FLYING ON THE GROUND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 24, 8 December 1939, Page 3

FLYING ON THE GROUND

A Wonder Machine at Wigram By "23/762"

Te Link Trainer is one of the several wonders of No. 1 Air Force Training School at Wigram. Youthful pilots in this amazing machine are able to take off, make a complete flight in the air, and land again without ever leaving the ground. But for the outbreak of war, a Link .rainer would have been one of the principal exhibits of the Royal New Zealand Air Force section at the Centennial Exhibition but, unfortunately, it is now too valuable to be spared from Wigram. Briefly, and without revealing any official secrets, the Link Trainer is a mechanical device for training pilots to fly by instruments and to use the radio ranges and other modern aids to navigation. In other words, the pilot is trained in blind flying. When the airman takes his place in the machine, it is exactly as though he were in the cockpit of a plane. All the instruments are there and a hood completely shuts him off from the rest of the world-in this instance a large room in one of the training huts at Wigram. An instructor sits at a table in the room and the two men can communicate only by telephone or by key, which is akin to receiving wireless messages from a ground station while a flight is in progress.

So a flight begins. While it is in progress an automatic course recorder, known to airmen as a "crab" or " bug," moves over a chart or map on the instructor’s desk, accurately recording the exact course flown by the pilot in the trainer. Every turn, every change, no matter how slight, is indicated. Afterwards the pilot and the instructor go over the recorded flight together, checking up on all that has taken place during the time the pilot makes his imaginary flight in the air. Such accuracy is one of the wonders of flying to-day. Latest Type of Trainer This particular Link Trainer is the latest type and is the result of seven years of constant development. The recorder itself, a delicate piece of mechanism, is driven forward at a constant rate of speed as the flight progresses so that the time taken and the distance travelled are accurately explained. The revealing needle of the recorder cannot lie, as an examination of the map or chart when the flight has ended will show, for every climb, dive or cruise is charted beyond doubt. Inside the cockpit the pilot has control of 10 different instruments, most of which are mysteries to the man in the street. They are the magnetic compass,

air speed, bank and turn, vertical speed, directional gyro, artificial horizon, sensitive altimeter, tachometer, visual marker beacon and radio compass. In addition there are the normal radio controls and the throttle. Blind flying and blind navigation are the primary objectives in the use of the Link Trainer, as the pilot learns blind take-offs and blind landings. While he is inside the hood he can see nothing except his instrument board, just as though he were actually flying in darkness. Other Developments at Wigram Meanwhile the rest of Wigram Aerodrome is becoming a large and still more efficient training school, where pilots receive their final training before leaving for England or, possibly, for Canada, where they will become proficient in learning to control the fastest modern machines. The first group of fully trained pilots passed out recently, after being inspected by the Minister of Defence, the Hon. F. Jones. Two large new hangars are nearly completed, dwarfing the hangars already in use. There are special departments for the study of every branch of instruction, and a new administrative block. One of these departments concerns the delicate instruments by which a machine is controlled; they allow for not the slightest fraction ~ of error. On the domestic side Wigram is almost as interesting. Excellent and comfortable quarters have been erected for officers and men, the whole making a unit in our defence system which is there for peace time as well as for war training.