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Aviation History
1986
1986 - 0840.PDF
STRAIGHT AND LEVEL FUNGUS has got into the timber trusses of the old Grahame-White hangar at RAF Hendon, at which I always wave from the St Albans train. The birth-field of British aviation is now violated by apartment blocks of undesirable character. But you can still see, looking the same as in the Flight archive photo boxes, the First World War hangar bearing the great Grahame-White name. Still there too are the company's old offices, the original control tower, and the hangar which housed the King's Flight Airspeed Envoys, now replaced by clapped out Royal Air Force crew buses. Still there, too, is the RAF Officers' Mess, the elegant country-club backdrop against which kings and princes and queens and prin cesses took tea and watched daring young knights of the air jousting in ribboned Siskins. Well, the fungus is winning. Unless someone can find £^ million, the Grahame-White hangar will be steel-balled when the RAF goes next year, after 70 years. A Ministry of Defence demolition applica tion has gone to Barnet Council. But nothing will stop the ghosts of Hawker Furies flashing through the front rooms of today's Hendonians watching Pot Black or wot's on the other Brian—dunno, some boring programme about old planes. ENGINE AIRWORTHINESS NEW standards of reliability are to be required of engines in extended-range transport aircraft, following an incident over southern England. A proposed new air worthiness regulation will require engines of extended- range (ER) aircraft to be accessible in flight unless the aircraft types can demon strate an in-flight engine shutdown rate of zero. A spokesman for the Minimum Everything Airline Network (Mean) said from his Mediterranean yacht: "Just when we were about to double profits by halving our engine crew and fuel, this is an act of—what did you say Rollo?—Er, an act of regu latory vandalism which will seriously disrupt holiday flights." The pilots' union welcomes the move, pointing out that after an engine failure a twin- engined aircraft flies more slowly, and after two engine failures "we could be up there for ever". The pilots would like to see a flight engineer, preferably a pilot, stationed in each engine pod. The proposed new airworthiness rule will require aircraft to be redesigned and modified with access tunnels through the wings to the engines. Industry comments should be with the Ministry of Planes before normal 3 p.m. closing time tomorrow. ("Daring French air mechanic Richard shows how, when the carburettor pipe broke on a Croydon-Paris flight, he rode on the engine as far as Lympne holding the petrol -pipe together." Farman Goliath, Salmson CM.9, c 1925.) fforwardpar^fHotors fuselage. The reduc- I tion in weight forward compensates for the I backward shift in the centre of gravity that Top: Flight Safety Bulletin No 4, Winter 1985-86 Above: New Scientist, February 20 Right: Adelaide Advertiser, February 13 5 The burnt engine will re-1 J turn, slung under the wing, I with the rest of the passen-| \ gers tonight. • On the early version of a certain airliner, a heavy nose- gear arrival caused the canopy to "oil-can". Stiffer canopy frames solved the problem. Designing for Hoskins can be quite a challenge. You make it impossible to fit chip detectors without O-rings by fitting little spigots. Then someone in the hangar says "Ere, I'd better file off this casting blob". • Everyone says that the JT8D is the airline industry's most reliable engine, with a shutdown rate of -001 per l,000hr or something laugh able. I say it, you say it, Pratt says it, and it is true. Yet, inside a few weeks of 1985, JT8D failures killed nearly 100 people within one minute of brake release. One had a cracked combustion chamber, plus a lot of perverse luck; the other had a corroded disc spacer tie. Continued airworthiness requires your best people's full attention seven days a week 365 days of the year. As Ron Brownfag says, never believe in the reliability of anything. PS—Haven't we now got the sensors and computer capacity and algorithms and data-link and other buzz words to warn chief engineer Ron of impending mainte nance problems? • I am sorry to hear that Sir John Dent, chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, is retiring. The CAA does a good job—so good on ageing aircraft structures that Sir John Dent should be ennobled as Lord Crack. # "Fight the flab as you fly—new low-cal meals by BCal", says this press release. "Weight-watchers will soon be able to order light chicken breasts with yoghurt..." One way to cram yet more passengers in. I SAID ISN'T GLIDING QUIET?. . . (A battery of Windcheater Wind Wagons, as supplied to movie-makers, being used in the USA for tethered glider training, 1942) 42 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 5 April 1986
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