S6B Wing Structure Query

The MAC drawings are all in ledgers, or on the museum’s library’s computer, so it will necessitate a (weekday) visit to the library to find the relevant ones.
Edgar

Last time I was there they were on microfiche cards in a filing cabinet :confused:

Jim,

Don’t forget that N248, the S6A, is in the Solent Sky museum in Southampton, if that is more convenient for you.

Cheers

Thanks everyone for the interesting information. I can see that I will have to go back to see the raw beast again the next time I am in London. I am not sure that the museum information board really does the machine justice.

Jim

For a more complete set for the aircraft you also need to look at the 186 series (S6A) and also those that relate to the S6, which predate the Vickers type number system and have various prefixes. PM me if you would like a complete list of what they have (as of 2005 when I last checked)

Ciao

The RAF Museum has many of the S6B drawings in their MAC series. The drawings are all in the 187– series, in Supermarine’s numbering system, and all seem to be in the first 10,000 MAC numbers (there are over 66,000, in the series, so it isn’t as dramatic as it sounds.) The MAC drawings are all in ledgers, or on the museum’s library’s computer, so it will necessitate a (weekday) visit to the library to find the relevant ones. The price of having a drawing printed was being reviewed (upwards, of course,) so you’ll need to find that out, but, if you take a camera, it is possible to photograph the screen of their latest projector.
Edgar

Total coolant volume was around 25 gallons of water. Yes, the take off run was generally commenced between 45 and 90 degrees to right of wind.

Cheers

Thanks for all the information.

There must have been a considerable weight of coolant carried to fill the volume of the radiators?

All this was with a fixed pitch prop, I believe, and a very long take off run that was started at 90 degrees to the required direction Is this correct?

Cross section showing the coolant radiator attachment to the floats, much the same as used on the wings.

No sectional drawings in Flight but if you can track down a copy of Aeroplane from October 2001 you will find a good one there.

I think the cooloing of the Schneider trophy racers is a fascinating thing when you look at the drastic and novel ways they dealt with the problem of shedding the heat.

antoni & chumpy
Thanks you for your reply. That explains what I saw and makes the machine even more amazing. It also explains the double row of close spaced rivets at the rib stations.

I wonder if there are any ‘Flight’ sectional drawings of the type. I believe there is an online library – I will go and have a Google right now.

On the subject of fuel, I believe this was the outcome of the, then leading edge, research on high octane fuels and the use of TEL to boost power through supercharging and high compression ratios.

Mitchell described the S.6B as a ‘flying radiator’ as so much of the surface area was used for cooling.

The engine oil was cooled by a series of pipes running along the sides and underneath of the fuselage. Efficiency was increased by maximising the contact of the oil with the outer surfaces. A large number of sloping gutters were arranged along the sides of the fin so that after the oil was sprayed from a pipe at the top of the fin it tickled down the gutters and over the internal structure. Pipes along the side took the oil to the fin and those on the under side returned it to the engine. These were shallow channels of tinned steel. Copper foil tongues were soldered to the sides projecting at right angles to the flow of oil. They were staggered so that the flow was not seriously impeded.

The upper and lower surfaces of the wings and upper surfaces of the floats were water radiators. Construction of the floats was complicated by having to prevent the outer skin buckling due to the radiators expanding by half an inch when they filled with hot water. An elastic framework was devised to take up the expansion.

The wings consisted of two thicknesses of duralumin with water spaces between. Wingtip scoops channelled air to cool the inside surfaces of the wing radiators.

For the World Absolute Air Speed Record the air scoops were removed and different fuel used, 30% benzole, 60% methanol, 10% acetone + tetraethyl lead additive.

As previously mentioned, the wing covering is the surface radiators. These made up of sheets of 24 swg dural, rivetted together with strips 1/8″ thick ‘Langite’ in between to create the internal space.

The radiators are attached to the wing structure by means of screws that pass through eyelets in the rads. The screws picking up tapped holes in the wing structure.

Chumpy.

Certainly it had radiators on the fuselage skins and also apparently some sort of cascade in the fin. Perhaps the wing skins too?

the macchi one definitely did!

So what were the intermediate lines of rivets or spot welds.

Didn’t some of these Supermarine racers have surface cooling ‘radiators’ built into the wings (as well as the floats)?