The Airplane Thread

[Lady Jane]

Originally Posted by JJ 911SC

Ford Tri-motors

Like a cat with nine lives. Interesting story.

[3798j]

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[vreihen16]

I saw a reference to the failed Bristol Brabazon online today, and thought that it was worth sharing.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Brabazon




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[ezaircon4jc]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

I saw a reference to the failed Bristol Brabazon online today, and thought that it was worth sharing.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Brabazon




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What a P-I-G pig!

Rate of climb: 750 ft/min

That's C152 territory!

[chassis]

Originally Posted by 3798j

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Love the Trimotor. Great period photo also.

[chassis]

Originally Posted by Jbrown7403

Couple of A380s at Heathrow. Sadly, only spotted 2 747s on a recent trip and they were pretty far away. I miss seeing all the elegant 747s in the various liveries
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Spend some time at FRA. Lufthansa runs a reasonably large number of 7-4s.

[3798j]

another tri-motor...The Keystone Patrician..."It set a load-carrying record by lifting a "payload" of "33 girls, two pilots, and a mechanic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Patrician

[Llarry]

Continuing with the trimotor theme, of course there is the German Junkers Ju52.

[Llarry]

Northrop's first post-World War II airplane was the C-125 Raider trimotor. The U.S. Air Force bought 13 YC-125A transports and 10 YC-125B Arctic rescue aircraft. They did not shine and were retired several years after their 1950 introduction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YC-125_Raider

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by ezaircon4jc

What a P-I-G pig!

...that was the size of a present-day passenger jet, had two decks for passengers (with LOTS of legroom), and slurped avgas like crazy thanks to its *eight* rotary engines.....

[Llarry]

Spitfires compared: From the first (Mk I) to the last (Mk 24)

[Llarry]

One final trimotor -- and this one was a combat aircraft -- An Italian air force medium bomber of World War II. The Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero.

[Lady Jane]

A more modern tri-motor: Britten-Norman Trislander

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britten-Norman_Trislander

[Lady Jane]

Yet another: de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drover.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Hav...a_DHA-3_Drover

[Llarry]

The Dornier Do X was a 12-engine flying boat that first flew in 1929. The 12 radials were arranged in a pull/push manner in six pairs. The pilots did not control the powerplants but sent engine orders to a flight engineer who then controlled the throttles. Up to 100 passengers could be accommodated.

Just three Do Xs were built; two were sold to Italy. By the mid-1930s they were retired and scrapped.

EDIT: I just noticed that the photo does NOT show radials. The Do X first flew with radials and was very underpowered; it was then refitted with American Curtiss liquid-cooled V-12s (as shown in the photo) and was better.

[chassis]

Bus is here! A330 as usual.

[flybigjet]

Originally Posted by chassis

Bus is here! A330 as usual.

How do you tell a new Bus pilot from an old Bus pilot?

New Bus pilot: "What's it doing?"

Old Bus pilot: "Oh..... it's doing *that* again."

[Llarry]

A brief history of BMW radial piston engines:

BMW got into the radial engine business in the 1920s, when they obtained a license to build U.S. Pratt & Whitney Hornet engines. The Hornet was a nine-cylinder engine of 27.7 liters displacement (1,692 cubic inches). In the early 1930s, BMW improved the design and put the result into production as the BMW model 132 radial of the same size as the P&W. The BMW 132 (first photo) was used in the Junkers Ju 52 trimotor transport and the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 long-range four-engine maritime recon bomber, among other aircraft.

But radial engines were considered to have too much drag for a high-performance fighter aircraft. Kurt Tank of Focke-Wulf thought otherwise and worked with BMW to develop a new twin-row 14-cylinder model 801 radial of 41.8 liters displacement (2,550 cubic inches) to power a new fighter design in late 1937: The Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

At the time, the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) fighter force was dominated by the Messerschmitt Bf (or Me) 109 fighter powered by a liquid-cooled inverted Daimler-Benz V-12 engine.

An innovation on the BMW 801 was a cooling fan (see black fan in the second photo) mounted just behind the prop that improved engine cooling. The 801-powered Fw 190 prototype first flew in 1939; the prototype suffered cooling problems and development took a while. By early 1940, the Fw 190 was starting to show promise and 40 pre-production aircraft were built. Early 190s were fitted with a BMW 801C engine of 1600 hp, but later models had 801Ds with 1700 hp. The third photo is of a Fw 190A fighter.

The BMW 801 also powered an important Luftwaffe medium bomber (and later night fighter), the twin-engine Junkers Ju 88 (fourth photo).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_801

The early production Fw 190As entered combat in the autumn of 1941. They proved popular with the pilots, who found the 190 to have excellent handling characteristics in contrast to the Me 109, which could be a handful. These early 190s also presented a nasty surprise to Royal Air Force Spitfire pilots, who found the BMW-powered 190s a formidable opponent.

Later in the war, the Fw 190 was adapted to the ground attack mission as the Fw 190F and Fw 190G, with armor for protection against ground fire and able to carry a single bomb on the centerline or a pod with four small bombs.

Also later in the war, the Fw 190 was adapted to use a Daimler-Benz inverted V-12 engine in a "long nose" variant which proved to have excellent performance, but BMW-powered 190 variants were produced until the end of the war in 1945. As were its Me 109 competitor, despite its faults. In total, almost twice as many 109s were produced as BMW-powered Fw 190s, over a much longer period of production.

In a bit of irony, the Fw 190 with it's American-derived radial engine proved the inspiration for one of the U.S. Navy's most capable piston-powered fighters, the Grumman F8F Bearcat. Grumman engineers carefully studied the Focke-Wulf design from a captured 190 in the UK and incorporated lessons learned into the design of the Bearcat in 1943-44, which just missed combat in the Pacific in late 1945.

[asianF22]

Boeing 747SP…

[ezaircon4jc]

Originally Posted by asianF22

Boeing 747SP…

Rode one of those from Narita to LAX in '79.

[Llarry]

The UK Royal Air Force's No 42 Squadron reformed in September of this year at RAF Lossiemouth as the Operational Conversion Unit for the RAF's Boeing (P-8A) Poseidon MRA1 aircraft. The squadron will ultimately fulfill the same role for the Wedgetail AEW1 aircraft once it is delivered.

[asianF22]

Attendee here to watch the local air show, RV8…