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Aviation History
1988
1988 - 0887.PDF
STRAIGHT AND LEVEL Skyport, February 25 MCDONNELL DOUGLAS is so torn between thermoset and thermoplastic carbonfibre wings for the F-18 that it has decided to build an aircraft with an epoxy ther moset right wing and a peek thermoplastic left wing. Thermosets, you remember, are cooked hard after mould ing and can't be reheated. Thermoplastics are hot- formed and can be reheated and remoulded; they are easier and cheaper to make and repair, absorb less mois ture, and are tougher and more resistant to battle damage. STATE OF THE ART Peek, off the cuff, stands for poly etheretherketone. Can I have both wings in epoxy? It's easier to spell. • Report received by the UK Civil Aviation Authority safety data unit: "While taxi ing to the runway, two cyclists were riding in the opposite direction aiming for the No. 4 engine. The aircraft was slowed and moved left of the taxiway centreline. "One intrepid cyclist, quite oblivious to the dangers of suction around a bypass engine, kept on coming and ducked under the wing- tip ..." • The first airliner planned to use Gatwick's new north terminal was supposed to be the Airbus A320. In fact the first aircraft to dock there, to check out the loading facili- ites, was a Comet 4B, the very clipped-wing specimen which WHEN you aren't flip and patronising about British aviation achievements you are negative and defeatist. I deplore your treasonable attitude. —Well just look at those struts. The airlines want effi ciency and economy through aerodynamic purity, not Epping Forest. We got here, didn't we? It's completely harmless, even when Imperial Airways crashes one. Anyway, Freddie Handley Page is incurably romatic about the air sighing through struts and wires. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 2 April 1988 —Crying out in pain, more like. It's 1937 and the Douglas DC-3 doesn't cause the air pain. Compare this as an exer cise in aerodynamics with the Supermarine S-6A of five years ago, the Comet Racer, even the D.H.71 of ten years ago. It's time we had the Ensign and the Albatross in service. But who will want to build replicas of those in 50 years' time? ' (Handley Page HP42 Hercules of Imperial Airways, possibly at Croydon, July 1937.) Any more over booking and we shall call the police . . . (Tulsa Police Department MD-500 keeps sight of their man. With acks to MDC's Helistop) has been around the airport for some years. Another de Havilland first. Talking about Gatwick, a flight engineer nephew from Brunei reports that someone has written under a swatted fly on the wall of the gents: "Bit late on the roundout, Hoskins". • Boeing says that Everett is the world's biggest building— wow. Loral says that its airship hangar at Akron is the world's biggest building— wow ... so big "it has its own clouds". That's nothing. At Preston they've got a building famous for Tornadoes and Lightnings. Wow. LETTERS First airship of spring? SIR—Today at 1400hr I heard and saw my first airship of spring. It was marked "Charles Wells—Bedford Ales". A real airship, with real beer. It blew my daffodils flat and silenced the cuckoo. Is this a record? REGINALD S. POTTER St Albans /&*££* ?W<n~ Aircraft Noise • Why have we shut down, skipper? Three-letter word, rhymes with "nice", first letter i, third letter e. —Ice? You could be a flying-boat captain one day, first foot man. The thing to remember about ice—apart from its obvious nasty habits, like vandalising wing sections, freezing controls, wrecking engines, and so on—is its infinite capacity for giving you a problem you've never thought of before. Like the noise it makes against the hull. 43
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