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Lowtimer Redux

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  • in reply to: New paint scheme for Sea Fury C-FGAT #1341215
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    Yes Peter. Most American furies have been converted to take a P&W radial engine for easier maintainence and reliability.

    The P&W R-4360 has been used, also the Wright R-3350. Has anyone tried the R-2800? I’ve not heard of it being used but it would have enough power for safe flight, not much use for racing though.

    in reply to: TFC Airacobra #1342251
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    At least in a decade or so our skies will be less troubled by the plague of G-xxII callsigns that cluster around aerobatic competitions ever since the display community worked out your could get the whole registration on to the fin of a Pitts or other small types if you included lots of “I”s, thus enabling you to flog the rest of the fuselage to your sponsor. Amusing when there were one or two of them, but not a barrel of laughs when you have multiple aircraft describing themselves as “Golf-India-India” and have to work out which is which, doing what and where. 🙂

    in reply to: TFC Airacobra #1342381
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    If anyone knows better please correct me, but my understanding is that in the UK, a registration once issued to a specific aircraft cannot be re-used. When it is cancelled for whatever reason (aircraft destroyed, sold overseas etc) that registration cannot be used on a different type. Unlike in the USA where N numbers seem to move from aircraft to aircraft over the years, much as car number plates can in the UK.

    in reply to: TFC Airacobra #1343143
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    If it can reasonably be claimed to be a genuine ex-mil aeroplane it should be eligible for a Permit, it’s only the self-evident new builds that are problematical in the UK. The move to rid the UK of resident N-reg aeroplanes is really only just getting going, it is a DfT initiative which is being very firmly resisted by AOPA et al.
    However, they will find it harder to get rid of aircraft registered to other EASA states (I hope).
    http://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=17410 if these matters interest you.

    in reply to: New Mossies – where to from here? #1343425
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    I presume you mean if it was a new design today?

    Yes, although of course if you had a surviving airworthy Mossie in the UK you would not be able to get that a Certificate of Airworthiness either, only a Permit to Fly.

    in reply to: New Mossies – where to from here? #1345618
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    Good news that yours are full feathering – must have been that the ones Eric Brown was flying on were cobbled together from single-engined fighter props, as a stop-gap for deck landing trials.

    in reply to: Messerschmitt Query #1345716
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    Given the proportion of surviving 109s and Buchons that have been damaged in take-off or landing accidents, without operational requirements to fly in dodgy weather, I don’t find it hard to believe a one in three figure. Of coure, these days they are generally rebuilt but diring wartime with the production lines in full swing it usually makes more sense to write off a significanly damaged aeroplane and “reduce to produce”, as the RAF used to put it.

    in reply to: New Mossies – where to from here? #1345720
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    Let me qualify my rather sweeping comment. Yes, if you are fast, light and happy over occupied France and your Merlin puts a rod through the block, you have a lot more options in a Mossie than in a Spitfire or P-51D.
    But you wouldn’t have those options for long if it wouldn’t feather the prop. It’s not just a matter of the drag of an unfeathered prop, which is bad enough, it is the unfeathered prop will keep rotating on a failed, non-lubricated engine, and this is quite likely to cause a major further failure through overheating of failed bearings, fire or a sudden seizure ripping the whole engine out of the wing.

    With a feathering prop the Mosquito is of course capable of a fair performance on one engine PROVIDING the pilot has enough speed (or height he can trade for speed) at the point of failure, AND the weight is OK. It is one thing to demonstrate single engined aerobatics in daytime at low level, starting with all the speed in the world in an unloaded aeroplane, and another thing to lose an engine as you try to pull the gear up with full tanks and a cookie on board, especially with the Mossie’s rather underpowered hydraulics straining to try to get the gear up so you can accelerate to single-engine safety speed. A lot of people were killed in asymmetric training on Mosquitoes, and it is worth reading David Ogilvy’s account of flying the type, also Neil Williams’ account of just a partial engine cut in a Mossie with no bombs on board some time, it is harrowing reading. None of this is intended to denigrate the memory of a tremendously useful combat aeroplane, and if fighting a war I would value the Mosquito’s performance over the engine-out risk any day, but there are good reasons why the Mosquito would not be certifiable today, at least not without a much better hydraulic system and a MUCH bigger fin and rudder!

    in reply to: New Mossies – where to from here? #1346419
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    My understanding, from Eric Brown, is that all the available four-blade props were non-feathering, thus making the very few four-blader Mosquitos even more lethal than usual on one engine. (He did the carrier landing trials with one configured thus.) Makes sense because there are lots of multi-Merlin aircraft with three-bladers but all the other four-blade Merlin prop installations I can think of are single-engined types with no need to feather.

    in reply to: RB-57F just flew into Mildenhall #1355246
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    Apparently it’s Nasa’s. Fabulous thing to see, I shall never forget it.

    in reply to: RB-57F just flew into Mildenhall #1355486
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    Actually it’s not really my first post, it’s just that I was Lowtimer here for a while and I’m changed email address since, and forgotten the password, so had to adopt a new identity. :rolleyes:

    in reply to: RB-57F just flew into Mildenhall #1355490
    Lowtimer Redux
    Participant

    And yes, it did look just as extraordinary as this. It was a silhouette against the sky, so I could not discern any markings.

Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)