SCHNEIDER CUP RACE

Taranaki Daily News, 22 September 1931, Page 7

SCHNEIDER CUP RACE

DESCRIPTION OF MACHINE TREMENDOUS POWER. ENGINEERS' DIFFICULT PROBLEMS. (From the Society of British Aircraft •Constructors.) Calshot Air Station, Aug. 11. Britain’s team of racing seaplanes for the Schneider Trophy contest on September P2—a group of tiny, beautiful monoplanes more powerful than any ex- 1 press locomotive and more than five times as speedy—was drawn up in line for inspection here to-day. I 1 or the first time we have been permitted to see the latest triumph of British high-speed design, the new racer, developed from the winning ’plane in 1929, which may prove to be the fastest vehicle yet built by man. Here all is smooth, unhurried planning for the great race. From now till the contest is over the station will see an ever quickening preparation, culminating in the most truly sensational speed contest in history, with nine six-miles-a-minute racers competing for the “blue riband of the air” over the Solent and Spithead. Externally the new racing plane, painted in the familiar supermarine blue and silver and with the number “N. 1595 imprinted in black across the Royal Air Force tricolour of red, white and blue on the tail fin, differs very littlo from his 1929 brother. He is slightly bigger all round, curiously shaped’ balance-weights on the control surfaces of wings and tail catch the eye, and there are certain detail modifications to the wing radiators and the floats. The greater power of the RollsRoyce racing engine in the nose of the fuselage, substantially more than the 1900 horsepower that an earlier motor of the same type developed during the 1929 contest, involves no change in outline or in fuselage dimensions, though the bigger fuel load needed by the increased power and an important alteration of the contest regulations calling for each machine to ascend, alight, and taxi on the water for two minutes immediately before crossing the Starting line is reflected in the bigger overall dimensions of the 1931 ’planes. {TOOLING SURFACES. 5.1595, and his twin 5.1596, may be considered from one point of view as flyino- radiators. No problem is more difficult in the design of modern superracing aircraft than the provision of adequate cooling surface, and, in 19-9, the winning ’plane was actually flown rio'ht through the contest with the engine throttled below full power because the cooling surfaces were not sufficient. Upper and lower surfaces of the wino's and the entire upper surface of each float are water radiators; along the greater part of the length of the fuselage, below and on both sides, run the oil coolers. ... Fuel is carried in tanks. inside tlie finely stream-lined floats, which by careful research and experiment have been evolved to a shape offering even less air resistance than the floats of the 1 * e ’planes. Considerably more fuel is carried in the starboard float than in the port float, an ingenious arrangement of load to counteract the terrific ‘torque, or turning moment, of the great engine, particularly during the take-off. Tins factor is so powerful in the new monoplanes that it is doubtful whether the craft could be persuaded to rise off the water with only a small fuel load on board, the effect of full engine ‘torque being to transfer a load of no less than 500 pounds from one float to the ther. Without the load distributed unevenly between the floats the port float would dig rteht into the water and might even cause° the ’plane to turn over and founder. ~ The presence of water-cooling radiators on the upper surface of each float obliged the designer to invent an elastic framework to take, up the expansion of the metal caused by inflow of water heated nearly to boiling point from the engine and thus avoid buckling of the outer skin. Also the fuel tanks are heavily insulated from the radiators to eliminate risk of evaporation. Britain’s second strings this year—one of them at least will fly in the contest are the two S 6 monoplanes flown in 1929 but with important modifications to the floats and radiators. These machines, too, have the static balances of the control surfaces placed there to guard against the possibility.of ‘flutter, the dangerous violent vibration of ailerons or tail surfaces which has caused many disasters to service and highspeed aircraft in the. past. Recently British aeronautical scientists have paid much attention to the prevention of this phenomenon, and static balances aie found to provide an excellent means ot dealing with it. SOME FIGURES. Though details of the 1931 machines and of "the modified 1929 craft may not yet be revealed, some chief figures about the S 6 monoplanes as they were flowni in the last contest give a good idea of the problem attempted and solved by.the designer. -The wings of the original Sb measured only 30 feet from tip to tip, and the total wing area was 145 feet. The weight empty, including the engine, was 4030 pounds; when in racing trim to this were added 160 pounds of pilot 115 gallons of petrol weighing 900 por-ds and 10 gallons of oil weighing 100 pounds. Thus the total weight at the moment of take-off was 52 jO pounds, everv square foot of wing surface lifting the staggering weight ot Bb- * This small flying machine was driven by 1900 horsepower derived from, a twelve-cylinder engine measuring just over 74 feet in length and packed into a frontal area forty inches in height and only thirty inches wide, lhe entire weight of the engine, including the supercharger which was perhaps its most important main component, was only 1530 pounds. Every horsepower was produced, therefore, by four-fifths of a pjund of engine! In the 1929 race this motor consumed fuel at the rate of a gallon for each 2£ miles, and so nicely was the fuel load calculated that Flight Lieutenant Waghorn, pilot of the winning machine, was forced to alight half way round an extra circuit of the course which he began because he made a mistake in counting the laps. The Royal Aero Club have announced the exact’ course chosen for the race, a triangle with the three sides totalling fifty kilometres (or 81.07 land miles) in length with acute angles marked by pylons located in Ryde Middle, half wy between the mainland and the Isle

of Wight, and on the shore at West Wittering and a blunt angle off St. ■ Helen’s Point, on the island. Each con- ■ testant must fly round this triangle ■ seven times, making a total distance of : 350 kilometres, or 217.47 land miles, equivalent to something less than forty minutes’ flying. Regulations governing the race, while they abolish the lengthy “navigability” trials of 1929, have, in the opinion of most experts, set the competitors, a much more severe task. Each machine must take-off, ascend to a height of nt least fifty metres, alight on the water; again and taxi for two minutes, all im- 1 mediately before the machine crosses the starting line off Ryde pierhead for the actual speed contest. This, condition is considered certain to provide a seveie engine test as well as requiring the carriage of extra fuel. SPEEDIER MAIL-CARRYING. The fastest British load-carrying civil aircraft yet built, an Avro mailplane. capable of flying at nearly three miles ■ a minute with full load on board, was l demonstrated yesterday afternoon at Heston airpark, near London, before Colonel Shelmerdine, Director of Civil Aviation, and a few privileged experts. Acceleration of air mail services throughout the. world is a subject ofi receiving nowadays marked attention in British "aviation circles, and this, new ■ craft is the first of a number of mail, carriers constructed in Br =h works' which promise spectacular progress in the development of night a <1 day aerial mail routes. The British Empire, scat-! tered in every part of the globe, offers a field for high-speed mail operation, not surpassed in potentialities by any of the other great land areas —the United States, Latin America or the; Soviet Union —and leading experts consider that the employment of relays of machines similar to the new Avro ’plane could at once, given the essential ground organisation, reduce the time taken for the mails to travel from London to Sydney, for example, to 7i days. The’ present controversy engages the protagonists of two theories, that mails should travel with passengers, and, alternatively, that these two main classes of aerial traffic should be separated. Supporters on the one side declare that the slowing down of mail transport to the speed °made necessary by the frequent halts while the passengers rest is illogical. The result, they say, is that the Indian air mail moves at. an average speed of no more than 28 miles an hour; for two-thirds of the journey it is stationary while passengers eat and sleep. On the other side experts poin- triumphantly to the United States lines which, begun as “mails only enterprises are now rapidly turning over to the operation of aircraft carrying passengers and mails together. But argument apart, there can be no doubt about the immense speeding up that would follow establishment of “mails only” services throughout the Empire, and this is work that the Avro “mailplane” type 627 ir admirably fitted to do. THREE MILES A MINUTE. Last week the new machine completed official trials at Martlesham Heath, the Royal Air Force experimental station where all new British aircraft are put through exacting teste. It recorded there a maximum speed, with. 870 pounds of mails on board and a full load of fuel sufficient for 600 miles non-stop, of more than 170 miles an hour, a rate of climb at ground level of no less than 1200 feet a minute and a cruising speed at only two-thirds of full engine power of 140 miles per hour. These figures represent a degree of performance striking enough to commend the ’plane to aircraft operating companies abroad, and within the next fortnight or so the machine will be shipped to° Canada for further demonstration; actually the conditions governing mail carriage in Canada received prime consideration in working out the design. The type 627 te a shapely biplane, a wing system chosen by the makers to secure co veniently small overall dimensions and low cost of transporting spare w’ngs in emergency. In every detail is perceptible the insistence on lessening re.-ifitance to movement through the air—the reduction of “drag,” to use the technical term — which is so marked a feature of presentday British aircraft design. Nothing is here to disturb the flow of air over the structure; even the landing wheels have stream-lined casings, while every strut and wire is stream-lined. ALL-METAL. Except for the fabric coverings of wings and tail unit and the fuselage fairings, the entire machine is built of metal, welded steel tubing making up the fuselage framework, high tensile corrugated steel strip the wing spars and duralumin pressings the wing ribs. The engine, an Armstrong -Siddeley "Jaguar Major” 525 h.p. air-cooled radial unit, is surrounded by a resistance-re- ■ ducing Townend ring, the outlines of which merge smoothly into a streamlined exhaust manifold behind the motor and continue into the fuselage. The single pilot sits in a cockpit immediately aft of the fireproof and water-tight mails compartment,, which has a total capacity cf 40 cubic feet. ■ His eyes are on a level with the. upper, wings and he has magnificent view in every direction. Seat height and the position of the rudder bar at his feet are adjustable in flight; before him on the dashboard is an unusually large; equipment of navigational apparatus to guide him by day and by night. After dark a flood* lighting device illuminates the dash and retractable landing lights are ready for instant use. To meet the rigours of flying in temperatures far below zero the cockpit is warmed from the engine by a long muff wrapped round a pipe attached to the exhaust manifold. A MARVELLOUS FLIGHT. Luck and great physical endurance are not alone sufficient to explain the new record flight between Australia and England. Mr. J. A. Moilison, who landed at Croydon last Thursday evening on his ninth day out from Wyndham, Western Australia, has to his credit one of the most carefully planned long distance solo flights in aviation history, and his triumph is but the culmination of twelve months of arduous preparation. No detail was omitted. The route was studied again and again, his machine —a standard “Gipsy Moth” light biplane fitted with extra fuel tankage —prepared to perfection, information of any kind likely to be useful along the way was eagerly sought. Finally, all these data were condensed into a notable document, a guide book of the route showing minute particulars. .of every aerodrome, facts about prevailing winds and weather along every section, times of sunrise and moonrise, fuel stocks, an engine inspection schedule and a time-table which, if fatigue had not defeated him, Moilison would have followed to reach England one day earlier than he did. ‘

Add to this intense preliminary work a dogged insistence on thorough routine inspection of engine and aeroplane at the end of every stage and astonishing trustworthiness of the engine—though run at full throttle for several days, sometimes for more than twenty hours at a time, it never missed a beat —and the almost miraculous achievement may be more accurately estimated. Moilison not only knocked two days off the time taken a few weeks ago by Mr. C. W. A. Scott in a similar machine for the homeward journey; he also beat by several hours Scott’s record for the outward flight to Australia, and, therefore, has made the quickest journey in history between Australia and this country. His machine lifted into the air no less than 110 gallons of fuel (nine gallons more than Scott’s fuel load) ths heaviest load ever airborne by a light aeroplane. With tanks full Moilison’* plane could remain aloft for a distance non-stop of approximately 2000 miles. Many confident predictions that Scott's outward record would not be eclipsed by any light plane flier are stultified by Mollison’s success in the opposite direction. Doubtless there will be renewed efforts to do atill better, proving nothing not previously known about the superb abilities of the British light aeroplane but, intertwined with laurels for the record-breaker, demonstrating afresh for all the world to see the path of future development before the airways. Every man who, defying fatigue and the bitterness of possible defeat, moves at great speed alone across ..the globe, shows how relay* of bigger, more powerful craft, flying by night and day, may cut in half existing time schedules. In this respect Mollison’s flight i* linked closely with yesterday’s display of the new high speed mailplane. THE GRAND TOUR BY AIR. On the same day that a wildly enthusiastic crowd wa* cheering Moilison at the London air station Miss Amy Johnson and Mr. C. S. Humphreys stepped out of a “Gipsy Moth” at the Tachikawa airport, near Tokio, whither they had flown from England inside ten dayc. Inevitably overshadowed by Mollison’s achievement, this journey to Japan is vet a magnificent example of the kind of “orand touring”, associated nowaday* with light aeroplane travel. The aeroplane, exactly similar in essentials to Mollison’s, was completely standard, carrying the normal load of 35 gallons of fuel. Incidentally the flier* established a light plane record for the trip to Tokio, and showed how comparatively simple at some seasons of the year is the air journey across the immense spaces of Asiatic Russia. ‘