April 15, 1920

April 15, 1920

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Universal Test Engine

By Glenn D. Angle18 min

Landing Run and Get-away for Standard Airplanes

By Alexander Klemin16 min

Directional Stability and Control of Airships

By Ralph H. Upson14 min

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Universal Test Engine

Engineers will generally agree, that despite the marvelous progress made in the development of high speed internal combustion engines during recent years, there still remains much to be accomplished toward increasing efficiencies and improving designs generally.

By Glenn D. Angle18 min

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Landing Run and Get-away for Standard Airplanes

Association with the air mail service leads me to the conclusion that the length of the landing run constitutes one of the greatest practical airplane problems, particularly when using the fields now available. A fast, heavily-loaded machine has excellencies of its own but is not likely to be capable of a short run; a powerfully-acting tail-skid, while giving full braking effect, is likely to damage a field and at the same time impose undue stresses upon the fuselage.

By Alexander Klemin16 min

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Directional Stability and Control of Airships

There are only two factors that need here to be considered: (a) Gusts or erratic movements in the surrounding air, (b) Instability of the airship itself. Consider the effect of a sudden side gust on an airship previously moving straight through the air: The ship will either turn away from the gust, or toward it, or as a special case will maintain its direction practically independent of the gust.

By Ralph H. Upson14 min

242243

The Gourdou-leseurre Pursuit Airplane

General Fundamentals of the Problem—We wished to build a fast monoplane armed with two machine guns and powered by a Hispano-Suiza 180 hp. engine. We determined on this construction for the following reasons: The efficiency of the monoplane is superior to that of the biplane.

By Charles Gourdou11 min

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Absolute Pressure Gauge for Wind Tunnel Use

In the Curtiss wind tunnels the air speed determinations are based upon the readings produced by a standard Pitot tube on an absolute pressure gauge of great simplicity. This gauge replaces the well known Chattock gauge, a sketch of which is shown below for comparison.

By Dr. J. G. Coffin9 min

246247

The Bureau of Standards Method of Altitude Computation

There has been so much discussion of late relative to the various altitude records said to have been made by various pilots, and in connection with these discussions there is always arising the question of how the figure given out as the altitude obtained was arrived at, that while it is neither the writer’s purpose to be minutely technical nor to cover in detail the whole matter of calibration and correction, it will be attempted in this article to show the general method of computation employed by the Bureau of Standards and the data on which these computations are based.

By Lester D. Seymour6 min

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Goodyear Type Aa Pony Blimp

The second Pony Blimp, Type AA, which, like the first, is 35,000 cu. ft. in capacity, is almost completed, ready for trial flights. This unit is slightly different from the Type A ship, the main change being that the car is designed to accommodate a tractor type motor.
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Editorials

THE Aeronautical Show which opens on April 21, at San Francisco is the first affair of this kind ever held on the Pacific Coast. As such it will undoubtedly attract a large number of visitors whose practical acquaintance with aeronautics was hitherto restricted to seeing various Army airplanes in the sky or on the ground.
244245

Monel Metal for Engine Valves

244245

Propeller Theory and Design

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