SAFE AVIATION

Northern Advocate, 16 June 1930, Page 3

SAFE AVIATION

i FOOL-PROOF FLYING- MACHINE PRACTICAL STEPS. A move? lias at last .boon made 'by airemit manufacturers to put a flying machine in the air constructed entirely on safety first lines, which will fly under full control at speeds definitely below the average stalling point and land and. take off comfortably, in the proverbial 100 yards. The move, lot it ho said, was not taken without persuasion. Designers had long speculated on the subject of a. fool-proof plane which would enable anyone to take the air, but to persuade manufacturers to build a machine entirely in the nature -of an experiment that paid no heed to efficiency, co-effi-cients and disposable space ratios was an entirely different matter. Production and sales problems were of infinitely more importance than the building of freak machines for fool-proof flight. When, however, in the middle of last year, the Guggenheim .Safe Aircraft Competition called for entrants from all nations to compote for a .grand prize of 100,000 dollars, with several 10,000 dollar qualification prizes, aircraft manufacturers, both in England and America, paused in their sales programme to think. 'Many indeed did little more than road through the rules of the. competition, for the qualification tests were about as rigid as ever confronted a designer, and it was obvious that the machine that would pass them would have done something to entitle it to being regarded as the world’s safest aircraft up to date. The first rule ordained that aircraft must he able to maintain level arid controlled flight at 35 m.p.h. It must bo able to maintain a glide for three minutes with the engine switched off at a speed not exceeding 38 m.p.h. In landing it must come to a standstill within a hundred feet of the spot vvhe.ro its wheels first touch the ground, and to complicate this procedure it had to glide in steadily over a 35ft obstruction, from the base of which the standstill was to be reached within 300 feet. The .same length of 300 feet constituted the maximum run for the take-off, while in 500 feet the machine had to b& capable of clearing a 35ft

i, obstruction. The plane had to b,j : stable under all conditions of flight, land if, through careless or incompetent piloting, it should be forced into an abnormal condition of flight, its structure had to be such that it would return automatically to a -steady flat glide with a minimum loss of height. Even more exacting was the demand that it should have inherent stability to fly for five minutes with "hands off'-' at 45 m.p.h. Again, it must" not fall into a. stall and dive if the power ; was cut off in a zoom. A Gathering. The rules covering the competition ; were not new, but it was the first j] time that a practical attempt had : ever been made to build ■■machines to i 1 meet them, and they explain for them- << selves some of the difficulties encoun , terod by Mr HandJeyPage, the Bur- J nclli and Curtis Engineers, and other i designers of the 27 entrants in the | competition, | Of that number three planes were j withdrawn by' their owners before any j tests whatever, and three more wer- 1 •< disqualified in the preliminaries. Twa , other planes were put out of action J during tests by the designers at Mit- I eh oil Field, the scene o'f the trials. j The most promising looking machine. J Major Schroeder's monoplane, with a j variable camber wing and adjustable j ailerons, came to grief as a result of j controls locking in a trial flight. The j fact, that ho brought the rnqehine , down safely with little damage to the \ plane and none to Himself was a tri- J bute to the design and construction (if I the entry, as well as to the pilot's | skill. j A monoplane entered by Taylor Bros, j of Bradford, Pa., was of a parasol j cabin type, the speed of which varied , with the angle of incidence to the ] main plane. j Popularity of the Slotted Wing. . Mr Frederick Handley-Page, the j well-known English designer and in- j ventor of the safety slop equipment, j attended Mitchell Field personally to . watch the tests of his bi-plane, which, ] in addition to the slots, had an club- j orate systems of flaps working automa- j tic-ally on both upper and lower planes, j The history of the slot is interesting , in itself. The original Hand ley-Page j safety device was controlled by the I pilot and operated entirely at his dis- | cretion. When it was found, however, j that the apparatus could be deponden j upon to. work automatically as the j plane reached stalling point, its valu rt . increased a hundredfold as still fur- | ther eliminating the personal clement, j Most of the slot and flap devices I which have eomo on the market since | have been built on the samp principle j of automatic operation. The, flaps on j the Handley-Page machine were con- j nected with the slots by means of push , rods and levers, and when in use had j the effect of increasing the wing cam- I her. Most of the machines exhibited j| in the competition made a bold bid at j meeting all the requirements—the win- j nin r machine, a Curtis* Tanager, giv- j ing such a fine exhibition of stability . at low speeds that its performance j mil"! have surprised even its designers, j Probably the most pleasing feature I of the competition was the very near approach to fulfilling the requirements

made by many machines already in use in commercial transport without, the adapting of any .special safety devices for the contest. No Radical Designs; The .-judges and sponsors of the competition expressed regret that the Cierva Autogyro, which has been so widely hailed as the solution of risk in flying, did not participate in the contest. Two autogyros were, in fact, entered, but a last minute decision that, further tests and adjustments should be made to the machines before being displayed was responsible for their withdrawal. So that' the competition brought out very little that was radical in design or based on any now aerodynamic principles of flight. It is hard, says the 'Shed! Oil Company, tp whom we are indebted for this article, to estimate the full value : to aviation of such a' competition, for 1 the simple reason that one cannot gauge the full effect ou aircraft design throughout the world of the safe- * ty features there exhibited. But'more than one of the exhibiting Arms ex- , pressed their intention of using the . principles embodied in their expert- ■ meats, with a few necessary modifiestions for production in the coihmcrcial j market. j