Semi-related ... I was watching a PBS show yesterday called 'chasing the sun.' They had a portion on the development of the dc-3. Apologies if I have the name wrong, but I think it was Pan-Am that drove the specification that the DC-3 was designed to fill.
One of the main factors was safety, and coming from a recent ford tri-motor crash that was attributable to a wing full of dry-rot, they wanted an all aluminum design. Going along with the safety theme, they wanted to demonstrate that the aircraft could be operated safely on one engine only. So, they devised a test where they were to take off from Winslow, AZ, cross the rockies mtns, and land someplace further east using only one engine the entire flight. I imagine if you have to be quick on the rudders with both engines, you probably have to be even more focused with only a single engine. They decided to idle the other engine the entire flight for safety reasons so they could kick it in if they started to get into trouble. Anyway, the copilot (who worked for Pan-Am) unexpectedly killed the 2nd engine soon after take off arguing that he worked for the customer and he wanted this to be a 'real' test. After a 'what the hell was that for look' the pilot recovered and continued on. It turned out that the prototype passed this test with flying colors and things proceeded from there. Regards, Curt. Andy Ross writes: > Dave Perry wrote: > > Attched find an xml file "dc3.xml" that includes edits that allow > > accelleration on the main gear and relativly easy wheel landings. > > With these changes, I can leave the tail wheel unlocked for take-off > > and landings. > > Very cool. I'll try it as soon as I get home. > > > 3. I moved the main gear back to 6.9 (from 6.02). This had a very > > big effect and enables getting the tail up and accelerating on the > > mains. Without this, no matter what I did, by the time the tail came > > up, I had already set up the porpoise. Same on wheel landings. > > This is the only one I worry about. While the other tunables > inherently involve some guesswork, the position of the wheels is, er, > Physical Truth. :) > > While it's entirely possible that I mismeasured the location on the > 3-view I was looking at, this is the sort of thing that in principle > can be made exactly correct. It shouldn't require tuning. There's > also the issue of synchronicity with the 3D model -- we want the > position of the wheels in the FDM to match what the user sees on the > screen. > > Instead, what you might try is to move the c.g. forward by the same 88 > cm by adding <ballast> tags. What these do is to place the specified > amount of the aircraft's empty weight at the location, instead of > allocating it to the wing and fuselage elements. The DC-3 doesn't > have any, but most of the tricycle models do -- they tend to tip over > backwards using the default weighting; tail draggers have a much > larger tripod to sit on. > > Andy > > -- > Andrew J. Ross NextBus Information Systems > Senior Software Engineer Emeryville, CA > [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nextbus.com > "Men go crazy in conflagrations. They only get better one by one." > - Sting (misquoted) > > > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
