747-300 from KLM had “strip” indicators for engine parameters.

Because of high failure rate they fell out of favour……………

The difference between Charged and Supercharged is that the compressor on a Supercharged engine can deliver more air on the ground then the engine can handle power wise ( so it can be overcharged – to high manifold pressure ). As such a super charged engine can deliver maximum horsepower up to a certain altitude because it can still deliver enough compressed air to reach maximum horsepower. A Charged engine reaches maximum power on sealevel and this power only decreases with altitude.

Interesting to see with these finds is that the use of “engine with crate” often leads to the misconception that it is a new engine. This probably caused by the car restauration scene where the phrase “crate engine” stands for a whole new engine.

If an aircraft is indeed a new and/or freshly overhauled example the engine logbooks would be present in the crate.

To Stuart Gowans,

I think you made a small error. 😉

First you use a thorough investigation as proof that they knew what there were doing at Supermarine and then it seams that this investigation was done after the last Spitfire left the building. I have never met a designer who started to make calculations when the product is already flying around. So if this investigation was made by Supermarine afterwards they must already have know that the elliptical wing was probably a poor choice.

Then you use this investigation that concludes that there wasn’t a significant differance between the elliptical Spitfire wing or a trapered wing to proof again that they knew what they were doing.

So if the design department of Supermarine knew what they were doing then they knew that aerodynamics gains would minimal ( your qoute doesn’t say by the way which design is 1% better ) why in the hell would you go for elliptical wing platform which is very difficult to produce ?

My conclusion : If they knew what they were doing there can only be 2 reasons for an elliptical wing – space requirements or estetics

Then a small afterthought. An elliptical wing I can understand but an all elliptical tail section must have been pure estetics and has nothing to do with common sense

Cheers, Pim 🙂

Clearly the design staff at Supermarine didn’t understand the basic idea behind the elliptical shaped wing . The Aerodynamic goal is to achieve an elliptical lift profile, this is quit different than an elliptical wing. The easiest way to achieve this is to use an elliptical wing platform and to use only 1 airfoil for the whole wing with a constant incidence.

For a better explanation see : http://courses.ae.uiuc.edu/AE440-A/files/Aerodynamics_Overview.pdf

If you then use 2 different airfoils ( spitfire naca2213 – naca2208 ) and you apply washout then you kill the whole idea behind it. 😮

The designers at Republic knew the basic idea , because they used for the P47 an elliptical wing, 1 airfoil and no washout.

With a trapezium shaped wing it is possible to come close to an elliptical lift profile by carefully choosing the taper , the inboard and outboard airfoil and washout or washin.

To the defense of the Supermarine design staff , I must say that probably the elliptical lift profile was classified German information. They saw an elliptical wing with good characteristics and thought probably that the shape was the secret of success. If they knew the aerodynamic principle behind it then clearly the shape of the Spitfire was a result of putting all the stuff in a minimum thickness wing.

I ( as an design engineer myself ) think the truth is somewhere in the middle. As an engineer you constantly look to the competition for inspiration, but afterwards you cannot speak of an eureka moment in your own design.

Cheers Pim

Where are they now? Maybe one in the Netherlands…

Hi Ritch & Max,

I am the owner of a Bede 5 kit ( B wings ) in the Netherlands.
I am certainly not the first owner , for sure is that I am at least
the third owner. I bought my kit in Belgium, partly built and ofcourse not complete.
I believe ( but are not certain ) that the kit came from the UK. From the original papers I have from the kit the first owners name emerged as :
Deane B. Fenton with a postal adress of ESSO refinery in Antwerp Belgium.
This name sounds very Britisch and certainly not from Belgium ! further to use your company name as postal adress sounds to me like someone working abroad.

Also for me it would be nice to know a little bit more of the origin of my BD5.

Greetings,
Pim
the Netherlands