The use of specialised equipment is common to many sports from tennis to car racing, but in no other sport has this equipment been developed to such a degree of sophistication as it has in gliding. Naturally, together with technical progress there has come equally sophisticated piloting techniques, and an understanding of the air which has been, in some areas, ahead of that possessed by acknowledged experts.

The first gliding competition—if it could be called such —was held in 1920, 53 years ago in the period of exhaustion following the First World War. It consisted of a few dedicated enthusiasts who had got together with their rudimentary home-builts on the Wasserkuppe mountain and who wanted, quite simply, to fly. The aircraft were mainly hang gliders, not much advanced over those used by Pilcher and Lilienthal at the end of the previous century, and using the same method of control—shifting of body weight. The builders appeared to have obtained little profit from wartime aeroplane experience except perhaps in the achievement of a slightly less feather-friend shape; but they were still on the side of the birds in that live legs were used for take-off and landing.

To ensure successful operation of aircraft at high angles of attack (or high lift) conditions, attention must be paid to two basic design aims. These are the ability to achieve an adequate high lift performance and the need to ascertain that inadvertent penetration of the post-stall regime (or more generally any critical condition, which may for a particular aircraft be considered as replacing the conventional stall) does not lead to uncontrollable and thus potentially dangerous flight conditions.

The first aim is concerned primarily with the maintenance of the flow pattern associated with the normal flight regime and the augmentation of the lifting capability of the wings to sufficiently high lift coefficients. It, therefore, relates to the design of the wings, leading-edge devices and the flap system, if any, in respect of the onset of the flow breakdown.

The purpose of this paper is to study the random vibration of linearly elastic, lumped-mass systems containing non-linear damping, to ideal stationary Gaussian white noise excitation.

The following practical examples of systems with non-linear damping are quoted. A random vibration absorber with (velocity)2 damping, (velocity)2 damping in an aircraft oleo pneumatic undercarriage, and spar cap beam dampers in which damping is produced by relative motion between friction surfaces during beam deflection. In the first two examples optimum system parameters are determined in order to minimise the mean square response. In the third case the root mean square acceleration of a beam with spar cap damping is determined experimentally, the results being compared with Caughey's theoretical results.

This paper is intended to show what would be necessary for a heliport suitable for scheduled helicopter services should a vehicle become available which proves economically viable for inter-city services. BEA is considering the possibilty of scheduled services from Central London to near-European capitals and in this respect, some preliminary investigation of sites has been carried out. However, the views expressed in this paper are personal and do not necessarily reflect BEA policy.

In this context we are therefore concerned with a heliport which will meet the required standards of safety and regularity, and will provide passenger handling facilities, car parking and support services at least comparable with equivalent fixed wing operations. Other types of landing place for helicopters, such as helipads, helistops, and conventional airports are outside the scope of the paper although similar design criteria may apply to these facilities.

The title of this paper has been chosen for several reasons. To take financing first: problems of financing in transportation occur at several distinct levels, namely

—systems suppliers, for example, aircraft manufacturers;

—terminals and infrastructure, for example, ports and airports;

—operating companies, for example, airlines.

We shall essentially be focusing attention on financing of systems.

Secondly, innovation will receive attention within the systems, because while financing of conventional systems may not be easy, that of innovatory systems is often almost impossible. An innovatory transportation system may be defined as a package of equipment or components, at least some of which are radically new and which are designed to meet the requirements of a given transportation market.

The Stiletto is an air launched supersonic target developed for UK ranges. It is based on the American AQM 37A target which was designed and manufactured by Beech Aircraft.

The development programme has entailed a number of changes, both in equipment fit and control, on the target and the design and incorporation of a launching system into a Canberra aircraft. The programme has been a joint one between MoD as the customer and Shorts as co-ordinating design authority with collaboration from Beech and from the UK companies who developed and supplied the required equipment. The AQM 37A Target is purchased by Shorts from Beech, the necessary changes and additions made at Belfast and the resulting Stiletto target is delivered to RAE, Llanbedr. The development contract was placed late in 1966 and the first Stiletto was launched on programme on 1st August 1968.

In this contribution my chief purposes are to describe the aviation safety organisation of the Authority, and to outline some of the objectives.

I will talk mostly about today and tomorrow, rather than yesterday. But an appreciation of the Authority's safety organisation requires an understanding of its origins, so a brief recapitulation of the past is a proper starting point.

Louis Brennan, CB, was born in Castlebar, County Mayo, in 1852, and whilst he was at a very early age his parents emigrated to Australia where in due course he attended the College for Artisans in Melbourne. I know little of his youth but I understand that he became interested in watch and clock making and that his first adult achievement was the designing and making of a civic clock of Big Ben status.

What next I know of Brennan's activities is from the notebook of Professor William Kernot of Melbourne University who, incidentally, was Australia's first engineering graduate. This shows calculations on the performance of the torpedo and is dated 1876, so Brennan must have been quite young when he conceived this idea.

With some assistance from Professor Kernot and others, he designed and built a prototype which carried out such successful trials in 1879 that the British Admiralty were informed and they invited Brennan to England and financed the further development of the torpedo.

In recent years many investigations have been made into ways of reducing the pressure jumps across the shock waves resulting from supersonic transports. Lately Warren has stated that a quantity which typifies a sonic bang and in particular with regard to its effect on structures is the characteristic overpressure. The characteristic overpressure is the ratio of four times the running integral of the overpressure to the time interval between the first and last shock in the signature. The work on the pressure jumps across the shock waves and the resulting lower bound values have to be modified when the characteristic overpressure is considered. This note describes a preliminary investigation into methods of obtaining the lower bound values for the characteristic overpressure.

It is an honour and privilege to present this further memorial tribute to those early pioneers in the aeronautical world, William Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow. It is a very long way from their pioneering achievements in the aeronautical field and their model flying activities of the 1840s to the subject of the management of the MRCA project, an international collaborative development of an advanced technology aircraft. However, it is not devoid of associations. The fact that the Memorial Lecture is dedicated to Henson and Stringfellow is in itself a recognition of collaborative venture in aeronautics. The First Memorial Lecture was also a unique occasion in the collaboration in its preparation between the current secretary and the past secretary of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

I would like to take one quotation from the First Memorial Lecture'11, where it is recorded that String-fellow wrote to Henson on 25th July 1845 as follows:

“I received two notes from Marriott: in the one received this morning there was a proposition which I give you under and to which I believe Columbine is agreeable, that is to divide the patent interests into 12 as follows, Henson 4/12, Columbine 4/12, Marriott 2/12, String-fellow 2/12—this Marriott thinks equable and just.

Successful man powered aircraft projects may be divided into three main stages:

(a) Design.

(b) Construction.

(c) Operation.

From a purely practical standpoint, this sequence represents the order of increasing difficulty. It is in the later stages of a project that the major problems of team management and of organisation arise. Indeed, many groups, having designed and built a machine, have encountered the utmost difficulty in flying with any regularity. As a result, relatively little has been recorded on the matters of operating methods or handling characteristics, although there has been much discussion on the theoretical aspects of flight under human muscle-power.

The local flow angles measured by incidence and sideslip probes mounted on aircraft differ in general from the free stream or ‘true’ values due to the flow field of the aircraft and of the sensors themselves.

This note describes a method of determining the correction factors by means of measurements made in oscillatory motion. The longitudinal short period mode is used for incidence calibration, the dutch roll for sideslip.

The deterioration in the performance of NACA submerged intakes in the presence of a boundary layer has been established in Ref. 12, where a correlation of experimental data, obtained from wind tunnel tests on models, is presented. The purpose of this paper is to provide a prediction method which will allow the efficiency of these intakes to be estimated outside the range for which experimental data exist.

While the development of the Turana drone forms a short and well defined programme, such programme would not have been possible without the preceding Australian activity on drones and guided weapons.

It might be appropriate to outline briefly this activity, since the approach to various problems of Turana and the solution of certain difficulties depended on the experience gained with the Jindivik, Malkara and Ikara.

In order to test a proposed design of aircraft brake, it is obviously necessary to build a prototype, lay down a testing schedule in accordance with airworthiness requirements, and then test the brake, using for example a flywheel type test machine.

The time scale involved in this exercise is quite considerable. Once the brake has been designed it has to be drawn, stressed and the paper work required to make the prototype raised. What is not quite so obvious is that in most cases of brake test the final stage or reject take-off test leads to destruction of the heat sink. Thus if the test is not satisfactory or the results do not comply with the requirements and a retest is required, then a new prototype will also be required. In the case of a large multiplate disc brake the cost of such an exercise would be considerable.

It is hoped that the introduction of a “simulator” program run on a digital machine will enable a good deal of both time and money to be saved in the evolution of a satisfactory design.

The wall jet is described as a jet of fluid which issues to a wall at an angle from 0 to 90 degrees and grows along the wall in a surrounding stationary or moving fluid of infinite extent. The plane turbulent wall jet issuing tangentially to a smooth wall surrounded by the same fluid of infinite extent at rest is known as the classical wall jet and is explained in Fig. 1.

Considering the importance of the phenomenon in explaining some of the practical hydraulic engineering problems like submerged flows from outlets and other problems like paper drying and rocket exhaust effects, it would be helpful to analyse the problem more rationally. The purpose of this note is to present a method to analyse the flow mechanism in a wall jet consistent with the physical situation of the problem.

A recent study by digital computer of the theoretical characteristics of a family of low drag aerofoil sections was prompted some time ago by the need to redesign a particular NACA 6-series aerofoil of high camber (which was not producing the desired pressure distribution). Understandably, therefore, this new family of aerofoils—christened the GU series—was patterned on the NACA sections, and designed to provide the characteristic region of uniform velocity over the forward portion of one surface at the extreme of the low drag range, followed by a compression region of roughly constant adverse pressure gradient.

It WOULD be foolish to pretend that helicopters do not have their competitors but some may be surprised to know that in recent years one of the main competitors to the executive passenger carrying helicopter in this country has not been another aircraft but the excellent inter-city service operated by British Rail.

It would equally be misleading to pretend that there are not occasions when enquiries are received to charter a helicopter but because of the particular circumstances, including perhaps the stage length of the journey, they have to be frankly and honestly advised that it would be better to travel by scheduled air service.

This, however, has applied to the past. We are now at a stage when a whole new breed of helicopter is becoming increasingly available with improved performance, they are faster, are equipped for day and night and all weather operation and hopefully as the result of this very symposium, will be provided with the facilities to enable them to land in or close to the centre of cities and towns throughout the UK.

MY views on the Civil Aviation Authority and the “second force” airline cannot ignore the political controversy which has taken place concerning the base from which the airline should be able to operate successfully. This controversy began very shortly after publication of the Report of the Edwards Committee in May 1969, and the recent debate in the House of Commons provided another unedifying example of a misguided preoccupation with political dogma at a time when the new regulatory body should be given every encouragement to get to grips with the many problems which face it.

The debate is over. Now begins the task of strengthening British civil aviation and providing for the legitimate needs of the growing number of people to whom in one way or another air transport is an essential element of everyday life.

Since our national economy depends, to an extent, on the successful completion of the design, marketing and selling of major industrial projects, one sees more exacting demands placed on the completion of these projects on time. For example we have seen the advent of increased Ministerial requirements on the estimations of development costs and programmes with the subsequent stricter control of the costs and programmes of advanced technological projects. In order to facilitate the implementation of the requirements specified in the Downey Report, and in particular, industry's own monitoring and programming, we have seen the development of network analysis management techniques.

Projects having slipped several months or even years tend to incur escalated costs and consequently one sees a loss in overall profit, lost future orders, etc. It would be more than useful, therefore to estimate a probability function of completing a project by a specified date in order that more realistic planning can be executed.