Aviation BS and Photo Thread

Sponsors mostly, and former crew.

 

Engine length and plane balance. First, the engine is MASSIVE.



Second, look where the pilot is in line with the wings. From a control and maneuverability standpoint, she's a lethal bird of prey. Power, balance, and 6 .50s.

Here's a neat little history I stumbled upon (instead of working)...
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-nothing-could-stop-p-51-mustang-38887

 

Just saw the thread and subscribed (MH-60S driver). If anyone has questions about Naval Aviation, specifically the helicopter community, slide into my PMs.

 

Aircraft maintenance is different than automobiles. All based on time, actual flight hours or calendar days depending on which part is to be serviced. I'm not an AnP so I could be wrong. Basing this on my non-current private pilot experience.
My father stopped logging time when he got to 27,000 hours of flight time.

 

It is not unusual to have multiple engines on the same aircraft on different overhaul intervals. Usually it happens because one engine gets damage before its recommended overhaul. At that point, most people elect to only service the bad engine since the others will probably have a lot of service life left and it would be a waste of money to service them also.

In this case, I can only assume that the #4 engine had something happen to it earlier on that required an overhaul at a shorter service life than the others. Then fast forward and the other engines will be overhauled but since the #4 was done more recently, there would be no need to do it at that point. That’s how you can end up with 3 fresh engines and one mid-time engine. Hope that makes sense.

I have no idea what the TBO (time between overhaul) is on these engines. That would help you figure out about how much more life to expect from an 800 hour engine. That being said, TBO is just a recommended time to overhaul the engines at. It is not required and plenty of people run their engines past TBO if they have no signs of degraded performance.

 

So civilian operators don’t have to comply with TBO component hours if they don’t want to?

 

TBO is only a recommended time at which to overhaul the engine. Some engines cook themselves before TBO, some last several hundred hours after TBO. It mainly comes down to engine design, maintenance, and the way the pilot flys it.

 

Interesting. Our TBO components are a hard number and must be replaced when due.

 

Who is our?

 

Army.

 

It's like any rule or regulation, you can choose not to follow it.

I would'nt get hung up on the overhaul hours. It's a twin row radial which are very complex, a lot of potential failure modes.

 

I’m not worried about it as it pertains to the 909 crash, just found it interesting that following the manufacturer provided TBOs in the civilian world isn't a regulatory requirement.

 

Ah, gotcha.

I’m not as familiar with radials. Do they typically have shorter TBOs than a typical horizontally opposed piston?

 

Yeah even in 121/135 it can depend on the language of the Op Specs.

 

Maybe it’s because I rent, but the planes I fly seem to get a new cylinder every couple hundred hours. Renters are hard on equipment. It’s had everything replaced multiple times by the TBO interval.

Did 5 night landings tonight for currency. Glad I don’t pay for tires.

 

You’re spot on. Renters most of the time don’t care how they run the plane since they’re not directly paying for the maintenance

 

No idea, would imagine it would be less. My radial experience consists of planes at the airport I was working at (tbm avenger, beech 18, grumman goose and a few t-6s) and they were constantly wrenching on them. The p51 at the airport blew up a fresh motor with 10hrs after overhaul and ditched into a field. Old stuff with old tech, anything could happen with these classics.

Did some googling and it looks like a tbo on a pratt r-2800 is 1000hrs with a field approved extension to 1600hrs.

 

Was it a rough evening?
Unless it was windy I never had issues with night currency. Night time is fun. Hell flying is fun but you already know this.

 

not rough, but was landing in a black hole and certainly put more wear and tear on the tires than I like. No taxi lights and several runway lights were out plus the runway was recently resurfaced black.
Was fun but not as gentle as I like to be.