PRACTICAL MECHANICS – OCTOBER 1937

One of the unsung secrets available to any members visiting LAA HQ (in post-Covid times) is our Members Lounge, which contains an archive of magazines predating even the earliest years of the Ultra-Light Aircraft Association. These include old editions of The Aeroplane and Flight, as well as this gem, a copy of Practical Mechanics from 1937, serialising the plans and building instructions for the Luton LA.4 Minor.

The articles were the initiative of the aircraft’s designer, Cecil Latimer Needham, a former Educational Officer, who was based at RAF Halton until 1935, when he started the Luton Aircraft Company. He’d previously been involved in designing the Halton Mayfly and Minus ultralight light aircraft for the Halton Aero Club.

While only a handful of Luton Minor aircraft were built pre-war, the design was set to become one of the first successful ULAA types after WWII. The first to fly under ULAA auspices was built to the pre-war Practical Mechanics instructions by Flt Lt James Coates DFC. Named Swalesong, after Coates’ native Yorkshire dale, G-AMAW is preserved today back in Yorkshire, at Breighton, with the Real Aeroplane Company.

Later Luton Minors owe their success to the irrepressible Arthur W G Ord Hume. He worked with Latimer Needham, ultimately taking over the design rights and redrawing the design to accommodate VW engines. In the 1950s, Arthur also arranged that the design and instructions were again syndicated to Practical Mechanics, aided and abetted by the editor, Frederick J Camm, the brother of Hawker designer, Sydney Camm. Steve Slater