Wooden Jet Mockups
Canadians are saving time and money by making jet-engine mock-ups of pine, mahogany and cherry wood instead of metal. From blueprints, woodworkers make full-scale patterns of every component part and accessory, except piping, on proposed engines. Completed assemblies are then inspected by designers and engineers for possible changes. Shortcomings or design improvements are more easily spotted with the aid of the three-dimensional mockups than with blueprints alone. After approval, the patterns help foundrymen in casting parts for the actual engine.

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Skyscraper Airport for City of Tomorrow

WHAT the metropolitan skyport of tomorrow may look like, as conceived by Nicholas DeSantis, New York commercial artist, is shown in the illustration below. His remarkable proposal, embodied in a model that he has completed after five years’ study of the project, calls for a 200-story building capped by an airplane field eight city blocks long and three blocks wide. A lower level of his “aerotrop-olis,” as he has named it, offers a port for lighter-than-air craft. Hangars for planes and airships occupy the top fifty floors.
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That sure is an interesting way to refuel a plane…

NEW MAIL PLANE HIDES WHEELS AS IT RISES

When the newest of the mail planes leaves the ground, the landing wheels swing backward and tuck themselves away in the lower side of the wing. A study in streamlining, the 158-mile-an-hour “Boeing Monomail” is shaped so that its speedy passage through the sky meets with the least possible air resistance. Recently the all-metal craft was placed in regular service on the air mail route between Chicago and San Francisco.

A glance at this low-wing monoplane’s lines shows how far airplane designers have progressed since the “bird-cage” biplanes, crisscrossed with struts and wire braces, of fifteen years ago. The “Mono-mail’s” fuselage tapers like a cigar, and is broken only by a low windshield for the pilot. Around the motor a newly-developed type of cowling further reduces wind resistance.

Floating Runways for Seaplanes

TO enable take-off of seaplanes with heavy loads—especially the additional fuel which is required for transoceanic flights—a new apparatus has recently been invented to launch them on the water, but not from it. As shown, it comprises a track, supported above the water by pontoons; so that the seaplane is given the advantage, not only of its own power, but also of a mechanical pull. It can maneuver itself, in the water, up the track; and the latter, being pivoted, can turn to the wind at the moment prevailing. Read the rest of this entry »

Peekaboo bag? No, a survival hood

It’s too bad that the pretty (take our word for it) girl shown here has to play peekaboo to get her point over. She is demonstrating the use of a plastic “survival hood” for airline passengers. Made by the G. T. Schjeldahl Co., Northfield, Minn., it provides protection against smoke and gas inhalation while escaping from a crashed plane.

New Helicopter Proves Its Lifting Power

Designed to raise itself vertically and hover or fly forward at will, a new kind of helicopter showed promise in recent preliminary weight-lifting trials at Heston Aerodrome, England. When tethered by slack lines to stakes in the ground, it lifted front and rear wheels alternately under its own power. The lift is obtained from a three-bladed, horizontal propeller. Two long vanes or sweeps, resembling the tail feathers of a bird, are mounted at the rear to stabilize the odd craft. Full flight tests will be made soon and the designer is confident of success.

EXPECT HIGH SPEED OF ROCKET-DRIVEN PLANE

If their calculations are correct, a barrage of rockets will soon send a ten-foot model plane whizzing through the air. Maurice Poirier and Franklin L. Wallace, of Los Angeles, Calif., built the model and if it flies they will attempt to build a full-sized craft on the same plan. They predict that the rockets will give the model a speed approaching ten miles a minute.

I thought that faxing maps of enemy positions from planes seemed a little impractical, but sending messages via carrier doves from a moving airplane certainly takes the cake.

Also, I love the word Pigeoneer.

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Dove Is Now Night Bird of War

Carrier Pigeons Bred by the Army at Fort Monmouth Fly in Darkness, Proving Old Fanciers Were Wrong

By JOHN E. LODGE

NIGHT flying homing pigeons, something brand-new in the bird world, have been developed by experts of the United States Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth, N. J., where most of the carrier pigeons for the Army are bred and trained.

In rearing and teaching these birds, the Government pigeoneers have accomplished a feat which for centuries was considered impossible. From time immemorial, it has been an axiom of pigeon breeding and racing that homers, no matter how fast and faithful, do not fly after nightfall.
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The Flying Flapjack

BY GILBERT PAUST

It looks like an aviator’s nightmare, but this Navy job is the fastest – and slowest – plane in the air.

THE Navy has a flying Flapjack, and brother—it can fly! It all began on a day in November, 1942, when the doors of the Vought hangar opened and test engineers trundled out a queer, saucer-shaped object on two long, stilted legs—and claimed it was an airplane. The V-173, they called it, and gave credit for its design to an aeronautical engineer who had been active in NACA research and had recently joined the staff of Chance Vought: Charles H. Zimmerman.
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Be sure to check out the awesome cover of this magazine.

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WAR Invades the Stratosphere

WHETHER any region of the earth is to be free from war and rumors of war, predicted for us thousands of years ago, is doubtful. War has been carried into the depths of the sea, to deserts and jungles, and high above the clouds. The scientists have barely succeeded in opening the stratosphere, or highest level of the air, to research exploration, than it is being surveyed as a possible battlefield.
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In 1930 airplanes of the 94th Pursuit Squadron were flying around with little swastikas on the side of their planes. (second page, second picture) I wonder how long that lasted.

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Romance of Plane Insignia Dates from World War Days

DURING the World war the various fighting squadrons of the Air Service adopted the policy of painting insignia on their airplanes.. These insignia reflected the experiences of the pilots or of the squadron in war, or perhaps had no significance other than that which the original design itself intended to convey. The squadrons of the United States Air Corps have, as far as possible, continued in peace the same insignia as were used during the World war.

Insignia, besides promoting an esprit de corps provides a means of identifying the planes of a particular squadron. At the Air Corps maneuvers held at Mather Field, California, this spring, squadrons were assembled from all parts of the United States; Pursuit from San Diego and Detroit; Attack from Galveston; Bombardment from Langley, Va., and Observation from San Francisco. The insignia of the various units, to those who were not abroad in 1917-18, represented considerable imagination and initiative in their preparation, but to those who served in Air Units during the war they awoke memories of the past and brought forth many reminiscences.
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I’m not sure this would actually help you learn how to fly, but I’ll bet it would be really fun for kids. Someone should make one of these now and hook it up to a flight sim.

Students Now “Fly” without Leaving Ground

ALL the sensations of looping the loop. going into a tail spin, and flying blind through fog are afforded students of the Array Air Corps at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, by an ingenious “primer plane” that never leaves the ground. A miniature fuselage, fitted with a propeller, ailerons, elevators, and rudder, is attached to an electrically-operated framework, and in the cockpit a prospective pilot does his first “flying” in safety.
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