I know there are many aviation buffs on the board, you can’t beat this, a Sopwith Camel flying formation with a Spitfire.
I’m surprised the Spitfire can fly slow enough to keep formation.
I’ve always wondered about how they came up with those rotary engine designs. Doesn’t the Engine need a fixed shaft to rotate around? How long before someone realized how much more efficient it would be to fix the engine and rotate the shaft with a propeller on it?
Seriously, has anyone ever calculated how much performance would be improved by such a change? Maybe I’ll ask that as a GQ thread.
It is my understanding that with the early engines the rotary had a much better power to weight ratio that was very important. Also it was air cooled so you did not need a complex radiator and cooling system.
Would the radiator weigh so much that it would outweigh the cost of spinning the entire engine in addition to the propeller?
The rotary engines were air-cooled. No radiator.
There were liquid-cooled inline engines such as the Liberty V-12, though.
I know that. My understanding was… rotary engine or a radiator. It seems to me the weight of a radiator would be considerably… er, outweighed… by the energy cost of rotating the entire engine at high speed.
Sorry, I misunderstood.
What cost?
All the energy it takes to spin the whole engine rather than just the propeller.
That would only be marginal. There would be an energy cost in terms of accelerating the engine every time you increase revs, and in terms of some greater friction due to additional weight on bearings, but as I say that is marginal.
Here’s the Wiki article on rotary engines.
I saw an original Camel flying at Chino a few years ago. It had an original engine, and it was the first time I saw a ‘blip switch’ being used.
According to the Wiki article above it hit its limits when too much of its power had to be used to push through the wind resistance generated by its own rotation. Also, the video on the OP notes that there is no throttle on the engine. In the Camel’s case, there was a form of engine speed control, but on others there apparently wasn’t. You turned the engine off to slow down, and back on to speed up. How often this was done I wouldn’t know, and I imagine that even with the engine off that the windmilling propellrr would keep the engine rotating at some speed or another.
I didn’t realize how small the Camel is. The Spitfire isn’t exactly big, and it looks pretty muscular next to the older plane.
I imagine the prop wash from the Spitfire could tear the Camel apart.
Does the guy pulling the chocks have a suicide wish? Usually they are attached to a cord so you can yank them both from a safe distance!
Wait, I thought this was a Sopwith Camel!
Curse you, Red Baron!
Thanks - that was remarkable. I have seen the Camel at the Imperial War Museum and they are tiny.
A question though. I thought the Camel had no brakes and on landing some guys had to run beside it and slow them down. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Or is it just a long strip and unnecessary?
As an ex Tiger Moth pilot I can tell you that provided you are landing on grass and into wind, the drag from the tail skid is plenty to slow you down quick enough. I have actually landed a Tiger Moth across that same airstrip the Camel was operating from, in a strong cross-wind (I deemed it safer to land into wind across the strip than along the strip with the cross-wind.) The reason you have people running along to catch the wing tips is to stop the plane being flipped over in gusty conditions. It’s a control thing rather than a speed thing.
Thanks. That makes sense.