Thread: Bird Watching

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Originally Posted by rspears

I referenced P&W for the R1820 but it was actually a Curtis-Wright design - nine cylinder radial, single row. Apparently the R1820 was also built under license by Lycoming, Pratt & Whitney, and even Studebaker during the war. The R3350 was two R1820's stacked, but used a slightly shorter stroke. Most had seven or nine cylinders per row, but I read that they experimented with an eleven cylinder design that never was used in production. Whoever thought of the single throw crank, master rod design was a smart cookie, in my book.

how about the sopwith camel the crank was bolted on the fire wall and the jugs spun around the crank. some think roller lifters are new i like the old radials but like the corn cobs and i am more of a liberty /merlin /alisons guy . the 540 lycoming engines are cool have seen some built and hone out some jugs on one they have some choke in the bore .l like the history of the old lost oil engines with valve springs that look like bed spring cool stuff like this at wrigth pat museum

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=7d411...CD39BC7D%21295

Try this like and if it works maybe someone like Roger can post them--

Will try this again - download to my computer was wierd...

Originally Posted by jerry clayton

Try this like and if it works maybe someone like Roger can post them--

OK, here ya' go Jerry, groups of five, trying it again:

Originally Posted by rspears

OK, here ya' go Jerry, groups of five, trying it again:

Group two of three...

Originally Posted by rspears

OK, here ya' go Jerry, groups of five, trying it again:

Group three, only two on this one...

Originally Posted by pat mccarthy

how about the sopwith camel the crank was bolted on the fire wall and the jugs spun around the crank.

Maybe the best known of the rotaries was the "Gnome", a French engine. You can Google "Gnome Rotary Engine" and see what its all about. The gyroscopic effect of all that iron spinning on the front end made for some interesting control problems. I read someplace that no airplane before or since could follow a Camel through a left turn ..... or was it a right turn?

I was privileged (well, make that lucky) enough to see the first test flight of a B36 bomber, and you have to be seriously old to say that. A B29 was flying alongside and a little aft and it looked really dinky. That airplane had its own distinct sound; six Pratt & Whitney R4360 twenty-eight cylinder radials in pusher (backward) configuration.

On a clear day we could see a long peach colored line of big buildings from our farm house, the Consolidated Vultee "bomber plant" in Fort Worth, twenty miles away. They made many, many B24 bombers at that place.

That was in 1946.

A few years ago at Oshkosh three B17's made a low flyover.

Talk about goose bumps!

Jim