COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER ELEVEN A TESTING TIME
tunnel,and others were under construction. But the grand design came
to nought and Twinwood was still very much as I remembered it,
fourteen years earlier, in the days of 613 Squadron and the Bisleys of
51 OTU.
The N.A.E. Gliding Club - drawing its membership from the ranks
of the scientific civil service - bore strong signs of Midwood
influence. In the Romney hut next to the blister hanger under the
trees, where the Mustangs had once undergone their major inspections,
you walked straight into the old crew room. A dark place at best, the
new management had turned it into a bar, and had seen fit to make it
darker still with a colour scheme of midnight blues and blacks. Empty
wine bottles, festooned with wax, stood ready to do further service as
candlesticks, and the ugly high pitched ceiling had been hidden behind
drapes of fishermen's netting. In the long winter evenings, with a good
fug up, it was comfortable and attractive and we enjoyed some rousing
parties there in our time.
The longer we spent at Twinwood the more I learned about the
Olympia IV and its early development.
It all began in the summer of 1951 when Harry left Avros, to join
the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, and enrolled as a
member of the ETPS gliding section. Moved to Thurleigh, six months
later, he decided to travel back there at weekends for his flying. Bill
Bedford, on his way to becoming Hawker's Chief Test Pilot - John
Sowrey, who was a pupil on No 10 course - and Roger Austin, still a
very junior member of staff, were fellow gliding enthusiasts. Each was
to play a major role in the story. The irrepressible Sowrey, owner of a
gorgeous racing Bentley which he was known to take on retrieves,
started the ball rolling by provoking the other three.
"With all the expertise at Farnborough" - he kept saying - "we can
produce the best glider in the world!"
That was a challenge which Harry could not ignore. Already aware
that the use of laminar flow sections might lead to a substantial
improvement in performance, he followed up various references and the
findings excited him greatly. For a start he discovered that the adverse
effect of small imperfections, considered to be a major problem on
laminar flow wings, was greatly reduced at the low Reynolds Numbers*
of glider flight. A thicker section widened the laminar drag bucket,
improving the performance over an extended range of speeds, and gave
a more gentle stall.
The significance of this last point seemed to elude other designers,
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