OCR Text |
Show Ririd Air Safety Code Beneficial to U. S. Aviation w - One reason for the supremacy of American aviation over foreign rivals ri-vals is supplied by estimates that this country's commercial air transport trans-port companies spend 500 pec cent more each year on research, maintenance main-tenance and inspection than all the rest of the world's airlines. Rigid safety standards are applied to even seemingly minor items of air equipment by aviation inspection trews. An example of their unusual un-usual requirements is found in a report re-port on the development of a new type of plane refuelling hose now in use by major oil companies having refuelling contracts at airports from coast to coast. Five years of research by scientists scien-tists of the B. F. Goodrich laboratories labora-tories went into the perfecting of the new hose which incorporates safeguards against two peculiar aviation avi-ation problems. A special compound com-pound of synthetic rubber was developed de-veloped for the hose to prevent the possibility of small particles of natural rubber which has a tendency tend-ency to disintegrate in contact with gasoline from passing into the motors. mo-tors. The new compound is said by technicians to be completely gasoline-proof. Stranded stainlo6s steel wire was also woven into the hose in order that static electricity which might have been generated by the friction fric-tion of air on the plane's surfaces in flight might be conducted harmlessly harmless-ly to the ground through the wire, which is attached to couplings on the field. |