Just plain pretty

+1

Great stuff! Certainly helped by the Doppler effect. Very cool.

Man, the B-17 is an impressive piece of kit! It didn't so much take off as force the air into submission to get airborne!

Thanks for the post,
Cheers,
Ian

 

Please don't ever think that hearing those radials is old hat to the old guys. It brings up a lot of emotion and THERE IS NO SOUND LIKE ROUND!

 

My Dad sat behind an R2800 in WW-II, and I went through navigator and electronic warfare school sitting between two of them.

Tigercats are pretty rare.

 

One of the greatest engines ever produced. What aircraft were you training in, Taz? All I can think of is a Convair,
Bob

 

Radial goodness

 

The first experience that I had with a B-17 was in 1942 when 5 of them in formation came over our little house on the beach. They were at maybe 200 feet altitude and headed out into the Gulf. We were having lunch and never heard them coming. My poor mom was scared out of her wits and had no idea what it was. Later that day I discovered several cracked windows in the house. Their station at Sarasota was short lived and they were moved to Drew Field,Tampa but we saw them all the time but at altitude. Two years later I was stationed at an Air Base with two squadrons of them. Then one year after that I was separated from the Air Force at Drew Field. Interesting time. I never got tired of hearing them all day and all night off and on and it became almost like a sleeping potion. Then when I returned home and slept on a screen porch, the silence drove me nuts for a while. When I hear one now I have to run out of the house to see it AND to hear those R1820's and the ol' heart rate goes up a bit. It will never get old.

 

Anybody remembers "Catch 22" opening sequence?

Rgds

 

"We gotta get rid of turbines, they are ruining aviation. We need to go
back to big round engines. Anybody can start a turbine, you just need to
move a switch from "OFF" to "START," and then remember to move it back
to "ON" after a while. My PC is harder to start. Cranking a round engine
requires skill, finesse and style. On some planes, the pilots are not
even allowed to do it.

Turbines start by whining for a while, then give a small lady-like poot
and start whining louder.

Round engines give a satisfying rattle-rattle, click-click BANG, more
rattles, another BANG, a big macho fart or two, more clicks, a lot of
smoke and finally a serious low pitched roar. We like that. It's a guy
thing. When you start a round engine, your mind is engaged and you can
concentrate on the flight ahead.

Starting a turbine is like flicking on a ceiling fan: Useful, but
hardly exciting. Turbines don't break often enough, leading to aircrew
boredom, complacency and inattention. A round engine at speed looks and
sounds like it's going to blow at any minute. This helps concentrate
the mind. Turbines don't have enough control levers to keep a pilot's
attention. There's nothing to fiddle with during the flight.

Turbines smell like a Boy Scout camp full of Coleman lanterns. Round
engines smell like God intended flying machines to smell.

I think I hear the nurse coming down the hall. I gotta go."

 

Great stuff! Thanks!

Cheers,
Ian

 

Great Minds run. This is something that I wrote to a friend three summers ago.

Thanks for that! It took me back to Langley when we used to watch the R1830's start on the B-24's. Cold and clanking like a barrel full of nuts and bolts. Then complaining like hell when they were interrupted from their nap and resisted all attempts to awaken them and to bring them to life. Then when they finally agreed to try to run , they misfired, barked, farted, spit, blew smoke , belched a bit of fire...and then quit. Then it was done all over again and finally decided to run a little bit more with maybe three cylinders making a half assed show of making a little noise and then two more kicked in . Then the other nine finally woke up and pitched in after some gentle coaxing by throttle manipulations and loud swearing of the operator. The last six decided to join in, awakened by all the racket of the first bunch.
And then, the nicest sound in the world after the piston slapped counterweights had settled down and warmed up and the liquid sound of everybody holding hands and happily working together to produce some of its 1200 horse power. Oil smoke burned away and the and the smooth hum of a few thousand parts happily working in rhythm gives one the impression that another safe flight may be at hand

 

One of my favorite movie scenes
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IACjOvyx5hs[/ame]

 

*Awesome* stuff guys! Thanks again. Love it!

Cheers,
Iam

 

Just like back in the '50s, old time railroaders said "We gotta get rid of diesels, they are ruining railroading."

The lack of excitement of diesels starting was part of the reason. I always said that a steam locomotive starting from rest is high drama, while a diesel starting from rest just.....starts.

 

In my thinking back, I miss the hand propping. It is also a thing of the past and many have no idea how to do it now. Each engine had its idiosyncrasies and it was a challenge to overcome them sometimes. The PT-19 was strictly a stem winding operation where most of the others were a prime, pull through, yank, and back up. I'll never forget the closest time that I came to meeting my maker was propping a Stearman with a Lyc. and a booster mag. After priming and just as I started to pull the first blade (that you have to lean into a bit) the instructor started energizing the booster mag and the engine kicked over as I was off balance and leaning forward. I have no idea how I avoided the sharp black blades of that Macauley prop as it cranked up. I must have contorted myself correctly as I felt the air from the prop as it spun up. I also can't remember what I said to the instructor but it was HOT.

 

My first motorbike was that style of idiosyncratic.. an Italian single cylinder with desmo valve gear.

Starting it was always a meticulous adherence to use kickstart to get to just before TDC on compression stroke.. give just the right amount of twist on pumper carby to squirt raw juice down the throat.. key on.. then while balancing your weight on the kickstarter against the compression holding you there you gave one super hard swift smooth down motion with simultaneous big twist on the throttle .. and if it all came together right (and the bike felt like it, never a given) a massive bark through the straight through pipe and you're ready to go.. but you always had to have your gear on and be ready to go straight away and don't even *think* of taking your hand off the throttle so you can catch it wanting to go below 33 1/3rd rpm and die.. thinking you could just let it idle would be laughable.. hot or cold it never quite liked doing it and letting it die while getting stuff on would only mean several exhausting repeats lol..

ONCE I got lazy and left my foot on the kickstarter at bottom of stroke and it kicked back worse than a mule.. right through the instep.. all I could do was circle on my good leg for a bit cussin like there was no tomorrow lol.

 

Bob- They were T-29Cs and Ds/Convair 240/340. Always enjoyed them starting with all the mechanical clatter, some cylinders firing, some not, until they smoothed out firing on all 18 cylinders. Lots of oil under them during preflight, but then they carried a lot of oil for the flights. Pretty big oil trail behind the aircraft in flight. Never had an engine problem in my 250 or so hours of time in them. Wore ear plugs all the time. Noisy as all get out and the noise reverberated in those aluminum tin cans with little insulation on the inside. They retired them about 2 years after I graduated from EWO school and replaced them with T-43s (737s) in the 1975 timeframe.

I have time in C-47s, C-118s, and a couple of others, too. Always an experience. Not quite like sitting behind a big radial in a biplane, but still fun. The C-118s (DC-6s) were very comfortable.

As an aside, the T-29D was originally used for training B-47 crews and the ones we used for EWO ESM training had a B-47 radar in them. Prettiest, and largest, radar picture I ever saw. Not everything analog was bad.

 

If I remember correctly, the 240 had the jet extractor exhaust with two big pipes in tubes that acted like big tubas almost. made a lot of noise. A late friend of mine was chief liaison engineer on the T-43. Must have been a welcomed upgrade from the T -29.

 

My first flight on an "airline' plane was a Continental Airlines C-340 from Albuquerque to El Paso with my Dad. Wonderful

It was quieter than my uncle's single engine.

 

They actually put insulation in the civil versions and in the AF VIP version, the C-131. Almost none in the T-29s, which they started delivering in the early 50s. My father was stationed at LAAFB and used to fly the AF Academy cadets on trips in T-29s and C-131s while working at Space Systems Development (now SMC). In those days (60s), pilots had to fly x number of hours each month or they lost their flight pay. Flight pay was a big chunk of pay back then.

 

Even the Millennium Falcon had an intertia starter:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-rkFaIPyL4[/ame]

 

I just visited the USS Midway down in San Diego the have a cut away section of a radial and I believe it is an R2800, the exhibit is called " The engine that won the war" .

The cutaway is motorized and turning, pretty complex piece of engineering, with all the gearing and super/turbo chargers.... I have no idea how they ran, let alone for so long making so much power, looks like it would all fly apart at any time.... When engineers ruled the world !!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyPvpdy4dgg

 

Proponents of some other engines, most notably the Merlin, might disagree, but the R-2800 is certainly a candidate.

Look at all the noteworthy U.S. aircraft that it powered: P-47, P-61, F6F, F4U, B-26, A-26, PV and C-46. After the war, it powered the F7F and F8F, and aside from the Convairliners and the equivalent Martin 2-0-2 & 4-0-4, there is the DC-6 series!