I’m definitely not an expert but I do remember being lucky enough to fly in “Piglet” – Duxford’s Varsity G-BEDV / WJ945 and hearing one of the flight crew counting the blades as the Hercules engines were turned on the starter before ignition was engaged. 12 blades as I recall. My understanding is, with radials, it is essential to circulate the oil that will have gathered in the lower cylinders before starting to avoid catastrophic internal damage. I guess, on smaller engines, they could be pulled through by hand for a few blades.

TFC pulled 12 blades by hand on their B25 & I’ve pulled 12 on a 3350 (along with a few other people) It’s basically to check the engine won’t hydraulic lock on the starter & to squeeze any oil into the exhaust stacks so it ends up along the sides of the fuselage or all over the ramp instead of bending a rod or blowing a jug off.

Did Flabob Express get away to Caen later in the day or has she missed tomorrows event. Felt sorry for the Norwegian Dakota team and the Flabob guys, great effort to get them to Duxford and then to miss the main event. I bought a couple of T shirts from the Norwegian team, hope it helps in some small way on the engine expense……

What are the engine issues with those two?

From what I’ve seen online, the most up to date & accurate info is being posted on Sherman Smoot’s Winery page on FaceBook.. (Bella Luna)

The only strange thing is that one company has a near monopoly. I only posted it to give an idea of how many US reg’d aircraft there may.. (or may not) be in the UK. Friend of mine flies some little bug smasher with an N# in Suffolk

There’s a huge amount of aircraft with N#’s apparently all registered to one address in Bungay

Surely someone is going to pop up in something small & get aerial pics of the flight line?

Lordy, that fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down! I guess these/this (don’t know how many there are) are the only flying representatives of the Canberra these days?

Adrian

Two flyers for sure, maybe three.