Way OT (For Pilot/Model T Owners On This Forum)

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Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2013: Way OT (For Pilot/Model T Owners On This Forum)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Hal Schedler, Sacramento on Friday, August 02, 2013 - 10:15 pm:

Here is a link to an interesting business jet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-pVuq-y5OY#at=237


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Friday, August 02, 2013 - 11:01 pm:

Finally flying. They've been working on that thing since Buddha was a Boy Scout.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Hal Davis-SE Georgia on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 05:39 am:

Interesting engine placement.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ivan Warrington on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 08:48 am:

Have seen this plane at NBAA show and been in it. It is absolutely gorgeous. The Honda engines are like a fine watch. Gotta wait for five years to get one.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ivan Warrington on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 08:51 am:

Have seen this plane at NBAA show and been in it. It is absolutely gorgeous. The Honda engines are like a fine watch. Gotta wait for five years to get one.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Frank Harris from Long Beach & Big Bear on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 12:14 pm:

The advantages that I see are the noise reduction due to the sound transmission going to the wing rather than the body where the passengers are, and the added lateral stability of the engine mounts. I also see the "Coke Bottle" fuselage shape that reduces drag.

I was the chief illustrator and tech writer for a boxy freighter that was the absolute opposite of this pretty plane. The Gaf-Hawk absolutely shoved its way through the air at 120 kts. max..




hawk


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Will Copeland - Trenton, New Jersey on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 12:25 pm:

Being rather low on the food chain I find it a bit hard to scrap up enough money to buy round trip passage on cheapo air. But when I do hit the lottery I might get a couple!


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Dennis Halpin on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 12:36 pm:

Interesting configuration. Remember what happened the last time the 'Japs' built some really innovative aircraft?
(don't bother to reply, I'm just being my usual smart A$$ed self) :-)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 12:51 pm:

It was the Mitzibushi MU-2, Dennis, a twin turboprop biz plane. It had spoilers in place of ailerons, and has a terrible safety record.

You'll find it on wiki.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bill Everett on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 01:21 pm:

I believe the Zero was made by Mitsubishi (was it an A6M?), but I don't know who made the Betty, or the Val.

What was the make of the airplane that Admiral Yamamoto was in when shot down? I believe it was a twin, but I don't know it's make.

Also, in the movie "The Aviator", Howard Hughes makes a reference to one of his designs that the Japanese "appropriated" which became the Zero. I wonder if there's any factual base to that.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Hal Davis-SE Georgia on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 01:53 pm:

I did not watch the entire clip. They may have addressed it, but does the engine placement not disrupt the flow over the wing ? I would think disrupting the flow on top is more detrimental than disrupting it below. Of course it is rather inboard, which would help stall characteristics, but I would think not disrupting flow over the wing at all would be preferred.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bob Gruber- Spanaway, Wash. on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 03:07 pm:

I'll stick to my 170 and Starduster Too.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 03:10 pm:

Elon Musk commutes between his Tesla factory in Fremont and his SpaceX factories in Los Angeles and Texas in a Honda.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Spaziano, Bellflower, CA. on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 03:50 pm:

Bill,

I had heard that the Japanese Zero was originally a Vultee design that was turned down by Uncle Sam.

Hollywood has a way of changing historical facts around to fit the script.

Many adults today that weren't even born when Howard Hughes passed away have some knowledge of who he was. I doubt many moviegoers would know who Jerry Vultee was.

My 2 cents.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 04:31 pm:

He was famous for the BT-13 Vultee Vibrator.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Gary H. White - Sheridan, MI on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 05:34 pm:

The Vultee Vibrator. Likely a few gals got a thrill from it.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bill Everett on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 05:54 pm:

Mike;

You're spot on concerning Hollywood's changing the facts, big time.

I don't know I have ever heard of Jerry Vultee, but something tells me I should have!


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 06:13 pm:

wiki:

"Jerry" Freebairn Vultee (1900–1938) and Vance Breese (1904–1973) started the Airplane Development Corporation in early 1932 after American Airlines showed great interest in their six-passenger V-1 design. Soon after, Errett Lobban (E.L.) Cord bought all 500 shares of stock in the company and the Airplane Development Corporation became a Cord subsidiary.

Due to the Air Mail Act of 1934, AVCO established the Aviation Manufacturing Corporation (AMC) on November 30, 1934 through the acquisition of Cord's holdings, including Vultee's Airplane Development Corporation. AMC was liquidated on January 1, 1936 and Vultee Aircraft Division was formed as an autonomous subsidiary of AVCO. Jerry Vultee was named vice president and chief engineer.[2] Vultee acquired the assets of the defunct AMC, including Lycoming and Stinson Aircraft Company. Vultee Aircraft was created in November 1939, when Vultee Aircraft Division of AVCO was reorganized as an independent company.

Meanwhile, Vultee and Breese had redesigned the V-1 to meet American Airlines' needs and created the eight-passenger V-1A. American purchased 11 V-1As, but the plane ultimately failed due to safety concerns about a single-engine plane and the advent of the twin-engine Douglas DC-2s and DC-3s. Vultee redesigned the V-1 into the V-11 attack aircraft for the United States Army Air Corps, but it received few initial orders.

By 1937 Jerry was heading his own factory in Downey, California with more than a million dollars in orders for V-1s, V-1As and V-11s.[2] In 1938, before he could see Vultee become an independent company, Jerry Vultee and his wife Sylvia Parker, the daughter of Twentieth Century Fox director Max Parker,[2] died when the plane he was piloting crashed in a snowstorm near Sedona, Arizona. A bronze plaque memorializing the Vultees is located at the end of Coconino Forestry trail named in honor of Vultee Arch, a natural rock arch (named for Jerry Vultee) near the site of the plane crash. Vultee Arch is a very well known feature near Sedona, Arizona. It is reached via a 5-mile 4WD road followed by a 2-mile hike (one way) on a well-used trail. The Vultee Arch Trail goes to a viewpoint for the arch.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bill Everett on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 06:52 pm:

I now understand why it was called AVCO-Lycoming, not just Lycoming.

Thanks for the update.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mike Spaziano, Bellflower, CA. on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 08:04 pm:

And all of Vultee's top brass drove Cords powered by Lycoming engines.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bob Coiro on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 09:30 pm:

The Mitsubishi Zero (called "Zero" because it was commissioned in 1940) was an original design, the wing and fuselage having been made in one piece for weight control. That was unlike anything the United States had built up to that time.

That the Japanese got as far as they did with the weapons they had seems a mystery—at least in light of 21st-Century hindsight.  Everyone who knows anything about military aviation is familiar with the mantra, "Higher, faster, further."  We use advanced technology and metallurgy to chase those performance goals and if you don't have the tech, you do a little creative "squeezing" and wind up trading something you really need for something you really need much more badly.  And so it was with the Zero, which, though it was a new design at the time of Pearl Harbor, didn't carry an engine any more powerful than that of the obsolete P-40 Tomahawk.  

In the case of both the Zero and Tomahawk, supercharging was a joke and so was the spec that claimed either airplane had a ceiling above 30,000 feet.  But the P-40 had an excuse: It was old.  It was little more than an obsolete inline engine grafted to an even more obsolete P-36 airframe (but even that improvised stop-gap was way better then the Bell P-39).

With a draggy, not especially powerful radial engine optimized for around 16,000 feet, the Japanese were going to have to make some significant sacrifices to make the Zero work, so no radios, no armor plate, no self-sealing fuel tanks.  They sacrificed structural strength to make the airplane as lightweight as possible and if it got tagged, it became tinsel.  Its aerodynamics weren't particularly sophisticated; in fact, above 250 mph, the airplane had stiff ailerons and it dove like a feather in a breeze.  Tests of a captured A6M2 Zero Model 21 showed a level top speed of 315 mph at 25,000 feet.  Compared to the Chance-Vought Corsair, that's pitiful.  Imagine, for a moment, what it would have been like to substitute the Zero for Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs in the air battles over Europe, at altitudes where Thunderbolt and Mustang pilots would have enjoyed not only a speed advantage of at least 100 mph, but a cockpit heater/defroster that actually worked in minus 60 degree temperatures.  

The Japanese didn't have turbochargers because they didn't have the high-temperature metallurgy to make it work, so their bombers were slow, medium-altitude, sitting ducks with minimal defensive armament.  If the Germans didn't have anything to compare with the B-17 Flying Fort, the Japanese CERTAINLY didn't. 
 
So, how did the Japanese do as well as they did with the aircraft available to them?  

Audacity—and superior tactics (which worked until Americans caught on to the fact that a left turn was a poor evasive maneuver against a Zero and that maintaining a minimum airspeed of 250 mph was pretty good life insurance).  Because of inexcusably bad management, Curtiss stopped building P-47 Thunderbolts after only having produced 354 units—and then, instead, continued producing the obsolete P-40.  Bell Aircraft should have stopped production of their thoroughly useless P-39 and, instead, manufactured... well, just about anything else.  Yeah, for a while there, we were helping the Japanese win the air-war.  
 
The Zero was a good, not great, fighter.  It was elegant, not sophisticated.  If the F6F Hellcat, with its mediocre top speed of about 380 mph, slaughtered the Zero (and I'd call a kill-to-loss ratio of 19:1 a slaughter), then the Zero had absolutely no business being in the same sky as the Corsair.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Ricks - Surf City on Saturday, August 03, 2013 - 11:52 pm:

The Zero was their secret weapon they thought would win the war against the US.

In the spring and summer of 1937, some small Japan airlines took delivery of 25 Lockheed Electras, just like Amelia flew. They were test flown at the factory in Burbank, then dismantled and shipped to Japan. The engines in the Zeros were exact copies of an American engine. I don't know if it was the same engine as on the Lockheed.


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