Sept 20, 2010: Growing Old Gracefully

[SPUCK]

Originally Posted by gvidas

What does "flying off the time" refer to? How long it took to make vs. how long he's spent flying it?

No, I believe you have to fly an "experimental" plane for 50 hours before you can use it like any other private plane. For those first 50 hrs you are only allowed to fly it within a certain distance of its home port and you can't take it into certain commercial airports, carry a passenger, etc., etc.


That's a really nice scale model. I wonder if it's safer to fly than the original.



Twin engine planes have one engine that is a "critical" engine, in that if it's the only one running the plane is very treacherous to fly. Something like the rotational direction of the air leaving the propeller hitting certain flight surfaces. This makes the controls behave poorly. It allows one to make a small mistake and find themselves in a flat spin or some other often fatal configuration. The original P38 was designed so BOTH engines were critical. If either one quits the other is nasty to continue with.

Hence, I wonder if that aspect was designed out on this one.

I also wonder what the engines are.

According to a story in the San Angelo Standard-Times, his engine selection was described as particularly tricky. “He tried pre-war inverted inline engines, but parts were scarce. He settled on horizontally opposed engines (220 hp Continental 360s) from a scrapped Seneca that landed with its wheels up.”