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Aviation History
1977
1977 - 1884.PDF
1786 W rid news Ducted- propulsor Islander flies THE Islander modified by Miles- Dufon to take a pair of Dowty-Rotol ducted propulsors made its first flight at Shoreham on June 10. Flown by Neville Duke, who now manages Dowty's flight operations, the aircraft was in the air for l12hr. Poor weather and rectification of a high oil tempera ture on one engine delayed the second flight until June 17. Single- engine handling, with feathering and unfeathering of the variable fans, was investigated on the first flight. Duke says that the aeroplane is internally much quieter than a standard Islander. The ducted propulsor is a seven- blade, variable-pitch fan coupled to a conventional piston engine. The arrangement is expected to be much quieter than the propeller, satisfying increasingly stringent noise legislation being proposed in Europe and the USA. Comprising the fan, pitch-change mechanism and hub and duct, the propeller can be suited to virtually any size of piston engine. The pro gramme is sponsored privately by Dowty, which is also financing the Islander flying testbed. The low design noise levels result from fan tip speeds lower than those of propellers. Dowty says that to reduce the noise of conventional pro pellers (around 90db), tip speeds have to be reduced from 900-l,000ft/sec to about 700ft/sec. At such low- velocities propellers are inefficient, acting as little more than stirring devices. But by constraining the flow in a duct and straightening it by means of stator blades efficiency can be maintained at lower tip speeds. The Islander is a convenient test vehicle, but Dowty says that the full benefits of the propulsor can only be exploited in a new aircraft design, probably with engines at the rear & la current turbine business aircraft. News from the Reading Show THE New York-based Rallye Aircraft Corporation is making Aerospatiale Socata's first serious effort to break into the US light aircraft market at the 28th Reading Show. First of the 12 Britten-Norman Trislanders to be ordered in the US is due to be delivered in a few months. Bellanca boasts a new management, new capital and a new T-tailed four-seater called the Aries T-250. Teal Aircraft of Canada plans to manufacture in Florida a 180 h.p. version of the former Thurston Teal under the designation Merlin 180. The TTI Fox- jet mock-up attracts keen attention. A full report from chief US corres pondent Warren Goodman will appear next week. Judicial inquiry in Bristow dispute BRISTOW Helicopters and the British Air Line Pilots Association (Balpa) agreed on June 3 to a pro posal by Employment Secretary Mr Albert Booth that their seven-week old dispute should be the subject of a judicial inquiry. Both parties have agreed to accept the inquiry findings as binding. Scottish judge Lord McDonald will not be investigating the pay aspects of the dispute, con centrating instead on whether Capt Peter Royston was unfairly dismissed by Bristow for refusing to accept an overseas posting. Balpa claims that the dismissal was unfair, and some 50 of its members at Bristow stopped work in sympathy with Royston. The company says that there are no longer jobs for all of the Dr Wernher von GERMAN aristocrat turned natural ised American rocket engineer Dr Wernher von Braun died of cancer on June 16 in a Washington hospital after months of illness. He was 65. If executive responsibility for the Apollo programme was to be assigned to one man, few would dispute that it should go to von Braun. He was the forceful director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Centre at Huntsville, Alabama, in the 1960s, with prime responsibility for building the 2,500- ton Saturn rocket to carry men to the Moon. From his earliest days as a science student, von Braun was fascinated by rocketry. He formed an amateur group to launch rockets from an open space on the outskirts of Berlin which be came known as the Raketenflugplatz. These experiments soon caught the official eye, and continued under sub sidy. When Hitler came to power the rocket engineer's work was put on a surer footing. In 1937 German rocket activities were transferred to Peene- munde, from where rockets could be test-fired over the sea, and von Braun became the technical director of the research group. The V-2 weapon which resulted was a brilliant technical success, and only logistical difficulties prevented it from inflicting war-winning damage on London. After the war, von Braun settled in the USA when it became clear that Britain was not likely to offer rocket research facilities for many years. Moreover, the Americans had cap tured a number of V-2 rockets and von Braun saw an opportunity of be- FLIGHT International, IB/25 )une 1977 50 dismissed pilots. In agreeing to the inquiry, Balpa says that it will not insist on any reinstatements. Flight , understands that some of the sacked pilots have already found jobs with I other Scottish-based operators and in Norway. Airline accidents ONE of the two survivors of the 11-62 crash at Havana on May 27 has died in hospital, raising total fatalities to nine crew and 60 passengers. • An Eastern Airlines 727 made a successful emergency landing on a foam strip at Tampa, Florida, on May 11 after experiencing an under carriage problem during a scheduled flight from Miami to New York. There were no injuries among the nine passengers and six crew. • A Continental Airlines 727 struck power lines on take-off from Tucson on June 3. The undercarriage was found to be undamaged after a pre cautionary landing. • Sudan Airways F.27 ST-ADW was damaged when the nosewheel col lapsed during take-off from El Fasher on June 6. Braun ginning work immediately as the acknowledged expert in the field. This he did as the project director for guided missile development at Fort Bliss in Texas. This work led in 1956 to the Jupiter missile, the importance of which was emphasised by the launch in October 1957 of Russia's Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial Earth satellite. When Nasa was formed in 1960 from the old Naca (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) von Braun became director of its rocket develop ment centre at Huntsville. It was there that were born the huge Saturn rockets which eventually carried men to the Moon. Von Braun was never eclipsed by the many brilliant US scientists and engineers who were tempted in from university and in dustry to participate in mankind's most ambitious technological venture. But he also had great personal charisma, and an ability to use pub licity techniques as well as any American.
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