Can we please stop hotlinking pics?

Sometimes I think the market for multi million dollar Porsche resto-mod things is saturated and overdone. But they keep coming out with stunners, and I'm here for it.

Tuthill GT-One:

Wayslow said:

Picture is unrelated but is another one my BIL found.

I wanted to comment on this picture of him standing next to the Anson (a popular twin engined trainer).  That crank he is holding is the crank starter for the engine (!).   WWI era plane could be prop started (spin the prop by hand, yes a bit dangerous).  Once the engines got bigger they had to go another way.  One way was a cartridge starter (basically a big shotgun shell that kind of rocket bumped the engine over) and the other way was the crank.  It wasn't a direct crank though, it was an inertial starter. The crank was heavily geared and connected to a flywheel which would be spun up by the crank and connected to the engine when up to speed, giving a few seconds of turning.   Lot's of work, but eventually of course replaced with a high amperage starter (electronics had to do a log of catching up in those days)

There was actually a great example of one in the movie The Great Escape (I think it was James Garners character) when they steal the Me-108 trainer from the German airport.

Here is someone starting an Me-109 with one.  This looks to be a G model, so later in the war.  Not sure if the 109's went the whole war without starters (!?).  This is not a small engine to crank start!  DB-605:  35.7 liters and 1,400 hp!

Interesting photo.  The fellow on the left suspiciously does not look like he is wearing a German uniform.   This may be a captured plane, though I would think they would paint over the insignias.  The allies did fly captured planes out of Germany late in the war though, so this might be one of them (?)

Too pricey or weird for Cars for sale, BUT  you have to see this mid-century modern boat.

aircooled said:

Wayslow said:

Picture is unrelated but is another one my BIL found.

I wanted to comment on this picture of him standing next to the Anson (a popular twin engined trainer).  That crank he is holding is the crank starter for the engine (!).   WWI era plane could be prop started (spin the prop by hand, yes a bit dangerous).  Once the engines got bigger they had to go another way.  One way was a cartridge starter (basically a big shotgun shell that kind of rocket bumped the engine over) and the other way was the crank.  It wasn't a direct crank though, it was an inertial starter. The crank was heavily geared and connected to a flywheel which would be spun up by the crank and connected to the engine when up to speed, giving a few seconds of turning.   Lot's of work, but eventually of course replaced with a high amperage starter (electronics had to do a log of catching up in those days)

There was actually a great example of one in the movie The Great Escape (I think it was James Garners character) when they steal the Me-108 trainer from the German airport.

Here is someone starting an Me-109 with one.  This looks to be a G model, so later in the war.  Not sure if the 109's went the whole war without starters (!?).  This is not a small engine to crank start!  DB-605:  35.7 liters and 1,400 hp!

Interesting photo.  The fellow on the left suspiciously does not look like he is wearing a German uniform.   This may be a captured plane, though I would think they would paint over the insignias.  The allies did fly captured planes out of Germany late in the war though, so this might be one of them (?)

Shotgun starters featured prominently in Flight of the Phoenix. 

3/4 ton pickup with Marmon-Harrington 4WD conversion.

In reply to aircooled :

Remember those wind up lawn mowers?  You wind the handle on top, then slap it down and the spring you just wound turns the flywheel.   Same logic only bigger?

Yes, I grew up with a Tecumseh powered Toro, has the big fold-over windup handle on top. It worked remarkably well.

914Driver said:

In reply to aircooled :

Remember those wind up lawn mowers?  You wind the handle on top, then slap it down and the spring you just wound turns the flywheel.   Same logic only bigger?

Sort of, but the energy in that case is stored in a spring.  For the inertial starters, it's stored in the heavy flywheel you spin up. It's more like one of those car toys that you drag across the ground that have a lot of resistance (spinning up a flywheel) so when you put it down again it shots away with all the stored energy.

It's basically like having a flywheel that can be disconnected from the crank of a car, then having a geared handle you can spin the flywheel up with (without turning the engine crank).  Once you get the flywheel up to a good speed, you hit a button and it re-connects to the engines crank, and you hopefully get a few rotations out of the stored energy.

Also, very similar to bump starting a car, but in that case, the energy is stored in the mass of the car you push to get up to speed before popping the clutch.  As with push starting, you REALLY want an engine that starts easily!

Hurricane fighter doing a rocket assisted launch off of a Liberty cargo ship, to give it fighter cover when out of range of shore based fighter. The pilot would ditch and be recovered if he could not get back to land (only one way, so much longer range than a shore based plane.

Your grandmothers in their youth.

In reply to Duke :

Random note:   The second plane up is not a P-51 (though pretty much the same plane).  Note the little slit in the middle of the wing, those are dive brakes.

It's an A-36 Apache (essentially a ground attack version of the P-51A):  

The grating are spoilers, ir brakes?

In reply to 914Driver :

Yes, just generally slows the plane in a dive, without inducing any pitch moments (making the plane pitch up or down), so you can dive for a longer time without going over maximum speed.  Similar, though far smaller, than the dive flaps on a Dauntless, which where so large and effective it gave it a very steep dive angle, making it potentially more accurate.  So steep, as with other dive bombers, the center bomb had to be mounted to a cradle that would swing the bomb out on release to clear the propeller.

914Driver said:

..when you are out of flares, and you don't really like your RIO anyway.

Obviously a photoshop job.  Looks to be a ejection seat test.  The seats in F4's are normally set to both go when one goes (with a slight delay of course).  I am pretty certain that missile is not a heat seeking missile also.

In reply to aircooled :

There is a valve in the rear cockpit to allow the crew to select aft seat only, or both seats. To clarify, if the front seat initiates ejection, both seats go, with the aft seat going first. The command-eject switch (valve) allows the crew to decide if the aft seat will go alone, or if it sends the front seat out as well.

Most fighter and attack aircraft with multiple ejection seats have this ability.

Former F-4, A-4, T-38, F-5, F-16 ejection seat mechanic here.

STM317 said:

Sometimes I think the market for multi million dollar Porsche resto-mod things is saturated and overdone. But they keep coming out with stunners, and I'm here for it.

Tuthill GT-One:

Oh. My. God.

In reply to myf16n :

Interesting, thanks for the info.   One wonders what the use case is for ejecting only the rear seat (other than ejection seat tests).

My source for that was a story by a Vietnam pilot who told the rear seater he would warn him before they ejected (clearly something you don't want to be surprised about), it was the third time he said "eject".  As soon as he said the first "eject" the rear seater ejected both of them (they were on fire at the time of course).

F3 Demon.  The attempt to improve the F3 design resulted in the F4 Phantom.  It was considered under powered, but it did normally have 4 20mm cannons, so it had that going for it (the Phantom was somewhat notorious for not having a gun in early versions)

An entire page devoted to aircraft, and one butt-ugly German car.  Eek.

Duke said:

I'm such an idiot savant that I immediately knew I was looking at a T-6 wing simply by the shape of the gear doors.