Airways Magazine October 2024 | Page 23

AIRWAYS SPECIAL Harbour Air
4 Located half a mile from Downtown Vancouver , convenience is one of the virtues of Harbour Air ’ s flight services .
5 The Hughes H-4 Hercules still holds the record for the widest wingspan for a single-fuselage plane , reaching almost 100 meters from tip to tip . // FAA ( PUBLIC DOMAIN ).
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bizarre ideas abounded , as physicists and engineers strove to identify the best way of flying . Fragile and primitive aircraft always had to be tested under the correct conditions .
While a modern Airbus A320 can deal with up to 10kt of tailwind on departure , the planes of the 1920s could only take off with headwind , and therefore had to be flexible enough to take off in the most efficient direction .
Then , as now , seaplanes could operate with no designated fixed runways and fields ; any suitably large and calm body of water would enable Pilots to literally decide for themselves in which direction to take off at any given time . At the same time , engineers had a solid starting point for
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