Air mail

Light aeroplanes

Sir,

As one of your avid readers, who learnt to fly in gliders shot from long rubber ropes, and then in gliders launched from a motor winch (1924, Rugby), passing to RAAF instructing, and on to photo recce Spitfires in UK, and the Middle East, I thank you for your present aircraft section. My first flight was in a Sopwith Gnu, if my memory is correct, and it still had the cockpit gun mounting frame attached.

I also recall that when Scott and Black won the UK to Australia race in the early 1930s, they were presented with a Vauxhall Hurlingham Roadster. I often wonder where it is now. I thank you for the best magazine in the world.

John P. Read, Victoria, Australia.

The Eagle Micro-Light

Sir,

You query if the new breed of micro-light aircraft is safe. My experience of the Eagle, as advertised in July Motor Sport, is that it is eminently safe, and apparently unspinnable. Its limitations are set, in the air, by its 35 mph maximum speed, and on the ground by its 1lb per square foot wing loading (as per the Wright brothers) which makes it very prone to blow away. It is very easy and most enjoyable to fly, but tricky to land in gusty conditions. Ours is powered by two 114 cc Chrysler engines, each reputedly giving 9 bhp and I have succeeded (just) in taking off and completing a circuit on one engine so (to take you up on page 919) perhaps it doesn’t “need more power to get an aeroplane off the ground than is needed to propel a car round a track.”

Cecil Clutton, Lezayre, loM.

Gyro-copter mystery

Sir,

I read with interest your article “Aviation for Everyone”. I am a relation of the late George Parnall of G Parnall and Co.

My family home’s attic holds some aviation history, a sample of which I thought may interest you.

The picture taken at the Lympne Competitions is self-explanatory but I would welcome any explanation concerning the early gyro-copter. The rotor blades do look inadequate even without the lateral interference.

Mark Parnall, Bude, Cornwall.