Video: GE Aviation And The Fascinating World Of Building Jet Engines

 I saw the short version of this video as a TV commercial yesterday and I really liked it. Even tho I have big issues with the mega corporate side of GE, GE Aviation seems to have its head screwed on pretty straight. The video also reminded me of an article from several years back that I had read that told of the unique manufacturing environment for jet engine building at GE... a quick search found the article: Engines of Democracy from Fast Company Magazine. If you've got an interest in how things get done, and especially in a very non-traditional kind of way, I highly recommend you read that article. It's from way back in 1999, not too long after the huge GE90 that powers the Boeing 777 was introduced, so the details of manufacturing may have changed, but it's a fascinating (and kinda long) read.

 The world of incredibly close tolerances, and essentially no-room-for-error is probably pretty different from what most of us live on a daily basis, but I must admit that I find it extremely alluring. It's the kind of environment and people that made America great 70 to 80 years ago... and I think we need a lot more of it. ASAP.

Video screenshot showing a GE jet engine coming together

CoolPix: Continental A-40 On A Taylor J-2 Cub (NAHI 2011)

(click pic for hi-res) Classic aviation beauty! Continental A-40 engine on a Taylor J-2 Cub

 I'm beginning to have a little infatuation relationship with the Continental A-40 engine from the 1930's. I've known since I was a kid that the A-40 was the basis for what would eventually become the A-65 (65 hp), which begat the C series engines (like the 90 hp C-90), which then led to a little engine called the O-200 (100 hp) which just happens to be the engine Cessna put into over 20,000 150's. There's a LOT of aviation history built around these little 4 cylinder engines! But, even knowing all this, I'd still never really studied the A-40.

 So when I saw this immaculate Taylor J-2 Cub at the National Aviation Heritage Invitational (NAHI) at Reno a few weeks back, I took a little closer look. What a beautiful little engine! This one is single ignition (later A-40's went to dual ignition) - and how cool is it (no pun intended) that there are cooling fins in the head? Almost looks like a little model airplane engine!

 Even more amazing to me is that this little 40 hp engine would actually get a 2-place airplane like the J-2 off the ground. If I could, I'd have me a Taylor J-2 Cub with an open cowl A-40... AND an early Taylorcraft, the side-by-side follow up design by C.G. Taylor, also with an open cowl A-40 on it. That would make a really cool collection of amazing low-powered 2-seaters from the golden age of aviation. And the best part to me is that the open cowl lets you take in that classic engine style all day long.

 BTW, this image, or one similar might be another option for my large, high-quality photo print idea. Hopefully by early November I'll have the first of some fabulous aviation prints (like the 'dawn patrol' B-25) available for you to consider purchasing : )

Griffon Powered P-51 'Precious Metal' Gets Dressed For Reno 2011

Recent test flight of the ungreened Precious Metal, the Griffon powered P-51 racer

 (3 pix, all from Precious Metal pilot Thom Richard's facebook page)

 The Unlimited racers for Reno 2011 (Sept 14-18) are lining up to make this an incredible year of racing. While I'm certainly no expert on all the aircraft that'll be racing, I have spent some time soaking up some info on several of the most notable... and the Rolls Royce Griffon powered mixmaster P-51 (with counter-rotating props) known as Precious Metal is certainly one of them. The airplane is now based at the Kissimmee Air Museum in Florida, where it can be seen when it's not at Reno. I had the pleasure of talking with PM's race pilot Thom Richard on the phone Wednesday about how progress is coming along for one of the most unique P-51 racers ever built. Here's some of what I found out.

 On Wednesday 8-30-11, the PM team put two test flights on the airplane totalling about an hour of flight time. They were testing out a variety of mods to the airplane that they've been working on for a while (sorry, no specifics to share) and everything worked! That's a pretty critical test to pass with the races starting in about two weeks. You may know that PM has been around for quite a few years but it's never really lived up to the potential that's packed into the front end... and the dreams that Don Whittington had for the airplane. The new Precious Metal team is hoping that these mods they've been working on will move the airplane from being a fascinating and entertaining novelty at Reno to being a real contender in the fast pack along with Strega, Voodoo, Rare Bear and last year's new kid on the block: Galloping Ghost...

(click pic to enlarge)  Precious Metal... highly modified P-51 looking pretty mean in flight

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QuickPic: Precious Metal - The Mixmaster Mustang!

Click the pic to see it over at flickr - or click this link to see it there in its largest size

 'Wow' pretty much describes this view of the Rolls Royce Griffon powered and highly modified P-51 known as Precious Metal. It's a near perfect view of this racer's most notable feature: the counter rotating propellers. Just as exciting as the way this beast looks is the fact that this pic was taken at the 2011 PRS (Pylon Racing School) where pilots and airplanes show their intent to race in September while proving they have the skills needed for safe racing. How fabulous will it be to see this amazing airplane race at Reno again!

 I'm looking to get more details on the status of race prep for the airplane... I admit that with all the avgeek thoughts in my head these days, I'm a little behind in having a lot of detail on the racers prepping up for Reno 2011. What I do know is that Thom Richard plans to race Precious Metal, and the airplane is based out of Kissimmee Florida and connected to Warbird Adventures and the Kissimmee Air Museum. I'm also getting the idea that new paint is in the works... I only hope it's shockingly hot - this airplane demands stellar paint!

 Watch for lots more coverage of this fascinating aircraft in the near future! 

(QuickPic image from flickr.com/photos/twozerowest - more great pix over there!)

Video: Judy Wexler Powers UMD 'Gamera' Off The Ground!

 Here's the youtube version of the successful flight on Thursday 5-12-11 of the University of Maryland 'Gamera' human powered helicopter. It's an impressive accomplishment no matter how you look at it.

 Congratulations to the entire Gamera team and to pilot/powerplant Judy Wexler - first woman to fly a human powered helicopter!

 Get more info at the UMD Gamera page or at this pervious post: University Of Maryland Gets Human Powered Helicopter 'Gamera' To Fly!

University Of Maryland Gets Human Powered Helicopter 'Gamera' To Fly!

Live-stream screenshot showing the 'Gamera' human powered helicopter in flight

 Historic first flight!

UPDATE: 6:57pm EDT - watch the video of the flight http://tinyurl.com/GameraFirstFlight

UPDATE: 9:01pm EDT - the hi-res version: http://tinyurl.com/GameraFirstFlightHiRes

 After unsuccessfully attempting to fly their human powered helicopter name 'Gamera' on Wednesday May 11th (2011), the group of 50 graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Maryland gave it another go on Thursday… and all of this was streamed live on the internet! The screenshot above shows that they did indeed get off the ground with female pilot Judy Wexler providing the power - which regardless of the duration creates a record flight since no woman has flown the other two successful human powered helicopters from the past. The flight appears to have lasted several seconds and got somewhere near a foot off the gym floor, so their first major milestone of getting off the ground has been reached!

 At this point the flight record is still unofficial, but at approximately 5:25pm EDT, the human powered helicopter Gamera appears to have flown!

'Gamera' pilot/powerplant Judy Wexler - first female to fly a human powered helicopter

 Ultimately they hope to be able win the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize by flying for a duration of 60 seconds and reaching an altitude of 3 meters while remaining in a 10 meter square. The Sikorsky Prize was established in 1980 and so far no one has been able to achieve the requirements. The existing endurance record is just 19.46 seconds set by 'Yuri l' back in 1994 in Japan.

 The Gamera empty weight is just 101 pounds, and the gross weight with the pilot onboard is just 208 pounds, so you know the structure is extremely light, which also makes it very fragile. The challenge of creating a mechanical system that can turn four rotors without failing at that weight is very difficult and is the primary reason that the goals of the Sikorsky Prize have not yet been met.

 Congratulations to the University of Maryland Gamera team for their great success so far… and watch for more details on this flight coming soon.

Gamera's 4x42' rotor system and framework - empty weight: 101 pounds

Promo video for the Gamera project

CoolPix: Sun-n-Fun Heat Wave - F-22 Raptor Style!

(click pic for hi-res)

 I posted this F-22 Raptor pic as a small version just a few days back in a Sun-n-Fun pic stream, but it's so awesome that I just had to let you see it in a big CoolPix version. The heat waves not only represent the power of the two big Pratt & Whitney F119 engines, they also do some cool things distortion wise with the fuselage and the background off in the distance. The best part to me tho is looking up inside the tailpipes and actually seeing the engines inside. 

 I must admit that the standard camera exposure didn't cause this to happen naturally, it took a tiny tweak in photoshop to bring out the shadowy area, but it's all real, no trickery here. This is also the start up of the F-22 flight that was cut short on Saturday due to some sort of systems failure. I wasn't able to find any definitive info on what actually happened, but fortunately the Raptor was able to land without trouble. The flight demo on Sunday went as planned, but I'm pretty sure it was the other of the two F-22's that made the trip to SNF. 

 Once the damaging storm of Thursday past, the weather for Friday, Saturday and Sunday was actually very nice. No heat wave tho, temps were just about perfect... you had to turn to the F-22 tailpipe for the real heat wave!

Video: First Run On A Pratt & Whitney R-4360 28 Cylinder Beast!

 First we went off the gold standard in America, and then we stopped building monster radial engines. No wonder this country is so messed up! So what if the turbine is light and powerful and burns kerosene, it sure doesn't sound like this engine. I know it's a hard sell trying to convince people that radial engines are where it's at, but I'm still a believer in the inspiring power of the sound that comes out of a radial's exhaust stacks.

 As it turns out, the sound on this first run of a rebuilt Pratt & Whitney R-4360 isn't the best part of the video due to the sound inside the test structure, but seeing four rows of 7 cylinders for 28 total (with 56 spark plugs!) and that huge prop is just pure awesome. It's hard to imagine that the post WWII Convair B-36 had six of these engines buried in the wings turning pusher props. In fact it's even more interesting to me because unlike almost all other radial installations, you get the feel for the roundness of the engine, but the way they were built into the B-36 as pushers sorta disguises that fact. And can you even imagine and airplane with 336 spark plugs?!

 I still think it would be very interesting to build a modern beast of a radial engine applying the design technologies that now make everyday oil leaks a thing of the past in automotive engines... along with the power-to-weight increases that computer-controlled fuel injection systems provide. Seems like a potentially viable concept to me. That was the fantasy idea behind my retro-wild Empress 400 airliner concept - big, powerful and efficient modern radial engines.

 Anyway, the good news is that massive engines like this R-4360 can still be rebuilt, which means that for now we can still produce the best mechanical sound man has ever produced. Rock on.

OMGosh! Museum Quality, Half Scale (UAV) Hughes H-1 Racer

Screenshot from the video below of the Aero Telemetry half-scale Hughes H-1 racer

 Wow, this couldn't get much cooler! A half scale flying model of the Hughes H-1 racer... and it has a 35 hp radial engine! Even better, it's being built by the guys at Aero Telemetry for the 75th anniversary celebration of the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) which will take place July 14-17, 2011 at the AMA headquarters in Muncie Indiana... just 2 hours down the road from me! You can count me in : )

 You've probably seen the work of Aero Telemetry but didn't even know it. They produced some very large scale RC models/UAV's for the movie The Aviator including an approximately half scale H-1 along with an XF-11 with about a 30' wingspan and a Spruce Goose with about a 25' wingspan. Some serious models! Read more about The Aviator models here. Aero Telemetry also makes UAV's for military and aerospace applications.

 Watch the awesome video now, and then read a bit more about it below.

 This new H-1 model from the video differs from the movie model in that it's being built to museum quality standards and includes a scale landing gear which the one built for the movie didn't have. That one was designed and built in under 8 weeks and since all the filming was to be done with the gear up, a scale gear wasn't needed.

 The new H-1 will also have a Lawrance 5 cylinder radial engine from the 1940's instead of the 30 hp 2 cylinder 2-stroke used in the movie model. There's very little info on the internet about this uber cute little radial engine, and often times people incorrectly spell the name Lawrence, but I did find this pic and this pic to show how absolutely cool these engines are. The engine makes about 35 to 38 hp and was built to be an APU, but they were mounted vertically and weren't designed for spinning a prop. You can get a little more more info from Aero Telemetry on the Lawrance for their H-1 model here. 

 I also saw some interesting info floating about the net suggesting that these guys are also building a full scale(!) version of the H-1 with an aluminum fuselage and wood wing. Don't really have any details on that yet, but wow, I can hardly wait to know more about it! Stay tuned for more info on the wild and wonderful world of Aero Telemetry and their Hughes H-1 projects : )

A Real Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Is In The Air!

Flying Heritage Collection's Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-5 first flight on 12.1.10 (photo: FHC)

(2 pix and 3 videos)

 The last time this airplane flew was July 19th, 1943. What that means is this is a 'real' German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 rather than the replicas that have surfaced in the last several years. Any Fw 190 is amazing, but to know that there is an actual example that's been faithfully restored is pretty phenomenal. The first flight actually took place about a month ago, with veteran race and warbird test pilot Steve Hinton at the controls, but since I somehow missed it when it happened, I thought you may have too. (if you're an Fw 190 fan, check out my other Fw 190 posts)

Paint scheme of the lost 1943 Fw 190  (image: FHC)

 The airplane is owned by Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection, and it will make an awesome compliment to the already stellar collection of historic World War II combat aircraft from around the world. These restored aircraft are brought back to flying condition, and done so at the highest level. The Flying Heritage Collection, which is based on Paine Field in Everett Washington, honors the amazing technological leaps that took place during the WWII aviation era.

 I've been fascinated with the Fw 190 since I was a kid, so this is pretty exciting stuff to be sure. Even more, I've recently been gathering a far greater understanding of the events of WWII than I'd ever had before. The more you understand about the people, the battles and the motivations involved in WWII, the more significant artifacts like this Fw 190 become.

 Here a three videos of interest related to this specific Fw 190:

Click to read more ...