Tag Archives: engine

Blackbird Motor

The SR-71 that is located in the Evergreen Aerospace Museum is configured to give some interesting views of the aircraft. One side of the aircraft is opened up to show the engine. The whole of the outer portion of the wing folds up to give access to the engine. I had no idea that was the way it operated until I saw this plane. It does show the engine configuration nicely. At the high supersonic speeds, there is a bypass process whereby a lot of the flow is taken around the core. The pipes for this can be clearly seen along the side of the engine.

787 Development Jets

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Two versions of the Boeing 787 have been in service for a while. However, development activities continue. The 787-10 is still undergoing flight test but work also continues on the older jets. Some of this is also related to the Dash 10. I had a post on my first encounter with the 787-10 which I wrote about here. I have since come across another of the test aircraft. This one is plain white and doesn’t benefit from the nice house colors that Boeing has.

Meanwhile, one of the 787-8 test aircraft has recently been testing the newest version of the Rolls Royce Trent 1000. I saw this engine when it was being tested on Rolls’ testbed in Tucson and that was in this post. Now it has been fitted to its intended platform and is undergoing trials. These have included lengthy flights around the US including one in which they traced out the planform of the aircraft across multiple states. If you are going to go flying for 18 hours, you might as well find a way to have fun with it. The aircraft is carrying the same logo on the engine nacelle that was on the testbed. Hopefully, the delayed upgraded engine will soon be in service, not just on the Dash 10 but also on the other variants.

Burner Love – Back of the B-1

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I’ve already shown the B-1s at Red Flag some love but here is a bit more about them because, well, why not? The four afterburning engines produce a lot of noise, light and, I guess, thrust. For a few of the departures, I focused the camera on the back end to try and show that energetic output. Daylight is not the best time to show up the afterburner plume – night works well for that as does being more directly behind the jet – but it still is possible to see the jet against the dark airframe. This is just something so impressive to see.

Consequences of a Doolittle Style Takeoff

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Grumpy got airborne using the Doolittle technique I posted about here. During the takeoff, there were some puffs of smoke from one of the engines. Initially I thought this might just be some oil blowing through but, as they climbed out, the output from the engine was clearly not as it should be and the one engine was clearly not healthy. They cut short the flight (although not as short as it could have been) and brought the plane back down. I saw Grumpy fly a few weeks later so I guess they dealt with whatever the issue was.

Icelandic Veteran With a Smoky Engine

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Icelandair has made a good business of operating Boeing 757s on routes from Iceland to the US with Seattle being a regular destination for years. There was a time when the 757 was a cutting-edge jet but these days they are getting up in years. Similarly, the RB211-535E4 was once considered very advanced. Now, it is dated. It turns out that one of the engines on this flight is in a little better shape than the other. As they cycled the power on the approach, the starboard engine was noticeably smokier. Not a big deal but I guess it has been on the wing a little longer than its partner.

Smokey the E-8

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A jet I don’t often get to see in action is the E-8 JSTARS. There aren’t a huge number of them and they often fly at times that don’t suit photography so I have not previously got a lot of shots of them and certainly not too many in flight. Based on the 707-300 airframe, they were pretty old when they were selected for conversion to the JSTARs mission. They are definitely showing their age and the USAF is in the process of competing for a replacement program. There are a few years left for the E-8 but they won’t be around for too much longer.

One feature of their age is the engines that they have. The jets are fitted with old JT3D engines. A program had been put in place to re-engine them with JT8Ds and a modified jet did fly. However, the program was put on hold due to the potential for a replacement aircraft making the payback period unviable. As a result, we got the old smoky jets. It isn’t as bad as the old pure jet days of the KC-135s and B-52s but it still is easy to track the jet as it climbs out courtesy of the black trail it leaves behind.

Anyone Order Some Engines?

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Modern engines last a long time on the wing of an airliner but they do need to be changed. Older engines tend to need to be changed more often. Allegiant fly a bunch of MD-80s as part of their fleet and they use the older Pratt and Whitney JT-8D engines. I guess one of the planes was due for a change because, while I was at McCarran, this truck showed up on the ramp with a couple of engines on the trailer. I can’t say whether these were fresh engines about to be fitted or the ones that had come off due for overhaul but, judging by the direction he was heading, I am going to say that these were being delivered.

Number Two is Cleaner

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This United 747 was flying over the Bay during the Fleet Week display as I posted about in this post. One thing that was very obvious as the aircraft was put through its paces by the crew was that the number two engine seemed to be burning a lot cleaner than the other three. You wouldn’t pay much attention to the exhaust of a jet except when there is a clear discrepancy and, in this case, the number two was so obviously less smoky, I noticed. Maybe it was fresh from overhaul.

Rolls’ Testbed Flies While I Am There – Twice!

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On my previous visit to Tucson, I saw the Rolls Royce owned Boeing 747 engine testbed. This was converted for the Boeing 787 Trent engine development program (hence the registration N787RR). The Number Two engine was removed and replaced with the test engine. The other three Rolls RB211s are unchanged. At various times the testbed has been reported to be without an engine in the test location but there was something there when I was last here – it’s just they didn’t fly. This time was different.

I saw the testbed when I left the airport after my flight landed. The following morning, I headed out to see what F-16 traffic there was and saw online that a flight plan had been filed for the testbed. I only had a certain amount of time before I was due to be at Hawgsmoke but it was supposed to fly long before that. Of course, test flying is not usually something that happens to a tight schedule and the takeoff time came and went. We were beginning to think we might miss it when the sound of some large engines spooling up reached us. A while later, out she came.

Engine testbeds require some careful control. Since one engine is significantly different in thrust from the others, there is a balancing act required to keep the thrust differential within the ability of the control surfaces to overcome. That means the max thrust is not always going to be used. Consequently, they use a good portion of the runway for takeoff rotating just passed our location. That meant I didn’t get the front quarter rotation shot I had in mind.

No matter, I still got to see it fly. The return was about six hours later and I was busy elsewhere at that time. I figured that was it for this trip. I was wrong. The morning of my departure, I had a little time to spare so went back to see what was happening. Amazingly, the testbed was already being crewed as I drove up. We got a repeat of the previous day and some similar shots. I guess I was compensating for not seeing it fly last time!

Is There Any Oil in This Thing?

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Parked up on the ramp at Erickson’s facility was a DC-7 tanker. It didn’t move while we were there so it became the target of a number of photographers at any one time. I shall show more of it shortly but one thing that caught my attention was the amount of oil on the engine nacelles. Old piston engines are well known for consuming oil at a prodigious rate and this beast was no exception. It seemed to have done a great job of relocating the oil from the internals of the engines to the outside of the nacelles. It made for some great patterns and this was what distracted me for a while as I walked around the aircraft.