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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
Keywords: None
Views: 5082
Comments: 75
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 71.
#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.
The gyroscopic forces were only part of the problem. The enormous weight of the rotaries would torque the airframe in the opposite direction. The engines weighed about as much as the rest of the airplane, metallurgy being what it was at the time. Sort of tail wagging the dog, or nose wagging the dog if the expression may be extended to tractor prop aircraft It might not have been as big a problem as I was just thinking since the rotaries could not be revved up or idled, hence ran at a constant speed. Blipping would create same torque against airframe since engine is slowing down and speeding up, so it must have made landing these beasts quite interesting since blipping was generally used to reduce airspeed.
#72. To: Pinguinite, Esso, StraitGate, Lod (#71)
(Edited)
I got to go up in a PT-17 Stearman as part of the tourist aspect of historical preservation. This was twenty years ago, only non-Jet/Commercial plane I have ever been in. Flown in, I should say, I did manage to get inside the B-17 at GrissomAFB outdoor museum. My Grandfather almost had to push me all the way up the ladder. Well, he did push me, but that was the only way I was going to be able to enter, so he made the right decision. I am glad he did. I wasn't hurt, but I felt a little ashamed at the time for being a weakling. Grampa had been a B-17 Mechanic in the India/Burma theater, 1943-1945, so even back then I understood how important the B-17 was to him. I was like 11 when the aforementioned narrative unfolded. He really wanted to share that part of his life. I also remember he would tell us stories about British East Africa Troops stationed in India, and there may have been some cannibalism. He never bragged about anything he did, I think he just wanted us grandkids to understand that war is not glamorous. When he came home from the war, he was an old man, at all of 26 years old. The deprivations had taken a toll on his body, and he was severely diabetic the rest of his life. He lived to be 65, so I had the fortune of knowing him for the first 20 years of my life. If not for him, I never would have seen the inside of a B-17.
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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)
#71. To: Pinguinite, Esso, StraitGate, Lod (#33)
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.
Replies to Comment # 71.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 71.