Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"Thou Shalt Get Sidetracked by Bullshit, Every Goddamned Time." -- The Ghoul

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck,
"FOFF" = Felonious Old Fat Fuck,
"COFF" = Convicted Old Felonious Fool,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset,
A/K/A P01135809, A/K/A Dementia Donnie, A/K/A Felon^34,
A/K/A Dolt-45, A/K/A Don Snoreleone

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

Red Bull's DC-6:



Posted by on or about 09:39
Labels: ,

7 comments:

Frank Van Haste said...

A case could be made for the R-2800, brought to life by George Mead and Andy Wilgoos of P&W, being the acme of radial engine design. (Yes, I know, but the -3350 and the -4360 never really beat their reliability issues.)

Pretty airplane, too.

FVH

1/19/2014 9:54 AM
Comrade Misfit said...

Frank, you and I both know a retired NWA captain who refers to DC-6s as "four-engined airplanes with three-bladed props" and DC-7s as "three-engined airplanes with four-bladed props".

1/19/2014 11:19 AM
Ole Phat Stu said...

In the Bristol museum in Bristol UK there is a skeletal cutaway full size of a multirow 9 cylinder engine. It is fascinating trying to watch all the moving pieces at once as the shaft is rotated :-)

Unfortunately, I only had a still camera with me, a video would have been great.
Anybody got one?

1/19/2014 12:06 PM
LRod said...

A few items:

•I was very fortunate to have taken a powerplants class from our school's A&P program when I was studying aviation in the '60s. In the lab was an R-2800 for use in training mechanics and other interested parties. I even had an ashtray (in my smoking days) that was the top of a piston from an R-2800. I love it.

•I was remembering the "3 bladed, 4 engined" quote as I was preparing to post this comment. I love it.

•I may have told this story, but in my working days at ZAU we used to see a freight carrier out of DET who flew DC-6es all over the Midwest. One day, as the thought occurred to me, I asked one of them in my sector, how come we saw all these -6es but we never saw any -7es?

His response was one word, and it wholly cleared up the mystery for me, "fuel". The R-2800 (on the -6es) can be made to burn 100LL. The R-3350 (on the -7es) cannot and require the largely unavailable (even when I asked the question in the early '90s) 115/145.
I loved that.

*********************

I don't know what the few flying Connies are doing about it, nor the EAL DC-7 flying out of MIA.

P.S. Your Turing test is getting ever more annoying. The all-numeric format was a vast improvement over the mostly undecipherable alpha images, but now it's changed to a gazillion digit long number for half the test. At least I can read it…

1/19/2014 1:35 PM
Deadstick said...

LRod, a company called Hjelmco Oil makes 115/145 on a special-order basis for just that purpose; they supply the Reno races, among others.

1/19/2014 2:18 PM
LRod said...

Deadstick,

Yeah, I knew about the special blend and RNO. I suspect it's pricey enough that high roller racers would buy it but it might be too much for a commercial operator.

LRod
ZJX, ORD, ZAU retired

1/19/2014 3:35 PM
Frank Van Haste said...

Responding to LRod: For certain, you can run an R-3350 on 100LL. CAF does it all the time with Fifi (their B-29A) and I suspect the sundry Connies do the same. I would expect that you could not use full blower and the Connies have the Parts Recovery Turbines inop'ed, but they all fly light so that's not a problem. I believe that these engines have fairly low mechanical compression ratios, so fuel with a low performance number is OK as long as you don't need War Emergency Power.

I'm not sure where you'd find R-4360's in operation today, other than perhaps an FG-2 or two on the warbird circuit, and who knows what they burn.

1/21/2014 9:45 AM

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