Aircraft Trivia Quiz

Thanks, Bondo - the Colony have been upset at my forgetting about the Princess, and have been throwing empty gin bottles at me all night!

OK - what's this:

and did it ever actually fly? (you gotta answer both parts of the question, and quote sources!)

Cheers,

Chris.

Now as I understand it,  this a fantasy turbine-engined autogyro as cooked up in Chris's imagination, sketched for him on a nice piece of paper by his sister, scanned and then posited here.

Whether it flew depended on how they folded the peice of paper, and how hard they threw it.

According to the guidelines, quoting source material is not required, but a mere curtesy, therefore I refuse to say where I got this intel.

Tom

For the avoidance of confusion, this thing really did exist. Unlike this:

which comes from the same country, from a reputable design bureau, but didn't make it off the drawing board.

Cheers,

Chris.

Really-Oh Gosh, I guess I was fibbed to!

Actually, Chris, I like the second one better, it has more potential to be a really neat modeling subject!

Tom

bondoman wrote:

Lucien- you had the answer I was looking for, however Chris you appear to be correct. I've found plenty of references of five engines, but no prop count and only one photo, which seems to agree with what you said except I can't see the front of the nacelles. I'll give the floor to Chris, unless others can quickly provide contradictory evidence. Thanks,Bill

Don't worry.  Chris is defintely correct.  I have probably the best source on German R-Planes, "The German Giants", and the -XV had the same three-prop/five engine layout.  In fact, the whole Staaken line pretty much exhausted the multi-engine multi prop layout..

But I digress.  As for the question?  No idea. 

Not sure how many more hints I can give, without giving the game away. The engine was a water-cooled V-12 of US origin. And look carefully at those rotor blades. They're not all the same size...

Cheers,

Chris.

Have no idea what it is and not looking at any sites whatsoever, I would say its origins are Sikorsky? The design of the rotors and mast area. and the outrigers looks like a hybrid of several of his designs. Rotors;Hoverfly, etc.

Cheers

Doesn't look like anyone's going to get this one, so to stop things stagnating, here's the answer:

It's a Bratukhin 11-EA PV!

Constructed in the Soviet Union in the mid 1930s, the design was so successful that the head of the design team only narrowly missed being arrested and sent to the Gulag! After a series of tethered flights, and quite a lot of redesign, a number of successful free filghts were eventually made in late 1940, but by then, the engine was pretty much worn out and no spares were available. By then, also, the Soviet Union had more pressing issues to think about than helicopter development.

Check it out, in all its wonderful wierdness, here:

http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/brat_11ea-pv.php

Anyway, here's another one - hopefully less obscure.

This is a Bell HSL-1:

the world's first purpose-built ASW helicopter. With a powerful engine, dipping sonar and Petrel air-to-underwater missiles for armament, it looked to have potential. However, at least two of its features limited its practical usefulness in the ASW role. What were they?

Cheers,

Chris.

I would have to say it's limited performance from having the lower end R-2800(1,900hp), and the noise associated with a tandem rotor system.

Cheers

Even a de-tuned R-2800 was pretty powerful for an early 1950s helicopter, but noise is, indeed, one factor - why?

Note that patrol aircraft noise is not an irrelevant factor in ASW. It is said thatthe props of Tupolev Bear maritime patrol aircraft make so much noise that improved Los Angeles and Trafalgar-class SSNs can hear them coming on passive sonar, and take evading action if need be.

Cheers,

Chris.

The loud noise (as previously mentioned) would mess up the sonar equipment readings, and it was too large to fit into the aircraft carrier hangers.

Another engine would have been preferred, but this wasn't a huge problem. 

Good enough, Lucien! My references say that it wouldn't fit onto a standard USN CV lift, but I'm not quibbling.

Your turn!

Cheers,

Chris.

Throughout the years some aircraft have been so technologically advanced that it was deemed prudent to, before construction of a full-scale prototype was built, instead build a powered, flyable scale version first, simply to get a handle on general flight characteristics, with the assumption that these would then translate over to the "real thing".

My question- Name at least two aircraft that this was used for.

For claritiy's sake:

• The correct response will need BOTH answers in ONE post.  This is even if one is already metioned. 
• The small-scale aircraft had to be both powered (no gliders!), piloted (no RC wind-tunnel aircraft), and the resulting full scale prototype had to actually be built and flown.

I'm thinking of two in particular, but I'll admit there are probably more out there I don't know about.  So long as you have two and they fit the criteria, go for it.

The Baynes Bat?  A flying wing, designed in Britain during WWII, in which a third-sized prototype was built and flown, but which the full-sized one never was?

Edited to add:

Sorry, didn't realise was glider...

I can think of two possibles. First is the Short S3 (aka the Short M4):

 a 1/2 flying, piloted, powered scale model of the Short Stirling:

designed to flag up any aerodynamic problems the design might have. One problem that it did show up was that the take-off and landing runs were unacceptably long, and thus the 'unstick' and stalling speeds unacceptably high, so on the Stirling, the angle of incidence was increased by 3 degrees to remedy this.

Second is the FGP 227:

a 1/3.75 flying, powered, piloted scale model of the Blohm & Voss BV-238:

It contributed nothing to the programm, however, since the BV-238 flew before the FGP 227 was completed, and the FGP 227 was then destroyed in a railway accident! I suppose that, since it never actually flew, this might only just qualify.

I'm sure there are several more, but they're mostly 'proof of concept' vehicles, as opposed to flying, powered, piloted, scale models.

Cheers,

Chris.

Ya got the two I was thinkin' of- nice job!

I'm actually working on a model of FGP 227 right now, which inspired the question.  The one for the Short Stirling was a bit more obscure, which is why I chose to have you give two.

It's all yours, chris. 

(BTW, my sources say that the FGP 227 did actually fly- it was completed before the Bv 238 was, but was damaged by the French Resistance.  It was repaired and flew afterward, but this was after the Bv 238 had been flying for a few months.) 

Thanks Lucien - question to come tomorrow morning British time - say 8 -10 hours. I thought that the FGP 227 was consructed in Czechslovakia, so I can't see how the French Resistance get in on the act.

Cheers,

Chris.

That it be.  Overall not a bad kit- one of their better ones.  They give you blanks for the cockpits, which is really nice.  The only problem is the props- they are nigh unusable, and there's six of them.  I still need to find some aftermarket props for it, but that can wait until after painting and decalling.

I'm building their Sukhoi Su-5 right now, too, and I'm enjoying it.  Definitely one of the better vac kit companies.

And about the FGP 227, AFAIK it was damaged in-transit from the company where it was built to where it was going to be tested.  To get exact locations I'll need to check again, but that's what I'm aware happened.

And about the FGP 227, AFAIK it was damaged in-transit from the company where it was built to where it was going to be tested. 

In that case. Lucien, it could well have been the French Resistance. A lot of German flying boat operations, in WW2, took place on the Lac du Biscarosse in South-Western France, on the Atlantic coast, south of Bordeaux. Aeronavale had a flying boat/ seaplane base there until the 1960s, and today there is a flying boat museum on the site, which is well worth a visit if you're ever in the area:

http://www.aviationmuseum.eu/World/Europe/France/Biscarosse/musee_Hydra_Aviation.htm

and I can recommend the restaurant at the Hotel Cousseau in nearby Parentis en Born!

Anyway, next question. Fairly straightforward, I hope:

List all the propeller-driven aircraft ever flown with a design capacity of 200 passengers or more.

I can think of at least five immediately - there may well be more.

Cheers,

Chris.

I've come up with four so far.Three US, one Russian.

Edit: here's my guess:

AN-22 (proposed for up to 750 passengers)

TU-114

C-124

XC-99

Hughes H-4

I'm allowing the Spruce Goose and the An.22. I can think of two more, designed for 200 or more pasengers, even if they never actually carried that many in service life.

Cheers,

Chris.

Tu-114's on the list. All the aircraft on Bondo's list above are correct. It's just that there's two more I can think of.

Cheers,

Chris.

roadkill_275 wrote:

The only two that I can think of off the top of my  head that's not on the list above are the Brabazon and possibly the Boeing 377.

Nope. they're both military freight transports, and the full passenger capacity, though part of the design brief, was never,AFAIK, actually used.

Also remember that the US and the Soviet Union are/ were not the only countries to make large propeller-driven transport aircraft.

Cheers,

Chris.