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Title: Still
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Published: Jun 22, 2023
Author: Whisperin' Bill Anderson - singer
Post Date: 2023-06-22 15:59:34 by Lod
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Views: 9772
Comments: 75
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#1. To: All (#0)
Reminded me of this one, as time winds down...
I washed my truck Tuesday afternoon for the first time in about two years. Of course, that had my back out of commission yesterday and on the narcotics. I'd be having the time of my life if it wasn't for the pain. My excitement now consists of giving away money and drinkin'. Anyway, the truck looks good. It ought to, it's got less than 11k miles after ten and a half years. FWIW, John Denver died at 53 in 1997 He died on the afternoon of October 12, 1997, when his light homebuilt aircraft, a Rutan Long-EZ with registration number N555JD, crashed into Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove, California, while making a series of touch-and-go landings at the nearby Monterey Peninsula Airport.
Why would a pilot make a series of touch-and-go landings? Practice? Fun? Testing the aircraft?
I don't remember the details. JD had plenty of hours, the aircraft was a homebuilt/experimental deal. Maybe he was trying to get used to it, I don't really know. Back in 2013, I was getting ready to get my rotary wing license. I wanted to finish up my Texas Two-Step lessons at the American Legion in Waynedale first. Texting Granny irrevocably changed my destiny on 26Nov2013.
The engine quit on John Denver's plane for running out of gas. It had a switch controlling which tank it drew gas from but in an unusual spot, I think above and behind the shoulder which was a customized location, and for some reason, one tank ran dry. So the crash was not any fault with the aircraft's avionics or general design.
Is the engine in a small aircraft like that easy to re-start in flight? What turns the engine to re-start it? Air over the prop? An electric starter like a car?
The vast majority of aircraft in the modern age can be re-started in- flight as they have battery power to do that. I can only think of the WW1 style radial engine types that relied on someone cranking the prop to start it. But of course you also need enough altitude to give you time to be able to react to an engine outage, determine the cause, remedy and restart it, and I think Denver was at too low an altitude to do all those things.
Are you familiar with the rotary-radial engines used mostly prior to 1920? The crankshaft was fixed to the airframe, while the entire engine block spun, with the propeller attached to the engine block. The main benefit of this design was that the engine air-cooled itself due to the cylinders spinning with the block, but there was no way to regulate throttle, the fuel supply was either on or off. That's why "blipping" was necessary, the pilot actually had to turn off fuel to regulate engine speed, so it sounds like engine is dying, then comes back. A major disadvantage to this design was lack of an enclosed crankcase, lubrication was via oil mixed with fuel, the oil usually being castor oil. The pilots would ingest the fumes and suffer the usual side effects of ingesting castor oil. Not to be confused with Rotary (Wankel) engine or Radial engine with fixed block and rotating crankshaft.
An aerodynamic issue with having the entire engine spin with the prop was that it created enormous gyroscopic forces, making it very difficult to turn in one direction but super easy to turn the other. It was something for pilots to adapt to for WW 1 fighter aircraft.
I never thought about that much. My buddy Jess had a Cessna 310? twin, I suppose the props (rotating mass) counter rotated to mitigate that effect, but his prop weren't probably 500 lbs. each. Turn too sharp, and one wing separates to the left and the other one cuts through the cockpit. Cessna made a pusher/puller twin-boom recon aircraft (don't remember the designation) during the Vietnam war. I wonder how those props spin? I hate it when Ecuadorians make me think too much (says the guy who's living in what was supposed to be a storage unit) :P You're OK, Pin. Skymaster That was a cool aircraft. (Next to the P-38 and P-51) The F-5 and T-38 trainer were the best lookin' jets, bar none. (Edit) One of those vids makes it look like the props counter-rotate, but it could be a shutter speed effect.
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#2. To: Lod (#1)
#3. To: Esso (#2)
Nice! thank you.
#4. To: Lod (#3)
...as time winds down...
#5. To: Esso (#4)
#6. To: StraitGate (#5)
(Edited)
#7. To: Esso (#6)
#10. To: Pinguinite (#7)
#12. To: StraitGate (#10)
Is the engine in a small aircraft like that easy to re-start in flight? What turns the engine to re-start it? Air over the prop? An electric starter like a car?
#13. To: Pinguinite, StraitGate (#12)
(Edited)
#33. To: Dakmar (#13)
#34. To: Pinguinite (#33)
(Edited)
Replies to Comment # 34.