Author Topic: Interesting or unusual planes?  (Read 385800 times)

Interesting or unusual planes?
« on: 14 November, 2010, 06:29:52 pm »
Since no ones started one yet!  There seems to be quite a few plane photos in here already as well!  Spotted this beast yesterday on a quick visit to Bembridge airport;






clifftaylor

  • Max - "make mine a Beophar Hairball Paste please"
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #1 on: 14 November, 2010, 06:31:30 pm »
What's the great big tube thingy?? Exhaust pipe??

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #2 on: 14 November, 2010, 06:32:09 pm »
What's the great big tube thingy?? Exhaust pipe??

Yep!

clifftaylor

  • Max - "make mine a Beophar Hairball Paste please"
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #3 on: 14 November, 2010, 06:32:47 pm »
Nice!!

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #4 on: 14 November, 2010, 06:42:33 pm »
What is it?  It looks like a Stearman.
Getting there...

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #5 on: 14 November, 2010, 06:44:24 pm »
What is it?  It looks like a Stearman.

N.A.F. N3N-3

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #6 on: 14 November, 2010, 06:47:28 pm »
Ah, thanks.
Getting there...

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #7 on: 14 November, 2010, 06:51:37 pm »
What's the great big tube thingy?? Exhaust pipe??
You'd think they'd make better use of it.  On a Spitfire (not a radial engine, but same principle) the six rear-turned exhaust pipes made a non-trivial contribution to total thrust. 
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

clifftaylor

  • Max - "make mine a Beophar Hairball Paste please"
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #8 on: 14 November, 2010, 06:56:15 pm »
Yes, you'd imagine it would provide an amount of rotational force.

Adam

  • It'll soon be summer
    • Charity ride Durness to Dover 18-25th June 2011
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #9 on: 14 November, 2010, 07:04:29 pm »
Simple answer - the Naval Aircraft Factory was effectively a Government run organisation.  Supermarine were part of Vickers-Armstrong.

Nationalised industry compared with private enterprise.  ;)
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” -Albert Einstein

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #10 on: 14 November, 2010, 07:12:04 pm »
What's the great big tube thingy?? Exhaust pipe??
You'd think they'd make better use of it.  On a Spitfire (not a radial engine, but same principle) the six rear-turned exhaust pipes made a non-trivial contribution to total thrust.  

On the Spitfire, the radiator ducts also made a contribution to thrust - there was some research into taking the propulsive effect of the cooling ducts further by adding a fuel jet and glowplug to make a form of ramjet, to be mounted between the radiator ducts, but bench tests indicated that the speed increase didn't warrant continuing with the project.*

Proof perhaps that you take things too far with radial engines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSC_Zvezda_M503

The Zvezda M503 was a maritime 6 row, 42 cylinder diesel radial engine built in the 1970s by the Soviet Union. Its primary use was in Soviet missile boats, which used three of these engines.  :o

* Source British Secret Projects - Hypersonics, Ramjets & Missiles by Chris Gibson and Tony Buttler. A fascinating book...
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #11 on: 14 November, 2010, 07:52:57 pm »
Simple answer - the Naval Aircraft Factory was effectively a Government run organisation.  Supermarine were part of Vickers-Armstrong.

Nationalised industry compared with private enterprise.  ;)

It is an issue of nationalised industry versus private enterprise, but not how you might think.  NAF was created towards the end of WW1 because the private companies could not reliably produce the number of machines needed for the war.  However, the nationalised factory supplied the gap where private enterprise failed ;)

I suspect many of the differences are related to the fact that the N3N entered service in 1935, and was a trainer, whereas the Spitfire went into production in 1938, and was a fighter.  Worth noting, too, that the Spitfire was created to an Air Ministry Specification.

Our trainers in the mid-30s were mainly Avro Tutors and De Havilland Tiger Moths - arguably more elegant, but not more sophisticated.
Getting there...

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #12 on: 14 November, 2010, 07:59:42 pm »
Liquid-cooled radials are pretty unusual.  One of the advantages of the air-cooled radial was that a cylinder could take a bullet and you wouldn't lose the whole engine.  They were also good for carrier aircraft because the engine was physically shorter, making it a bit easier to see the flight deck on a tail-dragger.

Cooling wasn't necessarily better; the Huns had all sorts of problems with the back row of the FW190 engine and ended up wedging a liquid-cooled engine in the last version.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

Adam

  • It'll soon be summer
    • Charity ride Durness to Dover 18-25th June 2011
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #13 on: 14 November, 2010, 09:18:45 pm »
Simple answer - the Naval Aircraft Factory was effectively a Government run organisation.  Supermarine were part of Vickers-Armstrong.

Nationalised industry compared with private enterprise.  ;)

It is an issue of nationalised industry versus private enterprise, but not how you might think.  NAF was created towards the end of WW1 because the private companies could not reliably produce the number of machines needed for the war.  However, the nationalised factory supplied the gap where private enterprise failed ;)

I suspect many of the differences are related to the fact that the N3N entered service in 1935, and was a trainer, whereas the Spitfire went into production in 1938, and was a fighter.  Worth noting, too, that the Spitfire was created to an Air Ministry Specification.

Our trainers in the mid-30s were mainly Avro Tutors and De Havilland Tiger Moths - arguably more elegant, but not more sophisticated.

According to Wikipedia, it was created "due to a decided lack of interest among aircraft manufacturers in the Navy's requirements for a comparatively small quantity of aircraft" and "and to have under its own control a factory capable of producing experimental designs".

Plus of course, the Spitfire was based on the S6B racing seaplane.
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” -Albert Einstein

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #14 on: 14 November, 2010, 09:23:49 pm »
... the Spitfire was based on the S6B racing seaplane.

Loosely.  And the engines were completely different.
Getting there...

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #15 on: 14 November, 2010, 10:15:21 pm »
Interesting, I didn't know the US went in for nationalised aircraft production.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #16 on: 14 November, 2010, 11:46:54 pm »
Less chat

Moar plains!

;)
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #17 on: 15 November, 2010, 12:17:56 am »
I was reminded by talk of the Naval Aircraft Factory, that the US War Department sponsored early experiments in heavier than air machines.
Langley Aerodrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It looked like this.


The engine was vastly better than the Wright engine,
Manly-Balzer engine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It could have beaten the Wrights to the first manned flight but it was scaled up from a successful quarter-scale model without allowing for the increased stresses and it broke up.

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #18 on: 15 November, 2010, 09:16:11 am »
Yebbut, the Wrights were bicycle engineers :D
Getting there...

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #19 on: 15 November, 2010, 11:31:44 am »
I always though the Do 335 was interesting.

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Adam

  • It'll soon be summer
    • Charity ride Durness to Dover 18-25th June 2011
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #20 on: 15 November, 2010, 12:13:41 pm »
I've always thought it was an amazing bit of luck that the Nazis never seemed to push as far ahead with their experimental aircraft as they could have done. 

They didn't put funding into developing the turbojets used by Heinkel for the HE 280, nor the Messerchmitt Me 262 (which was a very advanced design for the era), plus they dithered and changed their minds as to exactly what they would use the new aircraft for.  In the case of the Me 262, there was nearly 3 year delay in equipping them with a half decent engine, as the airframe itself was ready in 1942.

If the Luftwaffe had started equipping squadrons with those by early 1943, rather than March 1945, it probably would have changed the war.
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” -Albert Einstein

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #21 on: 15 November, 2010, 02:06:56 pm »
Never been sure about the idea of German jet fighters changing the war. The allies also had jets developed by 1943 and the Meteor went into service in 1944. The allies made a conscious decision to not put large numbers of jets into services as it was easier cheaper and faster to build lots of piston engined aircraft as they were good enough for the task at hand.  Had the Germans started to deploy jets in large numbers then one would presume that the allies would have modified their plans and done the same thing.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #22 on: 15 November, 2010, 07:30:32 pm »
The German's problems in the air were caused by lack of fuel and lack of pilots. They found it difficult to secure supplies of 100 octane Avgas, so they ended up building expendable one way vehicles such as the V1 and V2 and jets that could run on paraffin. The allies had so much fuel that by the end of the war they were running pointless bombing raids to use up fuel and ordnance. When the jets and turboprops took over there were still vast amounts of high octane fuel under airfields around Britain.

Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #23 on: 05 December, 2010, 05:58:21 pm »
I always though the Do 335 was interesting.

Yes they produced some interesting aircraft but I think this is so cool!


clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Interesting or unusual planes?
« Reply #24 on: 05 December, 2010, 07:29:22 pm »
Never flew AFAIK
Getting there...