Post by autolycus on Apr 10, 2024 5:29:43 GMT -5
Hi all elderly engine enthusiasts... And you may interpret that in either one of two ways...
As a JAR-66 B1 Licensed Aircraft Engineer for 50+ years, now retired in the Philippines, I still retain significant knowledge and experience on a number of (mostly turbo-prop, for some reason) gas-turbine engines - and am currently re-writing my account of an incident I was directly involved in in 1999, when a Lockheed L-188 Electra that I was flying on - as one of two ground engineers - did a bit of a whoopsy into Shannon. Trying to land with the gear up, striking the runway with our #2 prop tips, rocking across to hit - harder - with our #3, which promptly ripped itself and its engine & gearbox out of the nacelle and into an adjacent farmer's field.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the Captain decided that getting airborne during such an event would allow everyone to figure out what all the banging and crashing was about - so that's what he did.
...On the good #1 engine (with no generator fitted) plus a badly-bent #2 (with working generator, but no real power, due to severe vibration from the damaged prop tips), No #3 at all and a dead #4, due to shrapnel damage from the exploding steel prop blades on the #3... Not a happy Electra, at all. Not to mention struggling aloft with most of the available thrust from the left outboard side of the aircraft - and lots of drag on the right. As an ex-gliding Instructor, I was acutely aware that the unnatural attitudes that our badly bent Lockheed lady was experiencing were not normal...but...
Suffice to say, that as I am writing these words now, all six of us that were aboard that day must have walked away - and the back story behind all those events is in my book "Pancakes, Propellers and Paddy's Field", which will be available online and as a pdf, later this year.
Advertising aside, part of the process of writing such an account involved explaining how these airy-planes and their noisy engines actually worked, in words and simple terms that your average man(or woman) in the street would understand. This led in turn to revisiting some of my old (and very dusty) Technical Manuals and - in particular - some of the coloured fuel system diagrams that some of us learned at famous Aeronautical education establishments like (in my case), Royal Air Force Halton, in Buckinghamshire. Rediscovering the sheer beauty of a Rolls-Royce Avon Proportional Flow fuel system has subsequently reawakened my interest in elderly engines and, though I no longer have my manuals from that period, I did spend a couple of years in Oxfordshire and at RAF Gan (in the Maldives), playing with the Bristol Proteus, reverse flow, free-turbine- turbo-prop engine, as installed on Her Majesty's fleet of (equally ancient) Bristol Britannia aircraft, at that time.
The problem is, while I can remember replacing numerous combustion chamber cans over a cold Christmas at that time, and making my own specialised wire-locking tool - to ensure the security of all those pipe connections in the fuel system that were revealed when one opened the upper engine cowling and removed the inner upper engine panel... And, we mustn't forget the all-electric "Ultra" Throttle system that was a feature of these engines - and the electric prop brake - and the fact that, when running these engines (which we did, every day), you could start the actual engine with the prop brake on and run it up to idle - with the propeller stationary. Then there was Superfine pitch and (almost) everything being held together by 2BA nuts & bolts - happy daze.
Which leads me here. While looking around the interweb for any illustrations of a Proteus Fuel System - simply to satisfy my curiosity again - I stumbled upon this site - and a query about Proteus engines from one of your contributors, from back in 2011 or thereabouts. This led me to wonder if anyone reading this far has any - electronically transferrable - preferably coloured, illustrations of either the Bristol Proteus - or even the mighty Allison 501-D13 turbo-prop engine Fuel Systems..?
If so, would you mind sending same to me at: enjaymarine@gmail.com whenever you have a spare moment on your Mac or PC. In exchange, I'll happily send you a pdf copy of the new book - which is currently running at 260 pages, though I plan on reducing the font size and spacing, then revising the existing text and adding yet more wordage - so it will eventually be between 200 and 300 pages in length - with original photos too..!
As a JAR-66 B1 Licensed Aircraft Engineer for 50+ years, now retired in the Philippines, I still retain significant knowledge and experience on a number of (mostly turbo-prop, for some reason) gas-turbine engines - and am currently re-writing my account of an incident I was directly involved in in 1999, when a Lockheed L-188 Electra that I was flying on - as one of two ground engineers - did a bit of a whoopsy into Shannon. Trying to land with the gear up, striking the runway with our #2 prop tips, rocking across to hit - harder - with our #3, which promptly ripped itself and its engine & gearbox out of the nacelle and into an adjacent farmer's field.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the Captain decided that getting airborne during such an event would allow everyone to figure out what all the banging and crashing was about - so that's what he did.
...On the good #1 engine (with no generator fitted) plus a badly-bent #2 (with working generator, but no real power, due to severe vibration from the damaged prop tips), No #3 at all and a dead #4, due to shrapnel damage from the exploding steel prop blades on the #3... Not a happy Electra, at all. Not to mention struggling aloft with most of the available thrust from the left outboard side of the aircraft - and lots of drag on the right. As an ex-gliding Instructor, I was acutely aware that the unnatural attitudes that our badly bent Lockheed lady was experiencing were not normal...but...
Suffice to say, that as I am writing these words now, all six of us that were aboard that day must have walked away - and the back story behind all those events is in my book "Pancakes, Propellers and Paddy's Field", which will be available online and as a pdf, later this year.
Advertising aside, part of the process of writing such an account involved explaining how these airy-planes and their noisy engines actually worked, in words and simple terms that your average man(or woman) in the street would understand. This led in turn to revisiting some of my old (and very dusty) Technical Manuals and - in particular - some of the coloured fuel system diagrams that some of us learned at famous Aeronautical education establishments like (in my case), Royal Air Force Halton, in Buckinghamshire. Rediscovering the sheer beauty of a Rolls-Royce Avon Proportional Flow fuel system has subsequently reawakened my interest in elderly engines and, though I no longer have my manuals from that period, I did spend a couple of years in Oxfordshire and at RAF Gan (in the Maldives), playing with the Bristol Proteus, reverse flow, free-turbine- turbo-prop engine, as installed on Her Majesty's fleet of (equally ancient) Bristol Britannia aircraft, at that time.
The problem is, while I can remember replacing numerous combustion chamber cans over a cold Christmas at that time, and making my own specialised wire-locking tool - to ensure the security of all those pipe connections in the fuel system that were revealed when one opened the upper engine cowling and removed the inner upper engine panel... And, we mustn't forget the all-electric "Ultra" Throttle system that was a feature of these engines - and the electric prop brake - and the fact that, when running these engines (which we did, every day), you could start the actual engine with the prop brake on and run it up to idle - with the propeller stationary. Then there was Superfine pitch and (almost) everything being held together by 2BA nuts & bolts - happy daze.
Which leads me here. While looking around the interweb for any illustrations of a Proteus Fuel System - simply to satisfy my curiosity again - I stumbled upon this site - and a query about Proteus engines from one of your contributors, from back in 2011 or thereabouts. This led me to wonder if anyone reading this far has any - electronically transferrable - preferably coloured, illustrations of either the Bristol Proteus - or even the mighty Allison 501-D13 turbo-prop engine Fuel Systems..?
If so, would you mind sending same to me at: enjaymarine@gmail.com whenever you have a spare moment on your Mac or PC. In exchange, I'll happily send you a pdf copy of the new book - which is currently running at 260 pages, though I plan on reducing the font size and spacing, then revising the existing text and adding yet more wordage - so it will eventually be between 200 and 300 pages in length - with original photos too..!