The plane was interesting to say the least, yet despite it's relatively high speed capabilities it was lost.......though it's capabilities are no guarantee of anything.
The plane was interesting to say the least, yet despite it's relatively high speed capabilities it was lost.......though it's capabilities are no guarantee of anything.
Last edited by doitagain; 08-10-2012 at 08:19 PM.
Katharine's Legge is in the gravel!--Jenks
__________________________________________________ ____________________
12-7-1941 Never, Never Forget 9-11-2001
Failure of a counterweight on the prop according to the NTSB. This would cause an uncommanded pitch change to the prop blades (looks like it only changed the pitch on one blade, which would be even worse), along with a massive vibration, possibly severe enough to cause rapid structural damage.
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/br...03FA138&akey=1
It was a prop failure of sorts (one set of contrarotating props on one side going into reverse pitch due to an oil leak) that rendered the XF-11 uncontrollable and caused Hughes himself to crash into a house in Beverley Hills in 1946, btw.
"Only a fool fights in a burning house."-Kang
"If you listen to fools....The Maaahhhhb Ruuuules....."-Ronnie James Dio
Reports say Jim Wright did a heroic job of directing it away from personnel on the ground before it crashed.
Incredible effort went into reproducing an epic airplane.
"Construction took five workers from the Wright Machine Tool Co., which Wright owned, and seven major subcontractors 35,000 hours collectively. The work cost Wright nearly $2 million."
"You people worry too much. Strive for change. Root for your favorites. Enjoy the racing. Drop the flag." rev-ed, 3/04
It sounds like the desire to just get home overrode common sense in a machine with one complicated achilles heel......such a shame that a work of art which took so long to construct would be lost to something so elementary to it's need but so complicated in it's lubrication and balance properties......damn, what shame.Originally Posted by Sea Fury
It was indeed a beauty......wow.....a dream destroyed, and it appears a very good pilot lost.Reports say Jim Wright did a heroic job of directing it away from personnel on the ground before it crashed.
Incredible effort went into reproducing an epic airplane.
"Construction took five workers from the Wright Machine Tool Co., which Wright owned, and seven major subcontractors 35,000 hours collectively. The work cost Wright nearly $2 million."
Indeed...and the "recreation" was so precise it was given a serial number of "2" by the FAA.
However, Jim Wright took on fuel shortly before it crashed and said he was having trouble with the prop control. Reports say he worked on it and took off only to crash a short time later.
I'm neither a pilot nor an aero engineer, but my guess is a problem with a variable pitch prop is not someone one should take chances with.
OR, maybe someone with Wright's experience could have competently worked on it. I really don't know.
We all make mistakes, but his mistake had a higher cost than most anything us regular folk do......he was a pilot, pity he tried to be a farmfield mechanic on such a critical piece of needed engineering.
He was one of the people that built the airplane. Can't find any information as to whether he was an A&P mechanic listed on the airplane or not. With most experimental homebuilts, the FAA makes the builder one of the designated mechanics on the airplane.
Constant-speed props are not that exotic.
One thing that did get my attention:
That's 322-345 MPH. On 30% power. If that's true, well, that's just not at all bad....The airplane would cruise at 280 to 300 knots at 30% power
But counterrotating props have a problem in their casing other aircraft will never know......there are things which could never be seen.....parts can take time to get twisted up inside an closed environment and something else could be blamed for it.......I'm thinkin' if I'm in his shoes home will wait another day until it's really gone over.....forever is a long time.
EDIT---without seeing any prints I'm assuming the counter rotation weights would have to reside inside a casing and lubrication would be part of holding it all together.....perhaps I'm incorrect and it's visual to anyone in a balancer kind of operation 90 degrees to the prop......I've never seen a counter rotator to really understand it which is why I would have erred on the side of caution had it been concealed and the apparent problem only a symptom of a worse problem.
It did not have counterrotating props. We're talking about a COUNTERWEIGHT on a CONSTANT-SPEED prop. Singular. A now-common system and something aircraft have had on them for about 80 years.
You might be confused with my mention of the XF-11 earlier.
Which probably indicates the engine was far more powerful than the propellor could take advantage of and diminishing return had to enter into the speed equation unless he could refit on high speed high angle props which would probably cause takeoff and landing anomalies which would take a highly skilled pilot to overcome.......the beast was built for speed.
Ahhh......my mistake......for some reason I got in my head it was counterrotatiing. Thanks for the correction.
EDIT.....looking over the FAA report again I see where I had a bit of brain fade, when they were talking about counterWEIGHT #1 and counterWEIGHT #2.........not counter rotating.....duh.
Last edited by Neshaminy; 08-10-2012 at 09:51 PM.
It's a racer, but certainly no hotter than a Mustang or something like that. The engine only had 750 HP.
Speedwise, how would it compare to a P-82 given the chance? Both at highest prop pitch angles and full out, straight line, near sea level.
That's "constant speed" and "variable pitch", right?
And, if so, the variable pitch mechanism if fairly simple?
a little radial pron
Poking around I found the following for WW II fighters.....
P-61 Black Widow twin engine......top speed 460mph
P-82 twin boom(?) twin engine top speed 480mph...then.....
A 1937 design? Impressive.After the runs, Wright and the team were enthusiastic about the H-1's performance. "It was a fun day," Wright remarked.
The procedures required to certify the record take time, and it would be noon before they knew for sure if they had set the record. Wright said that the H-1 was really only flying at about 65 percent power because of the 5,000-foot elevation at Stead, and the fact that the prop only allowed about 2200 RPM before the tips went supersonic. Modifications to the prop allowing greater pitch should result in even greater speed, though he said they have no plans to go after Hughes' 352-mph record. Wright said that Hughes was probably pulling close to 1,000 horsepower out of the engine. Wright said he did not want to stress the engine that much.
Jim Wright: "It was a fun day."
LARGE PICTURE FILE of the prop assembly (H-1, not the replica)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...1PropLower.JPG
Are those double disks the counter weights? I sort of get the idea, at some point the rotation pushes something which twists the props to a steeper angle......and all the pieces look fairly simple, yet delicate despite the size.......at the prop speeds balance has to be way important
P 82, ain't that a double Mustang? I seem to remember a P-82 on static display at Lackland AFB in '72, while in basic. I seem to remember it as a all-weather regognasis aircraft. Kinda-sorta like a P-38 with two cockpits.
I believe the P-82 was the twin fuselage Mustang with counter rotating props, the P-61 was the twin boom Mustang/P-38 kind of with twin booms and central cockpit. Sea Fury no doubt has a better handle than I......the P-61 was a night fighter with tricked out parts for hiding itself at night, the P-82 was the looooong range fighter able to take off from London and spend some time over Moscow before having to return with the group.
They were both night fighters. The P-61 was a twin-boom airplane with a central fuselage "gondola" like a P-38, only larger, with radial engines (R2800s). The P-82 was the Twin Mustang, with twin fuselages and twin cockpits. In the end the Twin Mustang was also outfitted as a night fighter with a huge bulbous radar pod between the fuselages, the left fuselage containing the pilot and the right containing the radar operator. F-82s (so redesignated in 1948) made the Air Force's first air-to-air victories in Korea.
P-82C:
P-61s:
Where did you get the information regarding the P-61's top speed?
The fastest P-61 I know of was a post=war model that could reach about 420, but only a few of these were operational. The best a wartime P-61 could do was about 360.
The P-61 was designed for a specific role in WWll, and was long-in-the-tooth by the late '40s. The P-82 was kind of in the same boat, but it came along a little later in the war...it was a much superior aircraft.
Dan
hot ship
This might be where you got the "460" number.
fly-bys!!
I should probably have noted I got the numbers from wiki, so it may also be a typo..........shame on me.
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