powerandpassionThe following story is a work of fiction that is not based on any person, living or dead.
Once upon a time, a fuel vendor, responding to initiatives by a major political donor ethanol producer promoting lower cost, environmentally sustainable fuel, blended a small percentage of lower cost ethanol into avgas. This was part of the future and would help lower costs for aircraft owners. It was good. Not quite right, but meant to be good. This was not done without research, as it is known that ethanol may degrade certain seals in fuel systems. But the modern research never really covered shellac, which dissolves in alcohol, and nobody reasonably knew that shellac coated cork floats existed in the fuel systems of 1930’s biplanes. Who would ? Anyway, some of this fuel went into a 1930’s biplane with shellac covered cork floats and the floats degraded filling the tank with particles and sludge. This was OK until one day the fuel supply was interrupted upon takeoff and with faltering engine the pilot decided to turn back, which caused a stall and a fatal crash. The cause of the crash was the pilot’s decision to turn back.
Anyway the pilot owned a lot of stuff which had to be sold. A cupboard full of AGS which he had purchased for thousands of pounds sold for a few hundred. Ditto for streamline wires, spar timbers, carefully collected parts. Some things went for weird prices at the auction where things were sold. The auctioneer was more usually engaged in the selling of fine art, so his distribution list went out to folks that wouldn’t blink at spending millions on a mere canvas. Two absentee, high powered finance types in the City bid up an instrument panel from a famous WW2 fighter plane to an astronomical amount, because it would go well on a wall next to some framed, illustrated pages from a 16th century Koran. It would be a good talking piece, affordable. Maybe they felt sorry for the widow. Maybe they knew the pilot.
The moral of the story is that a genuine WW2 fighter panel with provenance, presented in a study littered with books, dirty ashtrays and a farting dog with mucousy eyes eating a leftover microwave dinner, will probably sell for less than a non genuine panel displayed in a glossy catalogue and fussed over by well dressed gay courtiers in a Victorian building next to a cafe with gourmet food in an auction by a firm used to dealing with people with tax problems. These people sell AGS as scrap but leverage human frailty into gold : look at my famous WW2 fighter panel ! The other moral is that although the pilot would have been pleased with the return on investment, he did not get to enjoy it. Amortizing this splendid, single gain against losses from other disposals meant a far more average total return. Better not to have had a fire sale at all.
This fantastical story may seem far fetched. It may be true that famous WW2 fighter panels are suddenly worth a lot of money. Let’s get together and knock a few up ! Oh the bits and pieces we walked past in our yesterdays or stupidly gave away for just a smile and a doughnut ! I’m going to knock a few famous WW2 fighter panels up, once I have worked out how to check for ethanol in fuel.
powerandpassionSomething like this but you would need to get your crankshaft (US or UK made?) analyzed for a definite answer. Generally class SAE 33XX, nickel chromium steel alloy, in the case of Merlin, nitrided.
powerandpassionVoice from the past
Letter from pilot familiar with service use of Kestrels indicating careful handling was a key then and probably now. Another thought is that an engine designed for 87 octane fuel running on 100 octane fuel may be exhausting unburnt fuel which acts to keep engine cooler.
powerandpassionMaterials
Just looking at the colour of Maxim’s light, the circular retaining band has more copper, probably a higher strength material. Brass was subject to ‘season cracking’ under stress, maybe they chose a more ductile copper rich material for the band. If you are going to the effort of making these lights as authentic reproductions, I would subscribe to build numbers. In aggregate we could probably afford some decent tooling to make decent pieces, including cast glass.
The threaded components require a rotating tool, like modern plastic injection molding of jar lids or soft drink caps. An interesting thing to make. I wonder if the thread is some Jurassic era once off.
powerandpassionEd1, a pleasure.
Just hand me the keys of your Bulldog and a flagon of Kentucky Whisky and point me to DC !
All the best,
Ed2.
powerandpassionSteve611, if it was a Business Man rather Warbird Enthusiast and it was close to the end of the financial year and the cigar man had a taxable profit for the financial year and was in the business of buying machinery and the machinery was on a ship that sunk then he could claim the loss as a tax deduction, in other words pay less tax than he ought to, and so indirectly recover his cash. Likewise if the machinery arrived and had missing pieces he could quickly sell it at a loss and get his money back via a tax write off, rather than deal with the complication of trying to sell damaged machinery to tyre kickers at ‘fair market value’. All this is theoretical, as in real life this would only be done by the Business Woman, who has now taken over the earth !
For your pleasure, the tax offset comes from consolidated revenue, which is you and you and you. Somebody else had to contribute tax to give the tax offset to the Business Man, otherwise the traffic lights would not work. So in fact you paid for the difference in price ! This is why the Business Man smokes cigars and you roll your own !
The only good news in this is that the Business Man is often not a good pilot, so tends to crash. I am still waiting for Trump to elbow some pilot out of the way, with a ‘you don’t know how to really drive this son’ !
All this talk of antipodean skullduggery is depressing. I don’t know anything about this story except for being drawn into it the same way as I am drawn into the marital problems of Brad and Angelina on a magazine cover in a supermarket queue. But I must defend fat, sleepy koalas from the raging British Lion with a thorn in its shoe ! If it wasn’t for Park then GB would be tucking into sauerkraut for breakfast ! All this could be amicably settled with a sword fight somewhere, and once somebody’s ear has been cut off, a glass of chartreuse. I trust my tax and conflict resolution advice may be useful.
powerandpassionCatalina bilge pump maybe. I think generic bilge pump, so also maybe Short Bros flying boats…
powerandpassionAGS 935
Here is AGS 935 from the 1930’s. Specified in nickel chromium alloy. I wonder what it was fitted to?
powerandpassionWhy-o-why…
Why is knowing what S2 was ‘understood to be back then’ important ?
This is a helix of thoughts growing from the observation of different aircraft designs, the materials of construction used in them, and how wings were engineered.
In simple terms an aircraft is a cross shape, north-south a fuselage, and east-west a wing.
The fuselage is generally one continuous member or structure, while the wing might be a continuous member or structure.
Often the wing is not a continuous structure, but is made of two members joining at the fuselage.
In observing the materials and arrangements of these designs, it is necessary to carry the forces affecting one wing, through the fuselage, to the other wing, for structural integrity.
Many British designs of the piston era had nickel chromium alloy spars, and used nickel chromium fuselage to spar fittings to join to the fuselage. Where the fuselage was a tube based design, they also used nickel chromium cross tubes or bracing wires across the fuselage to effectively tie the wings together as ‘one structure’ reacting to forces in a consistent way. Examples of these designs are Gloster Gladiator, Hurricane, Typhoon and Tiger Moth, using S2 bracing wires.
These metal materials evolved from a foundation of timber, and how it performed in service. Timber is a wonderful material of construction, but it tends to shrink or swell with moisture, and not last. So what is a metal that is ‘timber like’ in performance, but longer lasting and more predictable?
The attributes of nickel chromium alloy are high strength, ductility and elasticity. So a simple focus, today, on high strength, may not be enough to translate the designer’s original intent with material selection and performance. Nothing flexes so much as a wing. It must be strong, and, within limits, elastic.
Jes thinkin’.
powerandpassionAnother notebook
Another fitters notebook from 1929-30, dealing with Siskins, Virginias and Wapitis, everybody’s favourites ! They offer a clue as to why the chemical composition of S2 was never given, in that in 1929 the spec could be met by nickel chromium alloy or vanadium alloy, ‘as used in some well know automobiles’. Now vanadium is one of those subjects that you don’t generally come up in conversation at a bus stop. Vanadium could be the name of a heavy metal rock band (but the specific gravity of vanadium is less than iron). If you did have a conversation, say on a first date, or in a jammed elevator, I would venture that a few scoops of vanadium were more expensive than nickel and chromium, and overtly vanadium alloys went the way of the dodo. But S2 lingered on, open ended, while everybody understood this to be NiCr.
There is a precedent for this in T5 tube, which was supposed to be 50T ultimate strength tube, but everybody understood this to mean 45T ult strength in the 1920’s and 30’s. Then T5-3% nickel was brought introduced in the early 30’s to mean 50T, until this was re defined as T50 tube.
For interest, located within the pages of the notebooks, was a pre-weekend leave bollocking on sloppy barracks cleanliness, which shows nothing much has changed in human affairs….
powerandpassionFinal boarding call..bearing tender goes out in July.
powerandpassionAnother historical reference to S2 being ‘nickle’ chromium alloy, from a pre war RAAF fitters notebook, from ANAM Moorabbin Archives, dealing with Wapitis up to Hudsons, so 1928 – 1939 era.
powerandpassionNicko, nice. A frosty Coopers Red for you !
powerandpassion7 May the Force be with you.
powerandpassion6 2.23 inches is dimension of glass proud of brass case. All metal is brass except fixing bracket. Fixing bracket is bolted to underside of brass spun case with screws into a rectangular ‘lump’. Lump is brazed to brass case.
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