American television directory (1946)

STR AT O VISION WILL GIVE Aviation is ready to do its part in the creation of air¬ borne video broadcasts with trouble-free planes, relief planes standing by and enough gas for 1 1 hours. _ By WILLIAM K. EBEL Vice President in Charge of Engineering, The Glenn L. Martin Company Airplane broadcasting service is not only possible but is not too difficult to attain. The design of the airplane must be such that it will operate reliably 24 hours a day in the highest wind ve¬ locities to be encountered at 30,000 feet. Throughout the United States, high winds usually occur in winter months and the average velocity is about 50 miles per hour. The highest ever re¬ corded was 181 miles per hour at 18,000 feet over Lansing, Michigan, in December, 1919, but winds exceeding 80 miles per hour occur less than 1.5 per cent of the time at any location in the United States at 30,000 feet. Over Ja¬ pan, the crews of B-29’s often reported winds exceeding 150 miles per hour. We are fortunately situated for Stratovision operation. Weather No Problem At 30,000 feet all storms are below us with the one exception of thunderheads. These clouds, known as cumu¬ lonimbus, have been observed at alti¬ tudes of 40,000 feet with extreme ver¬ tical air currents of 200 miles an hour blowing straight up through their cen¬ ters. However, their occurrence at al¬ titudes of 30,000 feet is extremely rare. The extent of such a disturbance is purely local, or even more infrequently, may be a relatively narrow band of considerable length. This is a typical cold-front configuration. Since they are clearly visible, even at night, they can be avoided with no interruption of service by flying broadcast airplanes on either side of the disturbance. Always Two Planes in Air Airplanes would take off at stag¬ gered 4-hour intervals remaining at 30,000 feet for eight hours each. This will keep a broadcasting and a stand-by airplane on station at all times. At each area four airplanes will be re¬ quired so that while two are flying the remaining two will be undergoing serv¬ ice maintenance. Since the Stratovision airplane must operate in all types of weather, it must be equipped with hot air anti-icing equipment. Heat derived from either the engine exhaust or separate heat¬ ers is conveyed to the leading edges of the wings so that ice never has a chance to form. Moreover, with Stratovision broad¬ casting, a rebroadcast airplane can take off from Chicago outside of the storm area, fly over Pittsburgh at an altitude safely above the weather and serve the latter area even when a hurricane may have disabled all ground equipment. If the country were covered with aircraft operating at all times at 30,000 feet, meteorological data would be available to forecast weather even more accurately than at present, and to con¬ centrate aircraft as needed near storm areas. No storm area is ever so large that it would keep aircraft near its outer edges from getting on stations at any time. We can safely say that with the most modern navigational, radar, anti-icing, and blind landing equipment and with sufficient reserve aircraft, no area would be deprived of Stratovision serv¬ ice because of weather. Statistics Prove Reliability A question which may occur to the skeptic, as it has occurred to us: What about the reliability of the mechanical operation of aircraft? The Civil Aero¬ nautics Administration states that in a two and one-half year period from Jan¬ uary 1941 to June 1943, there were seven forced landings due to engine failure during a total of 340,000,000 miles of airplane operation. Using an average cruising speed of 180 miles an hour, we calculated the hours of flight per forced landing and the chances of interrupting a coast-to-coast network. Bear in mind that this interruption can only be caused by both airplanes at any one station being forced down at once. This probability in any one 24hour day came out to be one in 30,000,000. On an average we would have an interruption due to airplane engine failure once every 82,000 years. There are other things which can force the airplane down, such as loss of cabin supercharging pressure, but here again we will use the same tech¬ nique which nullifies the effects of en¬ gine failure. We will supply 100 per cent standby in all such items, includ¬ ing power generating equipment, emer¬ gency controls, oxygen and other items. Slow Airplane Required Present plans call for conventional all-metal, low-wing monoplanes — almost as large as the famed B-29, but with gross weight only a third of the Super¬ fortress. They would have automatic ( Continued on page 127) SKY GIANTS, all-metal, low-wing monoplanes as large as B-29’s but a third as heavy are planned for Stratovision. One will cruise at under 150 miles per hour while a second stands by. 28