Aviation Geeks unite?! Anybody else care about planes here?

[XCV330]

Lots of aircraft used starter cartridges back then. Safer (in theory) than trying to rotate the prop by hand like in WW1!

A lot of those WWI fighters, esp on the allied side, used gnome rotary motors where the engine rotated around the crankshaft as opposed to later radials where the crankshaft rotated. On a gnome, there was no reduction gear. The prop was bolted directly to the motor. Since oil systems were total-loss then, that meant a lot of hot castor oil flying back in pilots faces. I've heard rumors a lot of them had chronic diarrhea. Not really the romantic white-silk scarf in the air (smudged with repeated attempts to de-grease goggles) image of the times.

The really big radials like the Wasps would have been herculean to hand crank with the compression levels, gear reductions etc and electric starters would have been a lot of extra weight. So munitions start was an odd but workable idea.

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fun video of a gnome start

 

[J.T.B.]

A rather strange looking aircraft with a asymetrical cockpit, the Sea Vixen.

With the observer down in the dark hole! They thought that would be better to see the scope.

Gotta love a DeHavilland twin-boom. Have you ever seen a Venom or Vampire up close? They're surprisingly small compared to later aircraft.

Vampire, yes. There used to be a few privately-owned on the air show circuit. They look tiny, no bigger than a Sabre or T-33, and the fuselage part looks like a little pod.

And another nice oldie but goodie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-100_Canuck

IIRC that was in the running for the contract that the Canberra won (B-57), when the USAF realized they'd concentrated on the strategic role so hard they didn't have any decent modern tactical bomber.

When I was a kid I used to check out a book all the time called Famous U.S. Air Force Bombers. It was aimed at a young audience but had some semi-obscure planes like the B-45 and B-66. It didn't include the B-57 though, even though it had been used extensively in Vietnam. Because is wasn't home grown, I guess? When I read somewhere that Chuck Yeager flew a B-57 in Vietnam I remember thinking "A what?"

Another a/c that was hard for me to find out about pre-internet was the F-11, even though the Blue Angels flew them for years. But none of the library books I had access to as a kid, or even a teen, had anything about it.

 

[Santaman]

Compression starting is actually quite common, large diesel engines also have no starter motor, behemoths like the 14 cylinder Wartsilla Sulzer ship engine uses compressed air, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, that engine weighs 2300 (dry) tons, each of the 14 cylinders has a bore of almost a meter a stroke of 2.5 meters and a displacement of 1810 liters, yes, eighteen-hundred-and-ten liters per cylinder, the 14 cylinder version has 107.000 horsepower and 7.6 million newtonmeters of torque.
Imagine the starter motor you'd need for such a beast.

As for propellor aircraft, I've got many that I really like, of course I like the Dutch WW-2 fighters that were around those days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_G.I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_D.XXI

 

[StarCruiser]

A lot of those WWI fighters, esp on the allied side, used gnome rotary motors where the engine rotated around the crankshaft as opposed to later radials where the crankshaft rotated. On a gnome, there was no reduction gear. The prop was bolted directly to the motor. Since oil systems were total-loss then, that meant a lot of hot castor oil flying back in pilots faces. I've heard rumors a lot of them had chronic diarrhea. Not really the romantic white-silk scarf in the air (smudged with repeated attempts to de-grease goggles) image of the times.

The really big radials like the Wasps would have been herculean to hand crank with the compression levels, gear reductions etc and electric starters would have been a lot of extra weight. So munitions start was an odd but workable idea.

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fun video of a gnome start

Gnome, Le Rhone and Clerget rotary engines were dominant for part of the war. The Germans mostly used the Oberusel copies of the Le Rhone along with far more inline engines like Daimler and BMW.

Yes, the compression of a more modern (and as such MUCH more powerful) engine would be a problem to deal with so, that's a good reason to use a cartridge start...

 

[Santaman]

Another Dutch aircraft, the F27 Friendship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_F27

 

[Marc]

Another Dutch aircraft, the F27 Friendship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_F27

An aircraft I have flown on but was was little at the time so have no recollection

the joys of being little and it being the days when people when "Up up and away with TAA the friendly friendly way".

before they were bought out by QANTAS

 

[MANT!]

New announcement..

 

[Marc]

New announcement..

Not sure I'd given them good odds on achieving their goals of 200 ton of cargo at supersonic speeds

that's going to be one big aircraft (to put things in perspective - 200tons is about the capacity for the AN-225, the -124 can carry 150)

 

[J.T.B.]

The Handley Page Heyford was an inter-war RAF bomber that was so ungainly looking that I kind of have to like it. The last RAF biplane heavy bomber, withdrawn from bombing squadrons in 1939. Bombs were carried in the center section of the lower wing. The cockpit was 5m above the ground!

 

[XCV330]

coming to a space station near you, the Sierra Nevada Dreamchaser

 

[StarCruiser]

Gosh - sure looks familiar!

 

[Santaman]

And to counter all those winglessness..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35
A flying wing..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker
And an aircraft with a HUGE wingspan.

 

[StarCruiser]

And to counter all those winglessness..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YB-35
A flying wing..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker
And an aircraft with a HUGE wingspan.

Four burnin' and six turnin'...

 

[XCV330]

Gosh - sure looks familiar!

hey.. didn't Steve Austen fly in that thing, before they rebuilt him, made him better then he was?

 

[BK613]

hey.. didn't Steve Austen fly in that thing, before they rebuilt him, made him better then he was?

Actually, visually, it was the Northrop HL-10 (wing drop) and Northrop M2-F2 (flight and crash).

 

[Santaman]

Not very pretty but if you like big propellor aircraft..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-22

 

[Silvercrest]

You know, for quite a few years I idly wondered about bi- and triplanes and why multiple wings were even necessary. At least they seemed necessary considering how prevalent they were. Perhaps a lower power-to-mass ratio required greater surface area to get the same lift as what we get now from a single-wing with a more powerful engine? It seemed logical. I finally looked it up and it seems that isn't it at all. Those wings are close enough together that they essentially use the same airflow, don't generate that much redundant lift, and actually interfere with each other to some extent.

No, apparently the additional wings were needed because of the materials and building style they used. The struts that attach the wings to each other and to the plane actually hold the whole structure together and allow it to be rigid enough for flight. They had tried similar techniques with single-wing aircraft back in the day and they were too flimsy — hence they went to bi- and tri- structures that were stable and workable. Who knew?

(If I understood the explanation correctly.)

Can anyone add anything to that?

 

[Santaman]

^^ Depends on it, really early aicraft were monowing designs like the Fokker Spin (Spider) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_Spin

And in WW-1 the Fokker Eindecker also was not a biplane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_Eindecker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biplane
According to this:

The primary advantage of the biplane over a monoplane is its ability to combine greater stiffness with lower weight. Stiffness requires structural depth and where early monoplanes had to have this provided with external bracing, the biplane naturally has a deep structure and is therefore easier to make both light and strong. Rigging wires on non-cantilevered monoplanes are at a much sharper angle, thus providing less tension to ensure stiffness of the outer wing. On a biplane, since the angles are closer to the ideal of being in direct line with the forces being opposed, the overall structure can then be made stiffer. Because of the reduced stiffness, wire braced monoplanes often had multiple sets of flying and landing wires where a biplane could easily be built with one bay, with one set of landing and flying wires. The extra drag from the wires was not enough to offset the aerodynamic disadvantages from having two airfoils interfering with each other however. Strut braced monoplanes were tried but none of them were successful, not least due to the drag from the number of struts used.

and this bit is probably a main reason as well:

The low power supplied by the engines available in the first years of aviation limited aeroplanes to fairly low speeds. This required an even lower stalling speed, which in turn required a low wing loading, combining both large wing area with light weight. Obtaining a large enough wing area without the wings being long, and thus dangerously flexible was more readily accomplished with a biplane.

The smaller biplane wing allows greater maneuverability. Following World War One, this helped extend the era of the biplane and, despite the performance disadvantages, military aircraft were among the last to abandon biplanes. Specialist sports aerobatic biplanes are still made in small numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-2

The An-2 has no stall speed, a fact which is quoted in the operating handbook. A note from the pilot's handbook reads: "If the engine quits in instrument conditions or at night, the pilot should pull the control column full aft and keep the wings level. The leading-edge slats will snap out at about 64 km/h (40 mph) and when the airplane slows to a forward speed of about 40 km/h (25 mph), the airplane will sink at about a parachute descent rate until the aircraft hits the ground."

But there also have been biplanes without any struts or other need for bracing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin-Lindau_D.I

So all in all it might be all quite complicated..

And just an interesting aircraft I found while looking up stuff, the first four engine aircraft in the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_Russky_Vityaz

 

[J.T.B.]

Harry in Your Pocket, 1973. Not a great movie, but opens with this nice Western 720. Supposed to be at SLC, but the surroundings don't look like it.



One of my prize possessions as a kid:

 

[Santaman]

Another interesting aircraft, the Vickers Wellington.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Wellington
Of course the main reason that it is so interesting is that it has a geodetic airframe construction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodetic_airframe

And an interesting development of the aircraft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_VC.1_Viking
The Viking, one was fitted with Rolls Royce Nene engines and thus becomming the world's first jet transport aircraft.