Juan de la Cierva was born in Mosei, Spain nearly 100 years ago on 21 September 1895. At the age of 15 he constructed with two friends, a glider of his own design and contined to show great interest in aviation and aircraft design. He gained an engineering degree and in 1918 built his first tri-motor aeroplane in Spain. His concept was to provide a flying machine having a parachute capability for improved safety in the event of an engine failure and he worked in the direction of the helicopter concept, but concluded that true helicopter flight was not technically feasible with the state of the art at that time. He concentrated therefore on short take-off and landing combining both the fixed wing and the helicopters physical characteristics and called his invention the autogyro. The first successful flight with his autogyro was on January 9th 1923 at Getafe Aerodrome, Madrid. By 1925 development aircraft had achieved reliability and he began demonstrations in France, England and the United States before starting to produce the autogyro in quantity in both England and the United States. It was Juan de la Cierva's main rotor blade design and creation of the articulated rotor system that played such an important role in the first successful helicopter which flew in 1936 and in all subsequent helicopters.

The experimental results of an oblique Blade-Vortex Interaction (BVI) study are presented. The quality of all pressure data reflects improvements in the Glasgow University BVI facility and in the method of reducing and presenting data. The data collected during oblique interactions is found qualitatively and quantitatively similar to that collected in corresponding parallel interactions, for interactions within ± 30° of parallel. Details of the pressure data are examined in the light of understanding gained from parallel BVI experimentation. The study highlights the effects of three dimensional flow interactions not accounted for in the nondimensionalisation traditionally utilised in the analysis of parallel blade-vortex interactions.

A small, but increasingly active, lighter-than-air industry has developed in the United Kingdom over the last 20 years. One of the five companies now involved has built more conventional helium filled airships than the rest of the world's manufacturers put together. Two others have supplied over 100 hot air airships — mostly to orders received from outside the UK.

Current LTA designs and activity in the UK are described.

An experimental and computational investigation of hypervelocity, hypersonic combustion of hydrogen with air is described which was intended to confirm the presence of combustion at these conditions and then to gauge the pressure rise associated with the heat release of combustion. Experiments were conducted in a square cross section duct and wall pressure was measured. It was found that combustion did occur and that the maximum pressure increase was approximately 72% over the intake pressure.