BRITISH AVIATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22742, 30 November 1935, Page 14

BRITISH AVIATION

AIR CURRENTS RESEARCH WORK. (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, November 9. Special instruments are being devised by the Aeronautical Research Committee for measuring the strength of up and down air currents. They are carried on high masts, and certain preliminary work suggests that they will enable important information to be obtained about the behaviour of these currents, and about whether they are likely to be a danger to aircraft. Instruments for measuring accelerations have been carried by aerp- ? lanes flying on commercial routes and in raq, and the results obtained from them suggest that, for aeroplanes operating at comparatively low speeds, accelerations large enough to overstress the structure are exceedingly unlikely. The maximum accelerations observed during these flights involve an additional load on the aeroplane, either up or down, not exceeding twice the weight of the aeroplane. The annual report also deals with other research work designed to increase knowledge and to enable aircraft and engine designers and builders to make still further progress in their machines. This background of scientific research furnishes British aviation with part of its strength. There is close co-operation be tween the manufacturers and the Aeronautical Resarch Committee, and although some of the work of the committee has been criticised on the grounds that it is purely academic, much of it is highly practical and of immediate application. PERFORMANCE TESTING. Mr H. T. Tizard, the chairman of the committee, was a pilot in the F.R.C. in 1914, and it was he who was mainly responsible for laying the foundations of the present system of performance testing as it is employed at Martlesham Heath and Felixstowe, where the Government’s experimental establishments are situated. That system is now regarded throughout the world as giving as complete and accurate information about the behaviour of an aeroplane in the air as it is possible to secure. British manufacturers, when they give speed or rate of climb data for their products, quote figures which are the result of performance testing done on the lines originally suggested by the present chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee. Mr Tizard himself not only devised the first system of testing, but he also did the first tests, flying the aeroplane himself.