Remembering Juan De La Cierva And His Wonderful Flying Machine

It might be something new for the most of us but does anyone know that a little over 90 years ago, a Spanish aeronautical engineer invented a very unique flying machine unseen since the start of World War II?

By: Ringo Bones 

A little over 90 years ago, a Spanish aeronautical engineer invented a novel flying machine now largely confined to some dusty esoteric corner of some air and space museum. It was called an Autogiro or gyroplane and in honor of the 90^th Anniversary of Juan de la Cierva’s successful first flight, I could give a little information about it here. 

Juan de la Cierva, inventor of the Autogiro was born at Murcia, Spain back in September 21, 1895. His father was a noted lawyer and statesman. Juan de la Cierva though elected a member of the Spanish Parliament in 1919 and again in 1922, devoted his energies almost entirely to the invention and development of the Autogiro. 

He was educated at Escuela Especial de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos at Madrid, where he spent six years and studied the on his own the works of F.W. Lancaster and N, Joukowski on theoretical aerodynamics. He entered a competition for military airplane designs for the government and built a biplane bomber with three engines, using an airfoil section of his own design, developed mathematically. Tested in May 1919, the plane crashed when the test pilot stalled it. 

Cierva turned to rotary wing design after this experience, as a solution to the problem of safety. His first three machines were failures, but with the change made in the fourth machine, from rotor blades rigidly fixed to the hub to blades freely hinged, the first successful Autogiro became a working reality. It was flown for 200 yards on January 19, 1923, and three public flights were made on January 21, 1923 – the longest being a complete circuit of two and one-half miles in about three and one-half minutes. 

Also known as “gyroplanes” and with the exception of von Baumhauer’s experimental model, from 1923 to 1939 the only single-rotor machines that flew were Juan de la Cierva’s Autogiro or gyroplanes. These were not helicopters because they couldn’t take-off vertically, or could they sustain flight without forward or descending airspeed. The rotor was tilted backward and was turned by the airstream passing through it. In the gyroplane there is no torque to be counteracted in flight, except for the slight friction in the bearings between the rotor hub and the mast. Therefore, there is no need for counteracting means or counter-rotating rotors. However, one of the first of de la Cierva’s concepts of the gyroplane from 1920 included the use of counter-rotating rotors, principally to overcome the lateral overturning forces on a rigid rotor on forward flight and to cancel gyroscopic effects that may hinder the proper operation. 

By 1925, he had solved most of the problems of the Autogiro and in that year the Cierva Autogiro Company, Ltd., was formed in England, with Cierva acting as its technical director; Cierva also collaborated closely with the Autogiro Company of America after its foundation in 1929. On September 18, 1928, he flew one of his machines across the English Channel. And in 1930 he flew an Autogiro from England to Spain, giving a number of flying demonstrations in his native country. He demonstrated the Autogiro at the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio in 1929 and also visited the United States in 1932 and 1933. 

Cierva received numerous honors for his aeronautical work, including the Daniel Guggenheim Gold Medal for 1932, the Elliot Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute and, posthumously, the Gold Medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. During the last year and a half of his life, he supported General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Cierva was killed in a crash of an air liner at Croyden, England, on December 9, 1936. Sadly, virtually all Autogiro and gyroplane production and experimentation had all but ceased by the start of World War II. 

Did American Airline Companies Kill The Super Sonic Transport?

Even though such aircraft are notorious for being not environmentally friendly and abysmally expensive to operate – but did the American airline companies been out to kill the super sonic transport program from the very start?

By: Ringo Bones 

Before being retired back in 2003, most of us probably still harbor the impression that it was the horrible accident of Air France Flight 4590 where an Air France Concorde flight tragically crashed back in July 2000. Some could say it was the post 9/11 “fear-of-flying” that eventually killed off the Concorde – the only supersonic capable civilian transport plane that was part of the 1960s super sonic transport program started by both the United States and leading European economic superpowers back then. But does anyone still know that as far back as the late 1960s, American airline companies already harbored a disdain for civilian super sonic transport programs like the Concorde? 

A few years before the Concorde’s maiden flight at Toulouse, France back in 1969, American airline companies were already concerned over declining profits and were already committed – at the time – to the purchase of 5-billion US dollars’ worth of wide-bodied subsonic jets, they were in no mood to pledge additional billions in super sonic transport orders. Back then, American airline companies cancelled their options for the Concorde and left the Anglo-French combine with only 16 orders. Remaining customers back then, at almost 50-million US dollars per plane were Britain, France, The People’s Republic of China and Iran. Eventually, only Britain and France maintained a fleet of Concorde planes as part of their national flag carriers when the civilian super sonic transport entered regular service. 

Though designed in the 1960s, the Concorde still looks fresh long after its retirement into a museum piece ten years ago – even long after the other design fads of the 1960s have worn into a cliché. And it was only after a few years it debuted in the 1976 Paris Air Show – while competing with the then Soviet Union’s version of the civilian super sonic transport, the Tupolev TU-144 – that the Concorde entered into full commercial service. 

But in truth, the Concorde is abysmally expensive to operate in comparison to typical subsonic jumbo jets. It takes three times the maintenance cost of a Boeing 747 and burns 50% more fuel despite carrying only 100 passengers to the 747’s 400. And during the austere fiscal environment of the post Operation Desert Storm early 1990s, Air France and British Airways, the only airline companies that operated the plane, have taken to using gimmicks to fill the seats. It wasn’t until the Clinton era economic boom of the mid to late 1990s that the romance of mere civilians with a little extra cash can safely break the sound barrier while sipping champagne and eating caviar while being pampered like royalties – until the tragic crash of Air France Flight 4590.  

Charging Passengers By Their Weight: Fairest Way To Fly?

Even though this is how fledgling airline companies did business when they first set up shop during the 1920s should airline passengers be charging their passengers according to heir own weight and how heavy are their baggage are? 

By: Ringo Bones

Believe it or not, during the dawn of the airline industry when passenger planes were no more than converted World War I era multi-engine biplane bombers, passengers were first asked to stand on a weighing scale with their carry-on baggage and were charged according to how heavy they are. Fast forward to 2013, Samoa Air CEO Chris Langton recently gained unintended fame after he decided to charge passengers by how much they and their baggage weigh – i.e. by the weight airfare billing – as opposed to by seat class that had since been de rigueur way back when airline companies started using the Douglas DC-3. Given that the law of physics has made practical aviation a weight-sensitive endeavor, isn’t it more pragmatic to charge airline passengers by how much they and their baggage weigh as opposed to seat class? 

Actually it was back in November 2012 that Samoa Air started charging passengers by how much they and their baggage weigh because the small airline company flies just three small planes in their fleet and these type of planes require more fuel – thus increased operating costs – the heavier their passengers and loads are. As a way to avoid running their airline company to the ground financially, Samoa Air introduces surcharges for passengers weighing more than 72 kilograms. In Samoa Air CEO Chris Langton’s experience of running his own airline company – and it is also proven by the existing laws of physics – airlines primarily run by weight (passengers and baggage / cargo) and not by seating class. 

So is charging passengers by how much they and their baggage weigh the fairest way to fly? Many frequent fliers on Samoa Air’s routes are quite skeptical – given that most of them are rather the burly American tourist types who normally weigh over 80 kilograms and Samoans who have grown heavier as they integrate into a rather sedentary urban lifestyle as they go to work in the tiny South Pacific island nation’s major urban centers. The Western style meat based diets are not helping matters either for the native Samoans who are the likely passengers of Samoan Air’s “by the pound” – as opposed to by the quid according to seating class- airfare billing. I wonder if Virgin Galactic’s space tourists’ fares will be based on the passenger’s weight.  

Low Cost Airlines Fueling The Latest Civil Aviation Boom?

With Ryanair and Lion Air ordering billions of dollars worth of new planes, is the budget airline sector fueling the latest civil aviation boom? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary might have picked the very right time to order 15.6 billion US dollars worth of the new Boeing 737 Max aircraft. After all, with Boeing’s on-going problems with the lithium ion batteries of the auxiliary power unit of their fleet of 787 Dreamliners already in service around the world, the Ryanair CEO could easily negotiate Boeing to buy a new fleet of 737 Max at a very keen price. 

On the East Asian low cost airline scene, Indonesia’s Lion Air  - currently Indonesia’s largest privately run airline company - decides to buy 24 billion US dollars worth of new fleet of aircraft from Airbus back in March 19, 2013 given that budget air travel is the only economically viable business move in the region at the moment. But can the budget airline sector manage to revitalize the currently struggling civil aviation market? 

Even though well-healed tourists had always associated budget airlines with shoddy sub-par service, overseas contract workers – especially from the economically depressed parts of the East Asian region – had been embracing low-cost carriers since the late 1990s as their commute of choice on their way to work in the more affluent parts of the Persian Gulf to earn money for their families. And if the world’s major civil aviation firms manage to make keenly priced intermediate range passenger planes favored by low cost airline operators, then maybe, low cost airlines could spearhead the global economic recovery all of us desperately needs. 

F-35 Lightning: Not Airworthy?

As the current most expensive weapons systems procurement program by The Pentagon, is the F-35 Lightning’s jet engine problems affecting its airworthiness status?

By: Ringo Bones 

 

Back in February 25, 2013, a news story aired about a fleet of 50 F-35 Lightning aircraft were grounded after a routine maintenance discovered cracks in one of the plane’s turbine blades of its Pratt & Whitney F135 jet engine. Given that the F-35 program is currently The Pentagon’s most expensive weapons systems procurement program, will this turbine blade problem eventually affect its airworthiness? 

Given that current Federal laws still prohibit the export of the 120 million US dollar F-22 Raptor – even to America’s allies – Lockheed Martin developed a “budget” version of the Raptor called the F-35 Lightning during the late 1990s and it currently retails around 85 million US dollars each. Currently there are two variants of the F-35 – a conventional takeoff and landing version that needs 10,000-foot runways that Turkey and other American allies had been eyeing to purchase since 2010 and a short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing or STOVL version which the UK had been also eyeing to buy as a replacement for its ageing fleet of Harrier jump jets. 

Ever since the first decade of the 21^st Century, Lockheed Martin had been pitching the F-35 Lightning – especially its conventional takeoff and landing version – as the logical replacement of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, although these days, the top brass of the various arms of the US DoD had been eyeing the F-35 as a viable replacement of the A-10 Warthog and the F-18 Hornet. And there are two main capabilities of the F-35 that is absent of the older generation of military aircraft it sets to replace – like stealth and supercruise. 

As with the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning was designed with stealth capability - that is it is very hard to “see” or detect using conventional air defense radar. And its lightweight mostly composite material airframe allow the F-35 to have supercruise capability – i.e. fly supersonic without turning on its jet engines fuel hungry afterburners and like the F-22, the F-35 only requires the pilot to turn the afterburners only if he or she wishes to fly faster than Mach 1.5. 

Also, the short-takeoff-and-landing or STOVL version of the F-35 Lightning also has the advantage over the Harrier jump-jet it sets to replace due to its use of a lifting fan. The F-35’s lifting fan allow it to perform a very short running 100-yard takeoff and land vertically without the hot-gas ingestion problems that often cause the Harrier to crash during vertical landing maneuvers. 

IN the austere fiscal era of the post credit crunch world were shrinking national defense budgets are the norm - rater than the exception, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning seems to be the best high performance military aircraft out there with a good price-performance ratio, if only the famed aerospace firm can solve its current turbine blade crack problems. If it does, it could probably become a leading figure in the aerospace industry for years to come despite the world’s ever shrinking national defense budgets.