ALL-METAL 'PLANE

Evening Post, Issue 12, 14 July 1936, Page 10

ALL-METAL 'PLANE

A LOCKHEED ELECTRA

LAE-BRISBANE RUN

HIGH ECONOMY

, Recently advice was received from Australia of the decision of Guinea Airways to establish a regular air service to connect New Guinea with Australia, from Brisbane, along the coast of Queensland, to Lac. For its small white population, New Guinea is Drobably the greatest flying country in the world, for so precipitous and rugged is the mountain land between the coastal strip and the rich inland goldfields that only by air can rapid and economical transport be given. It is, furthermore, one of the few flying countries where air transport succeeds in itself, without subsidy assistance, for there, everything and everyone goes by air. There has.until the present, however, been no regular air connection between New Guinea and Australia, though flights have been made fairly frequently and machines operated to the goldfields by Guinea Airways and the several other companies have been assembled in Australia and flown to New Guinea.

The first machine to be operated in the new service, a beautifully-lined, all-metal Lockheed Electra, is on board the Hauraki, now in harbour, on its way to Australia, where it will be assembled under the supervision of Mr. Dale F. Hixson, chief ground engineer to. the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, and taken north on its first service flight.

Whether it is that aircraft design is nearing the lines and engine placing that accord almost with the ideal of theoretical efficiency the fact is that j in general low-wing monoplane designs ! are now much of a pattern; the Electra is very similar to the larger Douglas, in relation of fuselage to wing, i engine placements, and general propor-1 tioning, but there is a vital difference in the rudder plan, for the Electra has twin rudders, widely separated, so that each lies almost directly in line with the slip streams from the two motors. This feature, however, cannot be seen as the machine sits on the hatch of the I Hauraki, for the tail has been stripped of its rudders and elevators, and the outer ■ sections of the wings, too, are stowed in the holds. The construction is all-metal, in an aluminium alloy, finished to an almost perfect surface and riveted on a tension which gives great rigidity. TWIN ENGINES ON AIR LINERS. The Electra is one.of the family of Lockheeds, the latest of them, and the company, said Mr. Hixson today, is now concentrating almost solely upon this machine, in two types, one seating ten passengers and two pilots, and the other six passengers and two pilots. The Guinea Airways machine is the larger, Model 10, Electra. The Vegas the Orions, and the Altairs, all of which have built up aviation history in the hands of famous pilots, are out of production today, he said, for the air travelling public demand a twinI motored aeroplane, and only in the lighter types and machines flown by their owners for business or sporting purposes are single-engined civil aeroplanes in general production in America. The day of the tri-motored aero- ! plane has, he said, ended, and "as the j fellow up in front really ate up fuel : j without giving much return" the change in design to the far more effi- ■ cient bi-motored machine, capable of flying on either engine, came inevitably. So far there is not, he continued, a general swing to four-motored ' aeroplanes in .American land transport : machines.

The Electra is, for its ten-passenger capacity, quite a small machine. Its wing span is 55. feet and its length 38 feet; its over-all height is Oft 9in. Its two motors are each of 400 h.p., Wasps I Junior, and with this powering (provision is made for the installation of up to 600 h.p. on each wing) the performance is very high, 200 m.p.h. at 11,000 feet, 195 m.p.h. cruising speed at 5000 feet, with engines at 75 per cent efficiency, and 181 m.p.h, cruising speed at sea level, but, in operation, this sea level performance has little application, for aircraft are designed to operate at highest efficiency and economy at service levels. The landing gear is retractible, either by electric motor, in four and a half seconds, or manually. Air brakes, which drop down from the under-surface of the wing, bring down the landing speed to about-60 m.p.h The take-off run is short, 700 feet till the wheels leave the ground, after a run of nine and a half seconds, but, said Mr. Hixson, there is more to leav- i ing an aerodrome than of loosening up' the wheels. However, the machine which was designed for service on the lighter transport routes and in that sense did not claim to be a competi- ' tor with the much larger Douglas and other aeroplanes, built for operation over the greater distances of the through air lines of Continental countries, was capable of working from I the Electra wxll maintain altitude and will also take off, but a much longer runway, probably larger than New Zealand runways, is required, for the take-off takes about 15 seconds Because th.s machine is designed for runs between points of moderate distance apart, as the air regards distance, the cabin design is different from that of the longest range machines. In an hour's run passengers do not want to wander about, so the headroom is little greater than that of a roomy car, but it. is ample and there is easy spacing between the seats on either side of an aisle The pilot and co-pilot have a cabm to themselves, with a maze of instruments and dials before them, but button at each seat. TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION. Standard equipment includes the full range of navigation, radio, radio-tele- £ y' HeaC °n' blind-flyinS. and other il>ing-aid equipment, and a robot pilot may be added, though it is not regarded as regular equipment. Mr. Hixson mentioned that practically all directions to American airliner pilots and other.busmess between aeroplane and the ground are today given and transacted by radio tel^hone, Morse telegraphy being little used except in isolated cases where machines are operating over very long sections, when Morse telegraphy is used. The cabin arrangements are very complete; each seat is adjustable to the passenger's idea of comfort; a dial in ; the pilots1 compartment reads off cabin temperature, which can be lowered or! raised over a wide range, and, if that does not suit, the passenger can switch on or off his individual ventilatorthere is a reading light at each seat, and. what is not permitted in aircraft operating in New Zealand, each pas-, senger has his ash tray and may smoke as long as he annoys no one or until I the pilot presses a switch which requests him to fix his safety belt and put out his cigarette. It is claimed for the Electra that it carries the largest useful load (that is, passengers, mail, baggage, and freight) in proportion to gross weight of all present-day American transport machines, while being considerably lower in first cost than machines cf similar speed and capacity. The landed I

??piiSiNeW * Zeal? nd WoUld be about £18,000, not small money, by any Airline experience, said Mr. Hixson showed that the average operating cost, covering all outgoings, in depreciation, insurance, maintenance pilots' salaries, etc., was, with American fuel and oil charges and American conditions generally, 25 cents per mile, but those were figures for r,uns of normal operational length, for the shorter stages costs of operational went up considerably, and that was an-aspect of the greatest importance in the planning and successful operation of an air line. - Among those who inspected the machine today were the PostmasterGeneral and Minister of Defence the Hon F. Jones, the General Manager of *?%• ST Steam Ship Company, Mr. N. S. Falla, Mr. Maurice Clarke technical director, Union ■ Airways Mr C Weinstein, president of the New Zealand Aero Club, Squadron-x-ader G L. Stedman, and others interested in aviation development,