ALONG THE SKYWAYS

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19765, 21 December 1935, Page 25 (Supplement)

ALONG THE SKYWAYS

WHEN WE ALL FLY. PERILS OF PROGRESS, GRIB! PICTURE PRESENTED. MACHINES AS MAN’S MASTER. A Frenchman recently brought to England a sound, workmanlike aeroplane which cost £7O. When it is turned out by the million it will cost much less. It is a cloud in the sky, “no bigger than a man’s hand,” writes Mr Garrett Thorpe, the well-

known London . journalist. Soon everybody will be having one of those. £2O or £3O aeroplanes. And as soon as / the autogyro is on the market, and a man can land on a flat roof or in his own 'back garden, a vast proportion of working people, blackcoated or otherwise, will go to work in an aeroplane. Does that sound an attractive prospect? Let us see. Of course it will bring distant places nearer. You will be able to live in France and come, to work across the Channel in the morning. And as far as England is concerned the only limit of distance will be that if you go too far you will'be “barging” into another town’s extra-urban area. An attractive prospect, you think? Wait! Terrible Death Roll. What will the air be like? Perhaps you think there is plenty of space in the air. But will there be plenty of space in the rush hours in and near the great cities? In the morning millions of aeroplanes will be converging on a centre, and swooping down on the flat roofs of the city. In the evening they will be rising in the same dreadful swarm. The task of the traffic police to-day is nothing to the task that the traffic police of the air will have to-morrow. The number of accidents will be terrible. And remember that when two autogyros collide and crash over a city, it is not only the people in them who will suffer. The wreckage will crash on to a roof or down on a thickly-crowded street. It will be a thousand times worse than an air raid, and it will happen frequently. People wouldn’t stand it? Rubbish! Men and women qf 100 years ago would never have believed that we should stand our streets and roads being hurtled through by swift motor cars. Rut we do stand it, though we grumble. And in itself the autogyro is so safe. Children and old men can pilot them without danger—so long as they have air room. We shall become air-minded, and everybody will want to fly. But the people down under will suffer. Deafening Noise. Even when there aren’t crashes, careless owner-drivers will be dropping things. You see what that means. The other day an airman dropped a spanner with terrible results. You can imagine what sort of deadly weapon a spanner or a spare wheel would be, dropped from a height of 500 or 1000 feet. But the worst of it will be the noise. People who live near aerodromes, or the millions of Londoners who endured the sham air raids recently, know what a rlw a few aeroplanes can make What sort of row will 1,000,000 aeroplanes make? It will be, literally, deafening. One prophet, Mr H. G. Wells, foretold in “The War in the Air” the coming of an aeroplane as cheap and easily made as a push bicycle. An-, other prophet, Edison, foretold that soon the noise of our mechanical civilisation would deprive us of the sense of hearing. It is probable that in the next generation we shall all have gone stone deaf. Mr Edison seemed to think this will not matter much. He was wrong. Among other uses, the sense of sound is a warning of danger. In the first place, it is a warning to our nerves. The vibration of the 1,000,000 aeroplanes will batter on our unprotected nerves all the more when we no longer can hear them. Avoiding Collisions. In the second place, we shall have to depend altogether on our sight to avoid collisions. And so, even by day, the air will have to be full of lights of all imaginable colours, with far more (and far more varied) traffic beacons than Mr Hore-Belisha ever dreamt of. And there will be a nightmare of coloured lights on earth. Will our sight stand it? Already eye specialists tell us the sight of | civilised man is becoming steadily | worse because the eye has no rest. The glare of electric light keeps the eye at tension. And in the street our eyes are always alert to avoid disaster. Even ! now that continual strain is telling. j What will happen when we are all stone deaf? Are we to go blind, too? But, no! Before that happens we shall have decided not to stand it. We shall come to the conclusion that \ mechanical inventions may go too far, |

PROGRESS IN AVIATION

and that in one way or another we must call a halt. The fact that we are swiftly coming to the time forecast by Samuel Butler in “Erewhon,” when the machine would master the man. The people of Erewhon scrapped the Machine and went back to simpler things. But, of course, they were an imaginary people. Had the engines faltered those gallant airmen in their war-time aeroplane would have joined the hundreds of others who set out over the Atlantic never to be heard of again. But the engines did not falter, and at last the pilots sighted two lonely little islands off the Irish coast and then the masts of Clifden wireless station. To have accomplished the flight was sufficiently remarkable, but the time in which they accomplished it was

even more remarkable. It was eight years before Lindbergh emulated the feat of the British airmen and it was twelve years before their time for the passage was beaten. Regularity and Security.

Since those early flights aeronautical engineers have made much progress. Ranges have been increased as well as pay loads and there have been Improvements in mechanical trustworthiness. Consequently the commercial air line across the Atlantic, having high security and percentage regularity, has come into the region of practical possibility. Instead of those two heroic pilots, masked and goggled, battling with weather, conning their craft with no other aid than a compass, we pass to the time when business men will 101 l in armchairs in the cabins of large wireless directed flying boats and will write a stiff letter to the company if the machine arrives ten minutes late. ■lmperial Airways, with the aid of its British equipment, has been able to achieve records in safety, regularity and commercial rendering superior to those of any other air transport embark upon the establishment of an Atlantic air line'until it can guarantee results as good as it now gets upon the European and Empire lines. Sir Eric Geddes, the chairman of the company, said that the flying boat which is to be used for the Atlantic flying experiments, will be “of normal characteristics, but of sufficient range to fly the Atlantic” and he went on to say that they expected to start their experimental programme next year.

Aerial Sleepers.

Giving some further details of the j new fleet of aeroplanes which the J company has ordered, Sir Eric Geddes said that the new machines would have a carrying capacity of 3J-5 tons according to the amount of fuel carried and that they. would provide sleeping accommodation for the passengers. “The standard of accommodation for passengers,” he said, “will he superior to anything yet seen in aircraft.” Thus the policy of giving the passengers comfort on the British air lines is to be pursued in the future. On the existing European and Empire services it has proved completely successful. Statistics shoov that travellers prefer to go in one of the large British aeroplanes, with their spacious and silent cabins, than in machines which may be twenty miles an hour or so faster, but which are uncomfortable and therefore fatiguing to their occupants. It is to be noted, however, that with the further enhancement of luxury in the new air liners, will go considerable increases in the speed. SLEEVE VALVE ENGINES. RIGID TESTS UNDERTAKEN. SUGCOSS OF MACHINES. Sleeve valve aero-engines have more than confirmed their early promise. Remarkable new data about the behaviour of the British sleeve valve engines in service in the Short Syrinx i air liner have just been collected. Two ' of the Bristol Perseus lIL engines were installed in this aeroplane in place of the previous two which had completed 300 hours’ running. The second pair have now also completed their 300 hours and have been dismantled and inspected at the Bristol Aeroplane Company’s works. They were found to be in perfect condition. The original two engines have been re-installed in the Syrinx and the tests are being continued. During four months a total of 1,505 engine running hours under service conditions has been completed, and the important point lias emerged that the sleevevalve engines need no maintenance work other than periodic examination of the sparking plugs. The sleeves have been found to be in excellent condition. They are made of specially treated material and they show entire j absence of wear after long periods of; running. The surface attains a glass like finish and the oil consumption figures compare favourably with those ] obtained with poppet-valve engines. I Moreover, the tests indicate that thej

oil consumption steadily diminishes as the running hours increase. Warplane Tests. Bristol sleeve valve aero engines have not only been subjected to extensive tests in civil machines, but also in military ones. The civil rated Bristol Aquila has gone through searching trials in Bulldog and Bullpup aeroplanes. The pilots have had instructions which amounted to being given a free hand to try and break up the engines The engines were run continuously at wide throttle openings and high outputs and some 300 flights were made during which full-throttle runs were made at various heights, from 1,000 feet upwards, full power climbs to 10,000 feet, long periods of cruising at 2,300 r.p.m. at height, and fttel consumption and flow tests at different boost pressures and altitudes. The figures are sufficiently remarkable to call for no comment. The average fuel and oil consumption during the tests were 20 gallons an hour and 53 pints an hour. Fuel consumption for normal cruising conditions is, of course, considerably lower. As with the Perseus engines, the Aquila engines were found to be in perfect

condition upon being dismantled and inspected. The official report includes the following comment: “The general condition of the engine is regarded as excellent, and it is considered that much longer periods of running could be undertaken without necessitating overhaul. The internal sludge deposit was notably light and indicates that the engine had been operating under favourable conditions.” INTERNAL AIR MAILS. f NEW CONTRACT LET. EXTENSION OF SERVICES. An air mail contract for the carriage of mails between Liverpool and Douglas, Isle of Man, has been award-

ed by the Postmaster General to British Airways Ltd., the company recently formed by the association of many of the leading internal air line operators. This is the third air mail contract to bo held by the British Airways group. Tri-motored Spartan air liners will be used on the service, and it is expected that an average load of over 400 lb. will be obtained for each journey. Probably no better testimony to the practical qualities of British aero* planes could be secured than the increasing use that is being made of the internal air lines for the carriage of the Royal Mail. The PostmasterGeneral is charged by Parliament with the safe and swift carriage of the mail and unless there is excep-

tionally good regularity and punctuality he will not send the mails by air. The railway system provides transport of high efficiency and the English weather is a serious difficulty in the running of internal air lines. Yet improved engine trustworthiness, the use of multi-engine aeroplanes, and, perhaps most important of all, the practical flying • qualities of the machines which will allow them to operate in poor visibility nhd over difficult country with safety, have combined to enable many excellent internal linos to be established. Among them may be mentioned the London-Liverpool-Belfast-Glasgow line, and the Inverness-Wick-Kirkwell line, both of which have been granted mail contracts.,