It is indeed a very great honour for so new a member to be accorded the privilege of reading a paper before the Royal Aeronautical Society, and I would like to express my sincere thanks to the President and the Council of the Society for the invitation extended to me.

We have heard from designers and experts in all branches of aeronautics what problems confront them and how they propose to solve them. I am going to discuss, from the point of view of a pilot, some of the problems that seem to me to arise from high performance and increased wing loadings, and to indicate what appear to me to be possible solutions. I propose to consider these problems under five headings :—

1. (1) Take-off.

2. (2) Irreversible Aileron Control.

3. (3) The Approach.

4. (4) Flattening Out

5. (5) Touching Down.

West Africa, particularly British West Africa, has been one of the last areas to be opened up to Air Transport and because of physical and financial difficulties, progress has been slower than in most other parts of the Empire.

As West Africa, even today, is not very well known in other parts of the Empire, it will be useful to give a brief description of the territory and the early history of aviation there before dealing with the special problems encountered in the development of air transport. While the particular territories dealt with in this lecture are the four British West African Colonies and Protectorates of the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria, it will be necessary, from time to time, to make passing reference to the adjacent French territories and even to the Anglo–Egyptian Sudan. The four British territories, unlike those in East Africa, are not contiguous but each is surrounded on the land side by the intervening French territories of Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Volta, Niger, Chad and the Cameroons.

The pure bending of a rectangular beam about an axis parallel to a principal axis of its cross-section is well understood if its depth d is comparable in magnitude with its breadth b. The usual theory, noticing the geometrical fact that at any cross-section the longitudinal strains of filaments of the beam are proportional to the distances of the filaments from some neutral axis parallel to the axis of bending, postulates that the longitudinal stresses will vary in the same way.

This paper describes the construction of a simple electronic simulator for the solution of flutter problems in two degrees of freedom. It was intended as a prototype for a much larger machine to solve problems in six degrees of freedom.

Details of the construction and circuits are given, together with some typical solutions obtained on the machine. As a result of the successful operation of this prototype a larger machine in six degrees of freedom has now been built.

The study of the problems connected with a successful racing sailing boat, like Gaul, can be divided into three parts. There is first of all the general configuration of the hull upon which lately much study has been directed. Anybody interested in this should look up the article, “Model Tests of Sailing Yachts,” by Kenneth S. M. Davidson, Director, Experimental Towing Tank, Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, appearing in the August issue of “The Rudder,” in which it will be noted model hulls are pulled through the tank at an angle of heel, and with an angle of drift.

The field of viscosity forces in fluid currents of low viscosity—i.e., high Reynolds number—is frequently confined to a narrow zone in the vicinity of the surface; consequently, calculation can be simplified by the following assumptions :—

1. In the friction zone, customarily called the “ boundary layer,” only the most effective components of the viscosity force μΔω, are considered—e.g., for the x component of this force, μΔu (calling the direction of main flow parallel to the surface, the x direction, and that perpendicular thereto the y direction) the expressions μ (∂2u/∂x2) and μ (∂2u/∂z2) can be neglected for μ (∂2u/∂y2).

The introduction of rational performance requirements governing the operation of civil transport aircraft has given rise to a need for accurate and detailed information on obstructions in the vicinity of aerodromes. This paper states the origin and nature of the requirement and describes a survey technique, a particular application of terrestrial photogrammetry, which was used to meet it.

In the United Kingdom and in other member countries of the International Civil Aviation Organisation considerable progress has been made towards the rationalisation of performance requirements governing the operation of civil transport aircraft.