SAFETY IN FLYING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19838, 7 January 1928, Page 10

SAFETY IN FLYING.

HANDLEY PAGE WING SLOT. ASTONISHING DEMONSTRATION. [from our own correspondent. ] LONDON, Nov. 25. Personal trials were made by Sir Samuel Hoare, Secretary of State for Air, and Lady Maud Hoare in an aeroplane fitted with a device which marks one of the most recent developments in aeronautics. This is the Handley Page automatic safety control.

In a Bristol Fighter biplane, flown by Squadron-leader T. H. England, ana fitted with the new automatic wing slot, which gives the pilot control of his machine, even when it has lost normal flying speed, Sir Samuel went through a number of astonishing evolutions. Stalls, flat turns, and lift-like descents were made, and all the rules of flying were deliberately broken at so low an altitude that, with ordinary controls, disaster would have been unavoidable. At times the aeroplane reared itself on its tail and appeared to hang almost stationary in the sky, at other moments it would fall toward the ground quite 6lowly and maintaining a level keel. " I regard it as a very remarkable advance," Sir Samuel Hoare said in an interview after landing. " When the machine stalled Miere was almost the effect of a blow, jxifc the aeroplane remained under control. This development is on© more example of what can be'done by co-opera-tion between private enterprise and official research workers. It is being fitted to machines of every service type to which it appears - suitable. It is still a question, ,at this stage, whether the power of manoeuvre of high-speed fighting aeroplanes would bo affected by fitting the control."

After their flights Sir Samuel and Lady Maud Hoare, with Sir Philip Sassoon, were conducted to the wind tunnel, in which a mode] of the control was suspended. They watched through a glass inspection window while tho model wing was set at-different angles to the air stream which rushed through tho tunnel. Every time, as the wing passed a certain angle of the small slot in the leading edge flew open. It was ex>. plained that the slot Was opened by the formation of the air currents passing over the wing. Tho slot automatically anticipated the stalling angle and" gave the win,s lift when otherwise most of the lift would have disappeared.