BENEATH THE WINDSOCK

Evening Star, Issue 21137, 24 June 1932, Page 2

BENEATH THE WINDSOCK

[By Gypsy Aloth.]

NEW TRAINING ' BIPLANE. In its latest form that Proteus among aeroplanes—the Avro. 626 biplane, which is designed for the training ol pilots in almost every branch of military Hying—incorporates certain modifications decided as tho result of recent Air Alinistry tests and a few detail improvements. These include wheels of the kind familiarly known as “ doughnuts ” (which experience has shown afford definite advantages, particularly in landing on rough ground), wheel brakes, an extra fuel tank in the upper plane, and a resistance-reducing Townoiicl ring around the 215 h.p. Lynx engine. The fuselage of the type 626 is arranged to accommodate at need armament and equipment for eight specific branches of flying training, including “blind” and night flying, offensive and defensive gunnery, bombing, wareless telephony, and telegraphy, aerial photography, and navigation. Equipment needed for one particular duty can be removed and replaced with the equipment and armament required for any other form of training in the notably brief time of two hours, though in practice a military training school would probably operate most efficiently with a fleet of these craft, each fitted for one branch of training and kept exclusively to it. Ease of tuition, calling, for effective control all along the speed range and flying qualities similar to those of the service aeroplanes which the military pupil will be called on to pilot at the conclusion of his training period, is plainly fundamental in designing a machine of this kind, but the type 626 is also an efficient flying machine. Its maximum attainable speed at sea level is 112 m.p.h., and its service “ ceiling ” 15,000 feet. AVith full load on hoard and the extra tank in use it carried enough fuel for a non-stop flight, at cruising speed of ninety-five miles an hour, of five hours. The land undercarriage may be speedily changed for seaplane metal floats, when the craft is at once ready for operation from water. A KING’S AIR TOUR. The King of the Belgians, who employs tho aeroplane as a means of travel more than any other head of a State, has completed a notable journey to the Belgian Congo, in the course of which he covered nearly ten thousand miles in British passenger-carrying and service aircraft. Though he was absent from Belgium only one month, the regular African air line operated by Imperial Airways enabled the King to spend seventeen days in the Congo. Incidentally, the journey in one direction alone by surface vehicles occupies as long as the whole period of King Albert’s absence from his capital.

There could be no better example of the value of air transport and of its spectacularly rapid development. Where the King flew; comfortably in a large air liner was untravelled jungle country and desert at the beginning of the century. The days when the white man and his urge for movement had not disturbed the primitive life of Central Africa are so recent that the King was aide to gaze down from the saloon windows on great herds of elephants, and on myriads of buffalo, giraffe, antelope, and other wild game. Yet at night the King and his fellow travellers rested at comfortable hotels, ■ erected sometimes in places which are far away in the jungle and separated by weeks of arduous ground travel from the nearest big town. ■RED SEA CRUISE. Three big British troop carriers which cruised in formation recently from Cairo to Aden and Somaliland have demonstrated in picturesque fashion the well-nigh fantastic mobility conferred by the aeroplane. In a region of the globe where speed in the modern sense has found a place only in legendary tales the aeroplane has surpassed feats attributed to the magic carpet. Official records of the flight show that the troops carriers were away from their base thirty-four days. They flew altogether nearly 6,000 miles, yet moved for a few hours only on each of twentyone days. A man on foot, toiling day after day, might average twenty miles a day in tho heat of the desert if the surface permitted; he would spend not less than 300 days on the road. A swift horseman, gifted with superhuman powers of endurance, would perhaps average fifty miles a day; his travel time would he 120 days. With relays of racing camels, assuming that they could be employed all tho way, the same journey might be cut to 100 days. But tbe flying machine, without enforcing the slightest fatigue, is yet five times faster than the racing camel. And if necessary tho big transport planes could fly from Cairo to Aden and back in loss than live days. From Aden the formation made several local flights, one day flying to Miikalla with the Resident on hoard to pay his annual visit to the Sultan, on another making practice troop-carrying journeys with A (feu Protectorate levies A third day tho big planes patrolled the vast Hadraniaut region of Southern Arabia, their occupants gazing down on a land that from time immemorial has been inhabited only by nomadic tribesmen and where British flyers are now planning the organisation of an airway. The machines chosen to make this romantic journey were Vickers Victoria biplanes, craft which were entrusted last year with the annual Royal Air Force cruise in formation from Cairo to Capo Town and back, and aro famous for the outstanding part they played in the evacuation of 600 refugees from Kabul in the winter of 1928-20, when tho Afghan capital was tho fiercely contested prize of civil war. Powered each with two 500 h.p. Napier Lion water-cooled motors, tho Victoria biplanes reach a speed of some 110 miles an hour, even though they weigh with full load on board more than eight tons. There is space in the large cabin for twenty-two fullyarmed infantrymen and equipment, or, alternatively, the machine may bo used to transport ammunition, spare parts, food, and other supplies needed in emergency to maintain an air or ground unit on active service several hundred miles from the base.