Aircraft for Lunch mmmmmmmmmm

[cycledog]

I know alot of my fellow rustoliamites like airplanes. Here's what I did for lunch last Wednesday.

This first aircraft is a French(can you spell surrender?) from WWI. It was used as an observation plane.

The unusual thing is that the cylinders rotate around the crank shaft, which is hollow.

The fuel and a mixture of air and Castor oil are fed through the crank to the engine, which as I mentioned, rotates around the crankshaft. The air intake is two tubes on either side of the cowl and fed into a carb of sorts, no float bowl, more of an air mixing device. This is then fed into the cyclenders. The brass tubes you see are the intakes. The exhaust exits directly from the valve when it opens. The engine is timed so the exhaust opens at the seven O'clock position so not to get into the pilots face.

You can see the magneto gears. There are brass contacts at the point you see the spark plug wires attached, I suppose bailing or saftey wire would work in a pinch. This plane last flew 20 years ago.

 

[cycledog]

Sorry for the sloppy photography, this was short notice or I would have taken more lens and filters.

 

[cycledog]

This next plane is the oldest flying Boeing air craft. It was crashed on an Oregon mountain side in the 20's. It has been fully restored and toured around the country.

It is the Boeing 40-C. If you are interested here is a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zag8Wwjz0bc

 

[Bonehead]

The first one looks like some kind of rat plane. Especially the inside. Very cool.
I can't imagine the cost of keeping that 2nd one flying.

 

[Gastrick]

It doesn't get much cooler than that. Very interesting.

 

[Carlos Murphy]

Real airplanes have round engines...

Great pics.
I've been a motor head all my life, love airplanes.
Owned a Cherokee 180, flew R/C for 30 years, my ol man was a tail gunner in a B-17 in WW2 (and lived).

 

[cycledog]

Great pics.
I've been a motor head all my life, love airplanes.
Owned a Cherokee 180, flew R/C for 30 years, my ol man was a tail gunner in a B-17 in WW2 (and lived).

Where was your dad stationed? Mine was at Daubach England as a crew chief on both 24'S & 17's with Helton's Hell Cats. Flew over 30 missions and another 22 in Korea. Hard to believe those back then were bearly past their teens when they inlisted.

If your dad is still alive tell him thanks for his service.

 

[Thunder1]

Very cool! Planes are just hotrods that fly in my opinion. Here's a couple of pics of my last visit about a month ago to the Warbird Museum in East Tennessee. We got to watch these bad boys take off and do flyovers and then we got up close to really check them out afterwards. Nothing like the power and overall look of the P-51!!

Yes by all means Carlos M. your Dad and all the brave souls who manned these planes deserve our sincere gratitude and respect!! They have mine for sure!!!

Thunder

 

[Carlos Murphy]

cycledog and Thunder1

Don't know any details of my dads service in Europe, he would not talk to me about it. Told me about some training missions but that's all and after reading Jablonski's "Flying Fortress" and "The 9th Air Force in W.W.2" by Rust I could understand why.

My grandmother had a picture of him standing at the rear door of his B-17 dressed in his high altitude flight gear, beautiful rich brown fleece lined leather helmet, jacket, bibbed pants, boot covers and gloves hanging from straps from his sleeves.
He was also waring a parachute in the pic but not while in flight, couldn't find the pic after grama passed.