Tag Archives: piston

Even a Gloomy Day Can Yield Some Aviation

Sometimes, my aviation explorations take me to lower key locations. Snohomish is about 20 minutes north of where we lived in Woodinville and it has a small airfield, named Harvey Field. I was interested in the skydiving operations that they undertake there using a Cessna 208 and went up to have a look around. It was not a particularly nice day but still good enough for some flying to be underway – but not the skydiving! There was a Cessna 152 doing some pattern work and a Super Decathlon came in while I was there. These shots remind me of how much aviation takes place that might not normally get much attention.

Why Does the Black Widow Fascinate Me?

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In my early teens, I got into model making. One of the things I used to look forward to was when Airfix released their catalogue for the year. This included the new releases and, one year, they released a kit of the Northrop P-61 Black Widow. I had never heard of this type at the time. WWII aircraft weren’t really my thing then. However, for some reason, this plane really caught my attention. Not enough to buy the kit though – too many modern jets for me to focus on!

For some reason, this fascination with the P-61 has stuck with me. There aren’t many of them in preservation so, when I see one in a museum, I am drawn to it. There is one supposedly being restored to flight but that is a multi-year effort which will take a while yet. The NASM has on at the Udvar-Hazy annex. I was keen to get shots of it. However, they do seem to have done a decent job of tucking it in between other airframes that makes getting a clean shot tricky. I did the best I could with angles between other planes or getting elevated.

Sally B

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The lighting was far from ideal at Cosford when B-17 Sally B did its display, but the display itself was a good one. After a couple of decades in the US, I have seen a variety of B-17s at air shows. Sally B will still be the first one I saw, though. She has been part of the UK display scene for as long as I have known about it and was one of the five that were used for the filming of Memphis Belle. Good to see her again and glad to know that they have continued to keep her active.

Holding Down the Swordfish

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During the Cosford air show, the Royal Navy Swordfish was part of the display. While it might not be the fastest aircraft from that era, it still has a pretty meaty engine up front. Once started, time is needed to get the oil up to temperature and to run up the engine to check its performance before it goes flying. The ground crew needed to keep the plane anchored while this was done and the way they did this was to hang on to the tailplane. Watching them getting battered by the prop wash while the engine was cycled was rather amusing.

Prop Effects When Using a Phone

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Rolling shutter is a phenomenon that has become very apparent with the widespread adoption of digital sensors in cameras. The way in which a sensor scans across its surface means that relative movement can result in the position of objects being different at the end of the scan than the beginning. DSLRs used a digital sensor but a mechanical shutter so weren’t terribly susceptible to this (except when in video mode) but phones and video camera like GoPros have been.

Usually, if I am photographing aircraft with props, I am using my main cameras. (While I now exclusively use electronic shutter on my bodies, the read speed of the sensor is sufficiently high that the rolling shutter effects are barely visible. However, I rode my bike to Popham one Saturday and decided to grab a few pictures with my phone while I was there. The resulting shots have props that are clearly suffering badly from rolling shutter. It is not something I normally get so I actually found it rather funny. That wouldn’t be the case if I had desperately wanted the shot.

Turbulent Times

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If you are only used to airliners, light aircraft can look pretty flimsy. They are well designed, but they are small and a little flexible looking. They might be more than up to the task but, to a first timer, they might have the impression of being a bit risky. Then you can look at a Druine Turbulent. That takes the idea of simple to a new level. It is a home-built design that first flew in 1951. Small, light, powered by a small engine and with an open cockpit, it seems like even fitting in it might be a bit snug.

One was parked on the field at Popham one Sunday when we swung by to get some lunch. In due course, the owner came back to the plane and headed off. He had to hand swing the prop himself, so the aircraft was chocked while he started it up. The chocks were then stowed in a panel behind the seat and he climbed in and taxied out. Take off was not startling but still reasonably swift and he climbed out en route. What a cool little plane. I wonder whether it is a cost-effective way of flying.

Generations of Provost

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RAF Cosford provided a perfect venue to have a demo from an old RAF Jet Provost T5. As the home of part of the RAF Museum collection, they have the original Jet Provost which is currently stored at Cosford outside the museum building. Looking at this airframe on its stalky undercarriage, you can see that not a lot was changed when adding the jet engine from the original Percival Provost. I saw one of these flying at Old Warden last year.

The later versions of the JP had a more optimised approach. The airframe was tweaked and the undercarriage was shorted considerably. With the need for prop clearance, there was no need for long undercarriage and, I imagine, it was probably really inconvenient for boarding and servicing. The JP3, JP4 and JP5 have their differences but they can clearly be seen to be of the same basic design. Having two of the three on one day was an interesting comparison.

Europas With Varying Numbers of Wheels

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The Europa is a type I got attached to when my friend Sean had one. I was living in the US when he got it, but I used to come across for work on a regular basis, and we would often take the time to go for trips. It was a fun little thing to fly in with quite a turn of speed. The cockpit was very compact which was tricky when lugging a chunky camera around but not the end of the world! Recently, I made a couple of short visits to Popham Airfield and came across a couple of Europas.

The first was parked up and it is a Europa XS which is a later version fitted with tricycle undercarriage. It is a nice-looking aircraft, but it loses the novelty factor that the Europa Classic had. It has a mono wheel arrangement with outriggers to support it on the ground. The wheel, outriggers and flaps are all controlled together so, when you retract the flaps, the gear comes up. One had just landed when we got there and was getting some fuel. Fortunately, they took off before we left so I got a good look at it as it got airborne. A quirky but cool aircraft for sure.

A Fuji and a Bolkow

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When hanging out at a small airfield, you expect to get a bunch of the regular light aircraft types. Cessnas and Pipers will be expected. Popham has a good selection of microlights and autogyros as well so that will mix things up. However, it brought a couple of planes during one weekend that really caught my eye. These are not rarities, but it is still cool to see something a little different. One was a Fuji FA200. I have caught these a bit in the past, but this was a nice surprise.

Then there was something that I genuinely had no idea about. I got some shots of it and then, when I got home, got on the internet to check out the registration to see what it was. A Bolkow BO.209 Monson was the answer. Bolkow was a manufacturer I was familiar with both from its earlier days and then being part of MBB building helicopters and part of the Panavia consortium building Tornado. I was not aware of the Monson before searching for this plane and found that 100 of them had been built by MBB before production ceased. There have been times when resurrection of production was tried but without significant success. What a cool looking plane and I hope I see it again.

A Pitts with Extra Oomph

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When I was a kid, the Pitts Special was the pinnacle of aerobatic aircraft. Then, the arrival of a bunch of high-powered monoplanes like the Zlin Z50L showed up follow by Extras, and the Pitts became more the preserve of individuals getting into aerobatics. It can still make a good display platform, though, and plenty of souped-up versions are on the air show circuit. The Cosford show included one flown by Rich Goodwin that has been modified with a pair of turbine engines mounted on each side of the fuselage.

This makes for a lot of noise and plenty of extra power. The piston engine still does the majority of the work but, when going vertical, the jets are fired up and give a major boost in performance. That can include hovering in place if required. From some angles, the plane is hard to notice as being any different to any other Pitts. However, from the right angles, the engines are conspicuous. A pretty cool display act. I assume top speed is constrained by the original airframe limitations so not much point in using the jets unless pointing upwards.