Word: planes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...After circling over Indio, Calif. since Nov. 20, Endurance Flyers Dick Riedel and Bill Barris discovered that their Aeronca plane's carburetor was icing, were forced to land after spending 568 hours and 47 minutes aloft. The endurance record (set by two Long Beach, Calif. flyers in 1939) still stood at 726 hours...
Subsonic Express. At Muroc (Calif.) Air Force Base, Northrop Aircraft, Inc. ran first flight tests on an odd-looking plane that seemed to have swallowed its tail. Called the X-4, it is a batshaped little (20 ft. long) craft with two jet engines and broad, backswept wings (see cut). No entry in the supersonic sweepstakes, the X-4 was designed in the belief that subsonic speeds will still be the practical concern of aviation for many years. It will be used for research at speeds of about 650 m.p.h...
...Direction. The omniranges are changing all that. Operating at very high frequency, they are entirely free from static. They do not send out restricted beams but can tell any plane within their range (50 miles or more, depending on altitude) in what direction it is heading in relation to the station. The pilot need not listen to wearying dots and dashes in his headset. All he has to do if he wants to fly toward the omnirange is to tune to its frequency and then watch a needle on his instrument board. When the needle is ver tical, the plane...
...another pilot-comforter: the DME (Distance Measuring Equipment). If the pilot wants to know how far he is from a certain omnirange, he turns on a transmitter that sends out a coded signal. When this reaches the omnirange, a repeater answers like an echo. An automatic device on the plane measures the time between the signal and the echo. It turns this interval into the distance in miles and "displays" it on a dial. This gives the pilot a perfect "fix." He knows his direction and distance from the omnirange. Therefore he knows exactly where he is, though there...
...sure that this system, combined with blind landing devices at the airports, will make U.S. flying enormously safer and more regular. But CAA considers the system merely "transitional." The ultimate control system, which will become necessary as air traffic gets denser, will keep the planes moving like railroad trains on a "block system." Each plane will keep to a well-marked "track" in space. Signals on the instrument board will tell the pilot whether the block ahead is clear and whether the next plane behind him is treading on his tail...