Pre-war Services for Civil Aviation (continued)

By this time a new specialised five-figure code allowed the more precise reporting of weather affecting aviation, such as visibility, wind direction and speed, amount and height of low cloud, etc. The weather officers had been trained to make pilot balloon observations of upper winds. They plotted and analysed surface synoptic charts, and represented upper winds using the 'snake' graphic described by Gibbs (1995).

When the second forecasters' training course of 1937 was completed most of its graduates were posted to the same aerodromes.

It was at this time, after the loss of aircraft including ANA'S Avro 10 Southern Cloud in 1931 and Airlines of Australia's Stinson in February 1937, that the Commonwealth Government asked H. E. Wimperis, an aviation expert, to advise on improved services for civil aviation. The crash of ANA'S DC2 Kyeema in October 1938 underlined the problem. The Wimperis report added emphasis to the need for more meteorological support.

The DH86s on the Qantas/Imperial Airways service were replaced in August 1938 by Short Empire C class flying-boats. These large, powerful four-engined and high-winged monoplanes of all-metal construction carried only 15 passengers, a flight crew of two and a cabin crew of three. They were in fact luxury liners, extremely spacious, but with a cruising speed of only 140 knots and a range of only 700 nautical miles. Because of their limited speed and range and because the luxury passengers were accommodated overnight at intermediate ports these aircraft took between nine and 10 days to fly Sydney-England.

In Metarch Papers No 6 Keith Hannay (1994) describes his experiences as an aviation forecaster at Mascot aerodrome and Rose Bay (Sydney harbour) flying-boat base. The primitive nature of Mascot aerodrome is illustrated in the accompanying photographs.

Bureau of Meteorology