I wish it was only kids and youngsters..
I remember one refuelling of the Tiger particularly interesting: we organized a small fly-in at our airfield, there were lots of ppl and despite we placed red&white tapes to delimit the “keep-off” areas, we had a couple of “infiltrates” hanging around.
I was standing on top of the cowl refuelling with a fuel tank, I turned my sight for a second and there it was, that silly sod looking at what I was doing smoking his cigarette.. sometimes ppl stupidity is beyond human comprehnsion..

Alex

Stay Clear? 😉

Alex

lol guys, this thing is never gonna end!! 😀
I know I’m one of the firestarters here, dont look at me in that way! :D:D:D

Alex

Please correct me where I go wrong here – but I have in my mind the piece of info that because of carburetion on the Spitfire/Hurrican vs fuel injection on the 109 the English pilots had to do the half roll to dive whereas the German pilots could simply push the stick forward into a dive – saving precious seconds at difficult moments.

Makes me wonder/query whether there is/was any cause and effect between inverting the vee and fuel injection. And of course the related question, could carburettors be fitted to an inverted vee?

In other words were these two different approaches deliberate design principles related to fuel injection vs carburettion – and inter alia related to fighter design principles?

u can surely put a carburettor to an inverted V engine, but if u have injection stick to it 😉
As per the negative Gs… The issue was solved on the MkV with the anti-g carburettor (dont ask me how it worked though, I just know it was there..).
Good point even about the exhaust glare, this surely was another positive point for the inverted V solution!

Alex

It LOOKS like a Spitfire, so what the hell else are you going to call it?! 😡

call it whatever u wanna call it, but not Spitfire.. how about MiniSpit or something? :rolleyes:

Alex

I’ve been playing a lot with Tiger Moths in the past, the friends who owned them decided to install drum brakes and to add tailwheels, so the brake system check was added in the hour inspection list. I remember passing hours laying under the Tiger in order to have all the air out of the plant,with a relevant brake fluid drinking too 😉 but despite our careful checks we had in a couple of occasions a wheel braking more than the other or a ferod sticking to the drum with the understandable consequences.. We have the brake fluid tank inside the cockpit, so it’s not really hard to check, u just open it (carefully, so u can’t eat yr muffin while checking the oil 😉 )Our techie down at the hangar used to tell me that the best ways to spot a braking fluid leak in the walkaround are:
1) checking the tyre: if it looks “clean” or “semigloss” it might be an oil leakage in the brake area.
2) following with a finger the tube and checking yr finger: hydraulic fluids tend to follow the tubing lines when the plane is parked.
3) look for paint chipping around the wheel and wheel bay area: brake fluid is an incredible paint stripper!
All in all what happened to Janie is an inconvenience that unfortunately is not that rare.. Anybody can have a failure for any reason at any time, this happens even when driving yr car, it’s just a matter of bad luck sometimes. Of course careful and recurrent checks can minimalize the problem, but there are some troubles that can’t be predicted sometimes. A friend of mine, who’s attending the Italian Air Force Flight Academy, was making his first flying hours in the SF.260 and the instructors hammered them with all the emergency procedures. He had a tyre burst on landing and was able to manage it easily, but he said it was mostly due to the fact that there were no aeroplanes parked near to the runway. Accidents can be avoided with a careful airport managing, and above all with a serious attitude of the pilots, who must respects the ground indications, the ground control calls and always look around. This works well with military airports (and nonetheless they have accidents too), but in a civilian airport or airfield it can be difficult to be obtained. The best thing to do is thinking twice, and above all being sure to have enough room around u.

Cheers

Alex