Autothrust Blue
"Well, on the Brasilia..."
Oh yeah.
Eighteen Year Restoration - Then This
- Thread starter fholbert
- Start date
That was some Bob Hoover-level energy management. Ha!
I figure it’s like a vintage car. A Model T has no business on the 405, of course, but any serious hobbyist wouldn’t be there any way.
They’re fun to watch fly, my prefrontal cortex/evolved monkey brain says “DANGER!!” so I won’t get into one, but it’s a lot like breaking out grandma’s fine china for a dinner party.
I'm blown away we're still talking about that. Has the concept of time ever made sense in a Christopher Nolan movie?
”The Spitfire has gone into ”Blue Thunder ‘Whisper Mode’”
This sounds like “I went to ‘Open Mic Night’ and it was terrible”
You know, it’s an “open mic”, yes?
JordanD
Chinese Food Enthusiast
Tenet still makes my head hurt.”The Spitfire has gone into ”Blue Thunder ‘Whisper Mode’”
Right? Ha!
Kingairer
'Tiger Team' Member
Step further, some of these are like a Model T, with kids loaded up in the back of the bed of truck boppin around I-95.
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Low&Slow
Ancora imparo
Same with aircraft. If the standard is met, carry on.
You know you’d get into a C-123 to fly it....
Autothrust Blue
"Well, on the Brasilia..."
With the LHFEs, the ‘standard’ was white-girl literally reduced.
inigo88
Composite-lover
@Seggy is the original Jetcareers “Karen”, so his personal beliefs about warbirds (and anything else fun in aviation for that matter) doesn’t come as a shock to me. I am disappointed at some of the other ignorance in this thread however.
Here’s the deal. Aluminum structures always have a finite fatigue life. Age doesn’t matter (as long as you manage corrosion), it’s all about number of cycles. The more cycles you put on the structure (takeoffs, landings, maneuvering loads, turbulence, etc) the lower the failure stress of that metal gets, and the more likely it is that you’ll get fatigue cracks. In engineering this is illustrated on the S-n curve (S = stress, n = number of cycles). As you can see Steel kind of levels out over time, but Aluminum just keeps going down...
What this means is that if you fly an airplane enough, that airframe eventually becomes unusable and must be thrown away or rebuilt from the ground up. This is common in the helicopter world with rotor blades timing out, and even the bonded aluminum wings on Grumman Tigers need to be thrown out and replaced after a certain number of hours. But it’s entirely based on how much it’s flown (how many cycles, hours being an approximate way to track) and how well corrosion is mitigated.
My first solo was in a 14,000 hour Cessna 152, and in hindsight that may have been sketchier than the Great Lakes I’ve flown aerobatics in, or flying my old 4000 hour 1946 Cessna 120. One of the scariest flights I’ve had in recent memory was a training flight in a Piper Arrow in moderate turbulence, a month or so after the Embry-Riddle Arrow lost its wing due to fatigue. How many hours did my Arrow have on it? Did it have the same invisible cracks working their way out the wing attach bolts, invisible to the naked eye and only detectable by removing the wing and doing an Eddy-Current inspection? I’m sure many of you instruct in arrows and think it’s a non-event, but until they worked out that wing inspection AD things were a little dodgy...
Conversely I’ve been to warbird restoration shops and seen P-51s being “restored” that are nothing more than a data plate attached to brand new stringers and bulkheads in a jig. When that project is done it will be a brand new airplane, with a brand new engine, no fatigue and no corrosion.
Other warbirds may have all original metal and an engine on its 20th “field overhaul”, and be full of corrosion and fatigue cracks under its fresh coat of paint. It really just depends.
@Autothrust Blue ‘s “brain trust” idea is very real in aerospace engineering as well as flying and operating these aircraft. Just because a company once made a 747, a Concorde, or an Apollo Saturn V rocket doesn’t mean they can do so again. Those programs stood up an enormous workforce of engineers and technicians to solve extremely difficult problems, but unless the company had the forethought to thoroughly document the work and have those people mentor their replacements before they retire (many have now even passed away!) then a “brain drain” ensues and the engineers of 2021 are back at square one.
I think the same is true for owning, operating, piloting and maintaining warbirds. Just buying or restoring the machine is not enough, you need a continuous lineage of mentorship from the original people who built, maintained and flew them to those doing the same jobs today. The warbird community seems to be on a slow death march in general because there isn’t enough new talent willing to come in and get mentored (easier said than done) and carry the torch from the original old timers who are passing away. There doesn’t seem to be much interest in tailwheel training / tailwheel endorsements and I’ve even heard people on this forum ask “why should I open myself up to the extra risk if I might groundloop?” (Why do anything fun at all?). Finding living people with FE ratings in vintage airplanes is going to become a huge problem if it isn’t already, and I’ve witnessed first hand some types are nearly impossible to find a DPE for. If the torch isn’t passed to a new generation of warbird rated FEs, all the existing people with FE ratings in vintage WWII bombers will die off and those airplanes will be de facto grounded.
Long story short, I think @MikeD brought up some excellent points about systemic cultural issues with under qualified rich guy warbird owner pilots vs. those with the proper qualifications. @Roger Roger brought up some great points about inadequate maintenance practices and some of these volunteer groups potentially being in over their heads. Clearly corrections have to be made and the FAA is already applying pressure.
But to those of you calling warbirds a menace to public safety and salivating over destroying vintage aviation, get a damn life. You are a million times more likely to die in a car crash on the way to work than to get smushed by a falling TBM. We are all entitled to our personal minimums and are safer pilots for it, but don’t stomp on the joy of others because their entirely legal aviation activities are outside your comfort zone.
That concludes my rant. If you need me I’ll be building an experimental in my garage.
Here’s the deal. Aluminum structures always have a finite fatigue life. Age doesn’t matter (as long as you manage corrosion), it’s all about number of cycles. The more cycles you put on the structure (takeoffs, landings, maneuvering loads, turbulence, etc) the lower the failure stress of that metal gets, and the more likely it is that you’ll get fatigue cracks. In engineering this is illustrated on the S-n curve (S = stress, n = number of cycles). As you can see Steel kind of levels out over time, but Aluminum just keeps going down...
What this means is that if you fly an airplane enough, that airframe eventually becomes unusable and must be thrown away or rebuilt from the ground up. This is common in the helicopter world with rotor blades timing out, and even the bonded aluminum wings on Grumman Tigers need to be thrown out and replaced after a certain number of hours. But it’s entirely based on how much it’s flown (how many cycles, hours being an approximate way to track) and how well corrosion is mitigated.
My first solo was in a 14,000 hour Cessna 152, and in hindsight that may have been sketchier than the Great Lakes I’ve flown aerobatics in, or flying my old 4000 hour 1946 Cessna 120. One of the scariest flights I’ve had in recent memory was a training flight in a Piper Arrow in moderate turbulence, a month or so after the Embry-Riddle Arrow lost its wing due to fatigue. How many hours did my Arrow have on it? Did it have the same invisible cracks working their way out the wing attach bolts, invisible to the naked eye and only detectable by removing the wing and doing an Eddy-Current inspection? I’m sure many of you instruct in arrows and think it’s a non-event, but until they worked out that wing inspection AD things were a little dodgy...
Conversely I’ve been to warbird restoration shops and seen P-51s being “restored” that are nothing more than a data plate attached to brand new stringers and bulkheads in a jig. When that project is done it will be a brand new airplane, with a brand new engine, no fatigue and no corrosion.
Other warbirds may have all original metal and an engine on its 20th “field overhaul”, and be full of corrosion and fatigue cracks under its fresh coat of paint. It really just depends.
@Autothrust Blue ‘s “brain trust” idea is very real in aerospace engineering as well as flying and operating these aircraft. Just because a company once made a 747, a Concorde, or an Apollo Saturn V rocket doesn’t mean they can do so again. Those programs stood up an enormous workforce of engineers and technicians to solve extremely difficult problems, but unless the company had the forethought to thoroughly document the work and have those people mentor their replacements before they retire (many have now even passed away!) then a “brain drain” ensues and the engineers of 2021 are back at square one.
I think the same is true for owning, operating, piloting and maintaining warbirds. Just buying or restoring the machine is not enough, you need a continuous lineage of mentorship from the original people who built, maintained and flew them to those doing the same jobs today. The warbird community seems to be on a slow death march in general because there isn’t enough new talent willing to come in and get mentored (easier said than done) and carry the torch from the original old timers who are passing away. There doesn’t seem to be much interest in tailwheel training / tailwheel endorsements and I’ve even heard people on this forum ask “why should I open myself up to the extra risk if I might groundloop?” (Why do anything fun at all?). Finding living people with FE ratings in vintage airplanes is going to become a huge problem if it isn’t already, and I’ve witnessed first hand some types are nearly impossible to find a DPE for. If the torch isn’t passed to a new generation of warbird rated FEs, all the existing people with FE ratings in vintage WWII bombers will die off and those airplanes will be de facto grounded.
Long story short, I think @MikeD brought up some excellent points about systemic cultural issues with under qualified rich guy warbird owner pilots vs. those with the proper qualifications. @Roger Roger brought up some great points about inadequate maintenance practices and some of these volunteer groups potentially being in over their heads. Clearly corrections have to be made and the FAA is already applying pressure.
But to those of you calling warbirds a menace to public safety and salivating over destroying vintage aviation, get a damn life. You are a million times more likely to die in a car crash on the way to work than to get smushed by a falling TBM. We are all entitled to our personal minimums and are safer pilots for it, but don’t stomp on the joy of others because their entirely legal aviation activities are outside your comfort zone.
That concludes my rant. If you need me I’ll be building an experimental in my garage.
Autothrust Blue
"Well, on the Brasilia..."
Make sure you’re not like Agent Gibbs, and can actually get the damn thing OUT of your workshop.
stroboli62
Well-Known Member
Geeeezus, YesMake sure you’re not like Agent Gibbs, and can actually get the damn thing OUT of your workshop.
He's going to have to knock out one side of the foundation wall to get it out!
JordanD
Chinese Food Enthusiast
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a non zero number of people that are killed by vacuum cleaners every year.
WacoFan
Bigly
See...ever since I became a leftist DEMONRAT VOTER libtard communist I have been worried about Seggy. I mean, I can't even get it up to go to war with him over guns anymore - just old and lazy I guess.
But behold - always have faith because Seggy will eventually come through with a garbage take and I can resume my rethorical war against him! Yay me!
Never, ever, ever give up...on Seggy coming hard with a garbage take.
Stay thirsty my friends.
