At 08:35 PM 19/02/01 +1100, Chris Thorpe wrote:
>Peter you have confused your Viscount accidents and your comment about the
>designer is baseless. The Port Headland accident to MMA Viscount was due to
>fatigue caused by maintenance abuse and not design fault. The Viscount that
>lost a wing in turbulence crashed into Botany Bay. With the Botany Bay
>accident the investigators concluded the accident occurred through loss of
>control resulting from an encounter with "unseen turbulence of extreme
>magnitude".
>
>Christopher Thorpe
Good Day Chris,
Maybe you are close. But no airliner since has relied on a single spar to
support the aircraft.
I wonder what is "unseen turbulence of extreme magnitude". Several other
structurally well designed aircraft flew through the same turbulence over
Botany Bay and other places and did not lose a wing.
The accident investigators in those days were all trained by pommies. I
wonder why they concluded that the pommie built Viscount was not at fault.
But I also wonder why they changed the structure of the Viscount, by not
relying on a single spar, after several airframe losses, if the early
version were free of fault.
Even the Comet IV was a drastically different structure after its
predecessor's well known structural failure related crashes.
Apart from the VC10, the poms have failed with every attempt to build a
modern, safe, efficient airliner. Some magnificent aircraft such as the
Britannia, had short success, but that is all.
Australia's aviation industry was modelled by poms on a pommy system. No
wonder our best success was the NOMAD, a dismal failure even by third world
standards. Who else but a pommy influenced aviation industry would design
an aircraft with inverted helicopter engines? Why did the poms have wooden
Mosquitoes built in Australia for hot/humid conditions in which the
structure deteriorated from the moment it was glued together. The outer
wing structure delaminated in the first torrential rain storm it flew
through.
Gippsland Aeronautics is a hopeful exception. Not much pommy influence in
the valley.
It is an arguable point that Harry Schneider's glider buiding was more
succesful than GAF/CAC? And I don't think he got a fraction of the
government funding that GAF/CAC did. He certainly got no support from the
GFA with the Platypus.
Pommy PENETRATION, 2000 ft ceilings and 40kph. No wonder they have no idea
what goes on in the real world across the pond.
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