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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 0104.PDF
48 FLIGHT. JANUARY 12, 1939 COMMERCIAL AVIATION (CONTINUED) Trans-Canada's Next Move N OW that daily mail flights have been made between Montreal and Vancouver since December 1, special atten tion is being paid to the arrangements for completing the rest of the Trans-Canadian route—between Halifax and Montreal. It is expected that experimental flights over this section will start during this summer. It will be remembered that the eastern terminus is at Moncton, New Brunswick, where an airport is now under construction. This will have three paved runways each 1,000 yards long, and provision has been made for an increase of their length to nearly 2,000 yards. The site is expected to be ready for use at the beginning of September. This eastern section of the route will cross the U.S. State of Maine, and negotiations are now proceeding between the Canadian Government and the United States for the use of the landing fields and beacons in the district. New landing fields are being laid out at Blissville, New Brunswick; Megantic, Quebec; while a municipal airport at Halifax, and the aerodromes at St. John, Charlottetown, Sydney, Truro, Yarmouth and Dartmouth—the last four in Nova Scotia—are being extended. The Swissair Accident ON January 7 a Swissair D.C.2 on the Zurich-Paris run crashed at La Chapelle-en-Serval, near Senlis, some fifteen miles fiom Le Bourget. Five of the seventeen occupants, in cluding the pilot, Herr Frey, and the wireless operator, Herr Kurt Walter, were killed. So far there is no very clear indication of the causes of the accident, but the pilot had overshot Le Bourget, probably in the ordinary course of a bad weather approach to the airport, and there is evidence that the circumstances were made less easy by the fact of heavy ice formation.' The machine struck the ground, apparently in a power-glide attitude, in an open field beside the Paris-Creil railway line. The fact that Swissair have had such a remarkable record during the past few, years makes this accident all the more unfortunate, but until evidence is forthcoming from the wire less offices at Le Bourget it will not be possible to make more than a guess at the cause. In recent years the company has suffered only one accident where passengers were concerned, and in this the injuries were of a minor nature. The Ninety-Fifth A LTHOUGH it is too much to expect that an absolutely new type will, from the very start, be perfect in all its flying characteristics, the new D.H.95 prototype certainly appears to be working extremely well. In last week's issue we gave some details of the first series of test flights. It -appears that the lateral stability at low speeds is excep tionally good. Tests were made with the flaps both up and down, and with the cooling gills both open and closed. Most of the latter, incidentally, are on the underside of the wing, since the axes of the engines are quite well below the wing. The interference over the upper wing surface at high incidences, and, consequently, any change in stalling characteristics, would be expected to be very slight. The reasons for good stalling manners in a high-wing machine are fairly simple, the most important being that the upper wing surface is unbroken. When the whole of the centre section has its lift somewhat spoiled by the effect of engine cowlings and the fuselage itself (as in the case of the low-wing monoplane), the results of lift differences at either tip are very marked, whether or no arrangements have been made to in crease the lift at these points. In such circumstances the tips can be described as providing a large leverage effect. With the high-wing arrangement, and particularly where the engines are well below the chord lines, the lift is almost unbroken over the whole span. Consequently the effect of loss of lift at the wing tips is not so pronounced. Only with a very large reserve of power can the twin- engined type be considered as being comparable in " failure- safety " with the four-engined machine. In this connection the criterion of safety is not so much the height which can be reached from rest over a given distance, but the time and distance necessary to achieve the machine's minimum one- engine climbing speed. The ideal, of course, is a machine in which the climb, from the moment of take-off, can be continued when one engine fails, but a practical alternative is to have a reserve of power which will permit continuance of flight as soon as possible after leaving the ground. From all accounts, the take-off of the 95 is exceptionally good, and the power reserve thereafter provides the "practical alternative." The Mozambique Base TN future, passengers on the Imperial Airways' flying boat •*- service to Durban will spend the night at Mozambique in what the company calls a "floating hotel." It is actually a vessel, previously called the Richard King, which has been converted into a houseboat with accommodation for thirty passengers. Incidentally, another houseboat of a rather dif ferent type is used as a base on the Nile at Rod-el-Faraq, Cairo. , The Tasman Service 'T'HE long-delayed Australia-New Zealand air service would -*- seem at last to be on the way towards serious operation. Three flying-boats (Short modified " C- " class boats) for the route are expected in Australia "shortly" and radio and meteorological arrangements for the flights have been com pleted at a conference held in Melbourne between representa tives of the New Zealand and Australian Governments and Qantas Empire Airways. Slipways and hangars are going up at the Sydney and Auck land flying-boat bases, and by April or May the service should be in regular operation. Actually, a skeleton or experimental service could even now be flown if the authorities desired, but it would be without all those safeguards which the public of both nations, especially after the Kyeema disaster, is demand ing. Shipping is also expected to be brought into service by the relaying of periodical weather reports and other assistance. In the meantime, Pan-American Airways are planning a San Francisco-Auckland service, and await only the tests of the Boeing 314 Clippers which will be used and the com pletion of the Canton Island base. When, and if, this move is made by Pan-American Airways, it is possible that the com pany will make an agreement with Imperial Airways so that P.A.A. can fly from San Francisco to Sydney, and Imperial Airways from Sydney to San Francisco. Simplified De-icing T^ROM an air line operator's viewpoint a really efficient de- -*- icing paste has a number of particular advantages when it is compared with other methods designed to deal with ice accretion. Such a paste carries with it neither the cost nor the weight of mechanical or liquid chemical de-icers, while it can be applied to any part, such as the elevators and ailerons, flaps, trimming tabs and undercarriages. The different companies are experimenting with one or two types of paste. British Airways, and others, have been using a paste known as Antice, which is made by Whitehall Paints, Ltd., of 118, Weston Street, London, S.E.r. This possesses several unusual properties, the chief of which concern the sim plicity of its application and the comparatively long duration of its useful life. Antice can be simply spread with thumb and forefinger. There is no necessity to work it in, for it adheres immediately and spreads out into a fine, even film. The makers actually recommend that it should be smoothed down to a film approximately ^in. thick. If used on the leading-edge of a wing, a band some four inches wide should be formed. At all times, it is claimed, the paste remains solid and firm —it has withstood tests up to speeds in excess of 400 m.p.h. —but when a temperature of 34.5 deg. F. is reached it starts to sweat over all its exposed surfaces. This chemical exuda tion continues down to temperatures of 22 deg. F. and even lower. It will be readily understood that the presence of a liquid on the surface of the paste will prevent the ice which forms from obtaining a hold. It is, therefore, easily dislodged by the airstream. As soon as the temperature rises above 34-5 deg. F. the thin film of liquid on the surface is absorbed and the paste resumes its normal chemical composition. Mr. E. J. Pearse, D.Sc, whose research work has resulted in the evolution of the Antice chemical formula, claims that the paste is still effective after six weeks' use, although he recommends that a fresh application should be made more frequently than this. During the course of his experiments, Dr. Pearse found that the internal temperature changes in a small quantity of Antice were somewhat extraordinary when the external temperature was lowered. At 34 deg. F. the internal temperature had risen to 36 deg. F.; with an outside temperature of 22 deg. F., the internal temperature had risen to 48 deg. F. Antice, which is now fully covered by patents in all the leading countries, can be applied to fabric with impunity, while when applied to Elektron surfaces it has very little cor rosive effect, even after prolonged application at reduced tem peratures.
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