Word: airscrews
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Some American terms, usually technical, have found their way into the R.A.F. Thus an airscrew has become a prop (propeller). But U.S. airmen in Britain have taken over British technical terms, too. Most now call an airplane an "aircraft...
...last summer saw a strange craft skittering overhead. It had no wings. Its spraddle-legged landing gear hung gauntly from its snub-nosed body. Above the fuselage whirled a shimmering set of paddles, like a busy egg beater. On an open frame at the tail whirled another but smaller airscrew, in a vertical plane: even the tail surfaces of the what-is-it were busy...
...ownership papers to the 63-foot Winnetta, a 35-year-old schooner which in her $75,000 prime had once raced her sticks off on the Great Lakes, in more recent years had been the little-used property of fiftyish John S. Nairns, an inventor preoccupied with developing an airscrew for propelling ships. Inventor Nairns had sold the Winnetta's motor, but he still had the masts and sails in storage. Last week, lucky Tex scrubbed and buffed away at the Winnetta, dreamed of starting off round the world...
...blade), the S. S. Normandie last month recaptured the Atlantic speed record (TIME, Aug. 16). Even more striking are the results that have been attained in the last four years by changing the design of airplane propellers. Until 1933 there had been only two major improvements in the paper airscrew invented by Leonardo da Vinci some 450 years before to pull toy helicopters to the ceiling of his study. One was the Wright Brothers' development of a two-bladed '"prop" of laminated wood, the other the shift in the 19205 to aluminum alloy blades whose pitch could...
...lift 100 pounds; 35 horsepower will lift a weight for which an airplane like the De Havilland requires a 400 horsepower Liberty. Nor is a high degree of forward speed really hard to achieve. It is in coming down with engines stopped that the main difficulty lies. The airscrew must then act as a giant parachute. When one man sails down gently in a parachute its supporting area must be over 100 square feet. It is enormously difficult to provide a supporting area enough to prevent a 2,000 pound machine from crashing violently to the ground. The airscrew blades...
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