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CAN WE CRASH THE DEADLY FLAME BARRIER?

Fly a plane fast enough and friction will melt it. Can we “put out the fire?”

By David W. Barclay

ENGINEERS, who sometimes get pretty irritated when writers dream up catch phrases for their scientific findings, are not exactly happy with the term Flame Barrier or Heat Barrier which has been applied to hypersonic flight. (A barrier, say the engineers, is something you can climb over, sneak around or bull your way through. None of these work when an air-breathing, wing-lifted vehicle is trying to go faster and faster in the envelope of air which surrounds the earth.) But regardless of what you call it, the obstacle—air friction—is there and gets worse with each extra mile per hour of speed. Eventually you wind up as a glowing ember, blob of molten metal, or a cloud of superheated dust. Read the rest of this entry »

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Spinning Wing Airliner

More wing lift and less drag are the major aims of aviation’s researchers. Maybe the Magnus Wing will supply the answers.

ENGLAND’S aeronautical scientists may have a surprise in store for the rest of the flying world. Some years ago a prominent investigator, Anton Flettner, formulated the Magnus Effect—the strange behavior of a drum spinning in an airflow. Today with modern materials, equipment and wind tunnels, interest is once more directed toward this strange phenomenon.
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Trailers for Planes Carry Extra Fuel

TO INCREASE the cruising range of airplanes on long-distance flights, John Akerman, Chicago, Ill., inventor, proposes the novel flying gas tanks pictured in the drawing. The curious fuel wings, divided into a number of cells and provided with an automatic, float-operated mechanism that keeps them level, are towed behind an airplane by means of strong, hollow tubes that also serve as connecting fuel lines. During the take-off, the gas wings ride on wheeled undercarriages until they reach flying speed. When one of the tanks becomes empty during a long flight, it is detached from the fuel train by a special release mechanism, and glides to the ground where it can be retrieved, returned to the airport, and used over again.

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Gasless DIRIGIBLE for Safe Air Travel

EVEN the most rabid enthusiast cannot defend the weakness of the hydrogen-fill dirigible. Death and destruction lurk in every cubic foot of it. Human ingenuity has failed to devise a means of making it safe and the prospect of riding the air with 2,000,000 cubic feet of a violent explosive over one’s head is not alluring, at least to those who have had laboratory experience with the energetic hydrogen atom.
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Man-Made Gales Help Airplanes Land

HUGE fans which can whip up a 65-mile gale that will act as a brake on landing airplanes will be the next piece of equipment installed in the modern airport, according to experimenters.

Aviators have long known that it is easier to land in a stiff breeze than in still air, and it is proposed to take advantage of this fact by arranging twelve to twenty fans on the landing field to supply an artificial gale. The fans would be arranged at the end of the field to cover a section 200 ft. wide and 90 ft. high. The air would be driven through a screen of steel bars one inch wide and two feet apart. This screen would serve to break up the eddies of the air.
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Boeing’s 490-Passenger Jetliner

By Wayne Thorns

BOEING engineers call their 747 the gee-whiz airplane. The reason: everyone who walks onto the assembly line at Everett, Wash., and sees his first 747 in shining aluminum is a cinch to utter at least one gee whiz (or its equivalent) while registering stupefaction at the craft’s size.

MI’s author was no exception. We recently got a preview look at the world’s biggest commerical passenger bird. After being appropriately overwhelmed by the aircraft’s size and technical virtues we can report with some authority on what flying will be like in the Superjet era almost upon us. It’s closer than most folks realize. The 747 is scheduled to be airborne in test flights this month or next, and should open its doors to as many as 490 passengers per flight in scheduled service by late 1969.
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New All-Metal Helicopter Has Eighteen-Foot Wing Props

THE “Maiden Milwaukee,” all-metal monoplane produced by the Hamilton Metalplane company of Milwaukee has been converted into an experimental helicopter by Jesse C. Johnson of Delray, Florida. Johnson provided 18-foot wing propellers for each wing, in addition to the front prop. The wing props are driven by shafts from a motor in the fuselage and are expected to cause the plane to rise and land vertically.

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How Science Will Foil the SKYJACKERS

To see how new techniques and technology will thwart a potential air pirate, start here

By PAUL WAHL
ILLUSTRATION BY ROY DOTY

Ninety-seven passengers showed up for the flight, but 96 were on the Miami-bound plane when it took off from a New York airport one recent evening. Left at the gate, in the custody of two deputy U.S. marshals, was a gun-toting traveler. They nailed him after the loaded .38 revolver in his shoulder holster triggered a new weapons detector—one of the ingenious countermeasures devised by science to keep in-flight crime from getting off the ground.
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TOWER IS SCHOOL FOR PARACHUTE JUMPERS
So that novices may learn the sensations of parachute jumping and acquire confidence before they venture to leap from a plane, the Soviet government has established a training tower at Moscow that is believed to be the first of its kind in the world. A spiral stairway leads to a jumping platform at the top, where the tyro adjusts the harness of a permanently open parachute and leaps into space. A wire cable checks his descent for safety.

Something tells me people on a passenger ship are not going to be too keen to be catapulted off of the deck…

Plane Catapult Saves 18 Hours Time

PASSENGERS aboard the Ile de France, luxurious new passenger steamer plying between New York and Cherbourg, can now speed up their ocean journey by hopping off the ship in an airplane when a few hundred miles off the French coast, the plane carrying them directly to Paris. This is made possible by a 60-ton catapult installed on the deck of the steamer, which launches an amphibian plane.

On a recent test flight, the airplane left the ship 450 miles at sea and flew to New York with a mail cargo, clipping 18 hours from the regular sailing time of the vessel. Perishable express matter and other types of cargo requiring fast delivery will be carried by the airplane.

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This Automobile Is a Complete Airport

TWELVE-TON TOOL BOX ON WHEELS TURNS ANY LEVEL COW PASTURE INTO A SERVICE BASE WITH ALL EQUIPMENT FOR REPAIRING PLANES.

ROLLING swiftly down highways on ten oversize balloon tires, a revolutionary airport-in-miniature for use by passenger air lines and military air forces now provides quick and complete assistance to stranded airplanes. This curious “twelve-ton tool box” is the invention of Kibbey W. Couse, of East Orange, N. J. It is capable of turning any level cow pasture into an airport complete with machine shop, repair parts, floodlights, and radio.
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Air-Rail Line Spans America in 48 Hours

RECENT inauguration of regular 48-hour New York to Los Angeles or San Francisco air-rail service by the Transcontinental Air Transport, Inc., in which the Pennsylvania railroad is financially interested, is interpreted as the outstanding commercial aviation development of 1929 in the United States.
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