare our expenditure per head with that of British Airways is meaningless—it is what the two concerns produced that counts. Last year our two airlines (TMAC and BAF) made over £1 • 25 million net profit after depreciation and realistic interest charges, while British Airways made a massive loss despite loans at rates no private airline could obtain. My father once told me: "Buy for £1, sell for £2, and be content with your 100 per cent profit." I think he had the right idea. Southend Airport, T. D. KEEGAN Essex (Chairman) Democracy and the unions SIR—The December 14 letter on aero space nationalisation from Mr Tom Crow of the Civil and Public Servants Association calls for a response from the "reactionary" 40 per cent of the aerospace work force (the non-union staff) to whom he refers. • The Nationalisation Bill, by depriv ing the 40 per cent of the right to be consulted, is anti-democratic, and any measure to steamroller it through Parliament can only compound anti- democracy. •• Mr Crow apparently assumes that only TUC-affiliated unions can be con sidered as organised labour. The 40 per cent includes a large proportion of members of registered unions which are not TUC-affiliated. These workers are disenfranchised by the "Benn regime". • The present managers of the aero space industry are almost exclusively ex-workers, and a good proportion have been active unionists. Mr Crow's attack on the integrity of those who have succeeded by their ability and application is completely unjustified. • The Government dogma that TUC affiliation is the sole passport to worker rights is a major obstacle to industrial peace and prosperity. Is the aerospace industry to slide into oblivion for the sake of such dogma? British Aerospace EDWARD BRIGGS Staffs Association, Harpenden, Herts The case for Stovl SIR—In his letter in Flight for December 18 Brian Phillipson questions the need for Stovl (short take-off and vertical landing) perfor mance in the aircraft that is to re place the RAF's Harriers) and Jaguars towards the end of the 1980s. He accepts the requirement for STO but not for VL. Unfortunately, the weather in Central Europe precludes the opera tion of heavily-laden ground-attack aircraft from grass for much of the year. Moreover,, even a "clean" Harrier carrying out a RVL (rolling vertical landing) at 50kt on wet grass takes several hundred yards to stop and is then prone to bog down while taxiing on soft ground. Mr Phillip- son's proposal to operate Stol air craft from the grass areas of an air field that has had its runways des troyed is not therefore practical as an all-weather solution. The main advantage of a Stovl air craft such as the Harrier is that it can operate from either an airfield or a dispersed site. For the latter, VL is almost certainly indispensable. While low-speed landings at about lOOkt into some kind of mobile arrester gear would be feasible under certain conditions, the enforced use of narrow roads, the presence of vertical obstacles on a pre-set approach path of about 3°, strong crosswinds (particularly tricky on wet cambered surfaces), the need for accurate approach alignment in poor visibility, ground-flow congestion (the same strip would almost invariably have to be used for take-off and land ing), and the attendant flight-safety risks (brake or nosewheel-steering malfunction, for example) all militate against this solution and point to the need for a VL capability. The current development of specially designed counter-airfield weapons indicates that dispersed-site operations will be less vulnerable than those from main bases. Hence the need for Stovl in an aircraft that will still be in service beyond the year 2000. However, even assuming that the reverse were true, a Stovl air craft is more likely to be able to con tinue the fight from a badly damaged airfield than would one of more con ventional design. Once again, it is not STO that is critical — current thrust - to - weight ratios and high-lift aerodynamic devices permit excellent STO per formance without resort to vectored thrust—but the VL capability. Pilots returning from operational missions, perhaps with battle damage and in poor visibility, would find it extremely difficult to assess the distance avail able between craters and the mini mum landing strip required in vary-
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