Thread: 1940 Ford Pickup

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Was the New Zealand company a one man business in Auckland run by Mike Roberts ? I think he calls his business Hammerworks and does mostly restoration of early aircraft and racing car pieces. A very clever and talented guy.

That is very nice!

not much work on the truck but here's a plane pic, just getting the wings on and making up the control cables.

the way its been flooding in Texas--are you building floats for it?????
looking super

Very cool project. Nice work!

It's really coming together!

Well here's a update , nothing new on the truck but the plane is getting its covering now. Here's 2 pic's of it just before we took it apart for covering.

That is just plain cool! Thanks for posting the pictures. They are very special for those of us who don't get to play in arenas like that.

Looking at those pictures made me realise the delicate balance the engineer that designed it faced.
He had to make it as light as possible at the rear so that the rear would lift easily to get it airborne; but not so light that it was in danger of digging its nose in the dirt when landing.
Hence the placement of the axle braces.
There were some clever people out there 'back in the day'.
There still are some out there even now.

Thanks for that Navy.

Originally Posted by johnboy

Looking at those pictures made me realise the delicate balance the engineer that designed it faced.
He had to make it as light as possible at the rear so that the rear would lift easily to get it airborne; but not so light that it was in danger of digging its nose in the dirt when landing.

Good point, JB. Also, there is a delicate relationship between center of gravity (CG) of the aircraft and the center of lift (CL). Get the CG of the plane outside of the the fore and aft CG limits, and you have big problems.

Yeah, that's something I'd never thought about before either.
If you think about it; if you mucked up CG and CL the plane would want to cartwheel.
Scary!

I've never really looked hard at aircraft before.
Everything I've dealt with has had either tracks or wheels and just had to sit on the ground.

This is an entirely new train of thought.

That is very nice Navy! Thanks for posting the pictures. It looks so nice like that!

Good work Navy---

Adding to the comments about the center of gravity and center of lift-------with todays swept back wings (and folding) the CG changes drasticly from back to front with fuel burn plus the amount of upward flex of the wing from on the ground to in the air--next time you fly a long range flight ( 3-4+ hours ) try to get a window seat where you can see the wing tip----------

The movable horizontal stabilizer was a wonderful advancement

It was my understanding that planes carried the fuel in the wings, with the tanks centered over the CG so that fuel levels don't alter the CG.

Originally Posted by firebird77clone

It was my understanding that planes carried the fuel in the wings, with the tanks centered over the CG so that fuel levels don't alter the CG.

that's what they tried to do but with the shape of the wings-and the upper being more forward than the lower, it is virtually impossible to have a fuel tank shape/location that fits the aircraft shape and stays cg neutral-----as you change the pitch in flight the fuel runs forward/backward causing CG change-the non fluid stay the same --------

As I was saying-SWEPT WING---The wings taper back from the fuselage quite a biy and as fuel levels are burnt down during the flight the CG goes forward a lot.
Also some long range a/c carry fuel in the vertical stabilizer and it has to be burnt at a certain time into flight ---adding to the CG change is also the structural loadings that require a portion of the fuel load be burnt out of the forward/inner tanks to reduce leverage load on the wing tips-gets complicated-I'll try to look to see if I can find some DC10 manuals on the timing of the burn, I may have some B767 but they were simple compared to the DC10 with one tail mounted engine plus the wings