AN ENGINE WONDER.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4361, 4 January 1922, Page 1

AN ENGINE WONDER.

BRITISH TRIUMPH. 450H.P. MOTOR THAT FOUR MEN CAN LIFT. A costly three years’ scientific quest, has now provided England with a large air-cooled aeroplane engine with features that no other motor in the world can show. The small engines which cooled themselves by spinning round and were fitted to the aeroplanes of many pion'iers present formidable problems to attempts to increase their power. Yet the air, with a ’plane rushing through it, offers^ l n_jdj^ i ’j copling medium for-a' motor f com we. A'-ums air-cool it does away wi® theTmpedimenta and potential-sour cej of breakdown involved a.t present rn the most powerful aeroengines. The line of research has, therefore, been devoted to setting a number of large cylinders, fixed and not revolving, in a star formation, so that all of them stand well in the air flow, and to seeing whether a really powerful and reliable engine', such as is dfii manded for fighting or commerce, can be kept cool en.ough while operating at great speed simply by the flow oj air round its cylinders. How important this research has been may be guaged when it is said that a fixed cylinder air-cooled motor, containing 25 per cent, fewer parts than one that Is water-cooled, any yet developing several hundred horsepower, can be tucked in a fighting ’plane' int'O a space only 2ft from front to back , Success has now been achieved and the engine is entirely British. The Bristol Company, whose efforts have had the sympathetic interest of the authorities, have recently submitted to the most searching Air Ministry trials the largest and, for its power, the lightest, air-cooled motor ever built. This engine has just emerged triumphantly ’ from an officially ob-. s.erved technical test that no other engine of the kind has survived. This test has been bne equivalent to carrying eight pe.ople in a series of flights, entirely without overhaul, for 10,000 miles at a speed of! more than 100 miles an hour. The nine big cylinders of this en-i gine .develop 450-horse power when working at 1840 revolutions a minute, and yet the engine is so light that four men can lift it A new fighting machine, expected to, exceed in speed and manoeuvring power anything attempted hitherto, and also a British commercial aeroplane, having a unique capacity for making loads pay, are to be built to take the new engine.