Ops-Normal.org

Welcome Brian, 'tis a friendly place.
As an old HS25 - Dominie - driver, I have always been intrigued by the rumor that when deHavilland designed the 125 they sent some engineers to one of London's more posh gentlemen's clubs to measure the posterior of some gentlemen to arrive at the optimum width for the cabin of the airplane.

Stoneboat wrote: ↑

Sun May 06, 2018 1:18 pm

Welcome Brian, 'tis a friendly place.
As an old HS25 - Dominie - driver, I have always been intrigued by the rumor that when deHavilland designed the 125 they sent some engineers to one of London's more posh gentlemen's clubs to measure the posterior of some gentlemen to arrive at the optimum width for the cabin of the airplane.

Always amused me on the Dominie that the Air Conditioning used to favour the back end of the aircraft with hot air . . . always found that a trifle ironic

Mind you, as you'll remember, judicious use of the Dump Valve under the RHS, we could get some (non-verbal) hot air up the front . . .

Welcome!

Thanks a . . . ., I don't think I've ever had so many positive posts that weren't aimed at ripping my entrails from my body !!

TOP certainly doesn't promote knowledge and common sense (we used to call it airmanship didn't we)

Our 125 was a 1A-R, meaning retrofit, with Garrett 731's. I once compared notes with a Government pilot who flew the 1A but with Vipers. The differences were pretty drastic. He told me our fuel consumption at FL350 was the same as theirs at ground idle. Ours had two rudder bias struts to handle the extra thrust of the Garretts, if one decided to go AWOL. The 731 had 3500 lb of thrust and the MTOW of the aircraft was 21,500 lb, the same as the 700A series which weighed in at 25,500, so our performance was somewhat more sprightly. The longest flight I ever did was 5.1 hours, but I cheated and overflew our filed destination and flew to our filed alternate, which was our real destination all along.

Would someone let Brian know that he can post elsewhere on the forum. He's not restricted to just his introduction topic.

Alison

I think he already has several times!

At least Brian discusses aviation somewhere.

Caco

Stoneboat wrote: ↑

Wed May 09, 2018 2:46 am

Our 125 was a 1A-R, meaning retrofit, with Garrett 731's. I once compared notes with a Government pilot who flew the 1A but with Vipers. The differences were pretty drastic. He told me our fuel consumption at FL350 was the same as theirs at ground idle. Ours had two rudder bias struts to handle the extra thrust of the Garretts, if one decided to go AWOL. The 731 had 3500 lb of thrust and the MTOW of the aircraft was 21,500 lb, the same as the 700A series which weighed in at 25,500, so our performance was somewhat more sprightly. The longest flight I ever did was 5.1 hours, but I cheated and overflew our filed destination and flew to our filed alternate, which was our real destination all along.

The Viper had a strange life, being designed to be 'used once & throw away' and built to an appropiate budget, and then been used as a proper engine.

Did anything else in aviation compare?

The Viper had a strange life, being designed to be 'used once & throw away' and built to an appropiate budget, and then been used as a proper engine.

Did anything else in aviation compare?

It was originally created as a drone engine, but when DH designed the 125 it was available, and cheap. I don't know just what modifications were incorporated to make it a 'reusable' powerplant, but there must have been some. My Government friend used to say the joke among FBO employees was "Check the fuel and fill up the oil." I seem to remember there was a minimum oil burn specified in the operating manual, of one pint per hour. There was a little mini pump that sprayed oil onto the number five engine bearing and if the oil consumption was less than a pint it meant the pump wasn't doing its job.

There was a company in the US, Culver Aircraft, that built a drone that later became a two-seat puddle jumper they named the Culver Cadet, so that's about the only thing that comes to mind that is remotely similar.
Culver Cadet

Don't forget the Viper was used in hundreds of Jet Provosts - good development climate because they spent a lot of their time at 100% !

Ah! The Jet Provost - constant thrust, variable noise as it was known.

On a landaway that's exactly what we did. Refuel followed by climbing up on to the engine to refill the oil system from little square cans (IIRC).

I used to have two sets of aircrew (poofter) gloves, one set to fly in and the others to re-oil with. Sadly, they never supplied us with one of those great squirty oil cans that you see locomotive engineers with!!

I always thought the best bit of Dominie flying was taxying in . . . .

to Gatow

A Big G'Day Brian!!....It's great to see you!!