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Quoted: Damn ! If I'm reading this right, that aircraft never should have flown, let alone take paying passengers on a flight . DAMN !!! View Quote Sounds like it. Knowingly taking off with an engine that doesn’t reliably start (and I Presume restart). Both engines on that wing feathered? Feathered the wrong engine on that wing first or were both engines suddenly not giving power? |
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Quoted: What should be the universal age cutoff for aircraft when they're required to be parked? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Stop flying the damn things and put an end to it. Park them in museums so boomers can drool over the good old days. What should be the universal age cutoff for aircraft when they're required to be parked? Heck, my jet is only 15 years younger and is still fighting our nation's wars. |
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Quoted: Money. Always about money. If you have possession of such an aircraft no matter the usage, you need to be by the book period. Money can be no issue. View Quote The question is - what book? Performing maintenance on the military schedule would be a wasteful extravagance. Best to follow engine maintenance procedures for the same family of engine in commercial sue. |
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Can you know the magneto is bad while flying the aircraft? Or did the pilot say that because he knew #4 had a bad magneto?
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Quoted: Stop flying the damn things and put an end to it. Park them in museums so boomers can drool over the good old days. View Quote I know perhaps the government should pass out a suite of impregnable armor so people like you that are risk adverse don’t stub their toe. Since when do we have to keep everyone safe from everything including themselves? If you are thinking about taking a ride in a 75 year old airplane, then accept the risk factor. Shit, these freaking things crashed all the time during training and during use. |
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Quoted: Can you know the magneto is bad while flying the aircraft? Or did the pilot say that because he knew #4 had a bad magneto? View Quote The engine has two magnetos, each one firing a separate spark plug in each cylinder. The engine is normally operated on both, but can be switched to run on just one or the other. Part of pre-flight checks is to run each engine on both magnetos, then just magneto A, and then just magneto B. Since you are getting only half as many sparks, the engine runs slightly less efficiently, and the RPM at idle drops slightly. If the RPM drop on a particular magneto is too much, or the engine stops running, you aren't supposed to fly until it gets fixed. |
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Quoted: That has nothing to do with what I just said. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. The only thing we seem to know here is they had a problem with the #4 engine. That alone shouldn't make that aircraft unflyable. It sounds as if the more direct reason for the accident was probably pilot error. What exactly makes you say that aircraft wasn't properly maintained? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: There's a number of legitimate reasons. TBO for those is typically 1000 hours. That's a recommendation. The dead giveaway that they need it is when they start consuming oil at a significantly higher rate. But that one wasn't really due for it yet. And that's not too surprising . It's not uncommon that engines and props have significantly different amounts of hours on them. That foundation no doubt has a number of spare R-1820's to put on when the time is right. But none of this much matters. The engine problem didn't directly cause the crash. Those fly fine on 3 engines. Sounds like there may have been an error or two involved. That aircraft wasn't properly maintained. That has nothing to do with what I just said. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. The only thing we seem to know here is they had a problem with the #4 engine. That alone shouldn't make that aircraft unflyable. It sounds as if the more direct reason for the accident was probably pilot error. What exactly makes you say that aircraft wasn't properly maintained? Armchair quarterbacking. That article was a whole lotta words that added up to nothing. |
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Getting to ride one is a bucket list item for me. I didn’t have enough money on me the last time at the air show.
I hope they keep flying. If I die in a B17 crash that fact is going on a headstone. |
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I'm thinking if they no longer have the money from people paying to go up in them, the money from people who just want to look at them won't support the touring operation.
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Should have had a simple rule in place to do a run up check and a short pre-test flight around the airport before taking on its first passengers of the day. If an engine shows a problem during run up or on its first test flight of the day then all passenger rides should be cancelled until a thorough maintenance check is completed. Once signed off then another check flight should be done, then can start taking passengers on.
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Quoted: Whatever people with knowledge of such things deem it to be. Someones gotta win and someones gotta lose and the cutoff has to be somewhere. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: What should be the universal age cutoff for aircraft when they're required to be parked? Whatever people with knowledge of such things deem it to be. Someones gotta win and someones gotta lose and the cutoff has to be somewhere. The airframe didn't fail. Only the engine did. Do you think it'd be OK to fly these airframes but with new engines? BTW, people with knowledge of such things agree they're safe to fly. But, for the sake of healthy debate, lets ignore that fact. I want to go down the road of using age as a reason to ground an aircraft. |
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Quoted: The airframe didn't fail. Only the engine did. Do you think it'd be OK to fly these airframes but with new engines? BTW, people with knowledge of such things agree they're safe to fly. But, for the sake of healthy debate, lets ignore that fact. I want to go down the road of using age as a reason to ground an aircraft. View Quote I like where you head is. A B-17 with four PT6s would be great. |
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Quoted: I like where you head is. A B-17 with four PT6s would be great. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: The airframe didn't fail. Only the engine did. Do you think it'd be OK to fly these airframes but with new engines? BTW, people with knowledge of such things agree they're safe to fly. But, for the sake of healthy debate, lets ignore that fact. I want to go down the road of using age as a reason to ground an aircraft. I like where you head is. A B-17 with four PT6s would be great. Good God... *shivers* That would be a sin against God. |
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Is there any better information that isn't from the terrible article linked in OP?
I want to understand the technicals how to jury a mag off. Actually curious of any technical findings that are available or written in technical form. |
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Quoted: Good God... *shivers* That would be a sin against God. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The airframe didn't fail. Only the engine did. Do you think it'd be OK to fly these airframes but with new engines? BTW, people with knowledge of such things agree they're safe to fly. But, for the sake of healthy debate, lets ignore that fact. I want to go down the road of using age as a reason to ground an aircraft. I like where you head is. A B-17 with four PT6s would be great. Good God... *shivers* That would be a sin against God. Attached File |
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View Quote Wasn't there a test bed that had an engine in the nose too? |
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Quoted: Should have had a simple rule in place to do a run up check and a short pre-test flight around the airport before taking on its first passengers of the day. If an engine shows a problem during run up or on its first test flight of the day then all passenger rides should be cancelled until a thorough maintenance check is completed. Once signed off then another check flight should be done, then can start taking passengers on. View Quote There is a runup check prior to EVERY flight in ALL recip aircraft.If it doesn't check, you don't fly. |
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Quoted: Dick Blumenthal is such a worthless piece of shit. I hope he catches the wuhan and dies. He literally fucks up every issue he deals with. View Quote Why the fuck was he even in this article? He’s a coward, lying Politician. What does he even know about airplanes, let alone radial engined bombers? Connecticut voters are morons. TC |
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View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The airframe didn't fail. Only the engine did. Do you think it'd be OK to fly these airframes but with new engines? BTW, people with knowledge of such things agree they're safe to fly. But, for the sake of healthy debate, lets ignore that fact. I want to go down the road of using age as a reason to ground an aircraft. I like where you head is. A B-17 with four PT6s would be great. Good God... *shivers* That would be a sin against God. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/66085/B17Dart_jpg-1336190.JPG Part of me just died. |
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View Quote And, yet, despite more reliable engines, it crashed. |
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Quoted: As much as I love these old war birds, we are probably reaching a point in the future where most of them need to be preserved and not flown. Spares are less and less available every day and you can only refurb things so many times, and as someone else said. If you don't have multi billionaire money to make parts, then you're probably going to be SOL keeping them alive. I'd hate to see the loss of more of these planes that in this day / age are increasingly rare already. View Quote |
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Quoted: The engine has two magnetos, each one firing a separate spark plug in each cylinder. The engine is normally operated on both, but can be switched to run on just one or the other. Part of pre-flight checks is to run each engine on both magnetos, then just magneto A, and then just magneto B. Since you are getting only half as many sparks, the engine runs slightly less efficiently, and the RPM at idle drops slightly. If the RPM drop on a particular magneto is too much, or the engine stops running, you aren't supposed to fly until it gets fixed. View Quote And are they trying to say that they knowing flew around with a inoperative magneto on the #4 engine? Presumably something that can't be deferred on a Minimum Equipment List? And what happened with the #3? Accidently feathered? And the issue with the plugs? |
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Quoted: He was the most experienced B17 pilot and mechanic on Earth. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: The chief maintenance inspector was the pilot? Seriously? How dumb can they be? Zero oversight. Being the most experienced doesn't mean shit when nobody else can check your ego/integrity/processes. No oversight means one person. People are full of themselves. |
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Quoted: Gotta wonder why the pilot shut down two engines? A rough magneto is not an emergency in an airplane with four engines. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Gotta wonder why they rebuilt 3 engines and not 4. Gotta wonder why the pilot shut down two engines? A rough magneto is not an emergency in an airplane with four engines. How many magnetos per engine? I thought there were two, primary and secondary. |
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Quoted: Being the most experienced doesn't mean shit when nobody else can check your ego/integrity/processes. No oversight means one person. People are full of themselves. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The chief maintenance inspector was the pilot? Seriously? How dumb can they be? Zero oversight. Being the most experienced doesn't mean shit when nobody else can check your ego/integrity/processes. No oversight means one person. People are full of themselves. He's credited as having the most experience flying B-17s. He's not credited (that I'm aware of) as having the most experience wrenching on them. There's a lot of knowledge walking around out there about these aircraft. There's more than enough to provide safe oversight. This was not the first time, nor will it be the last, that a common engine failure is mismanaged into a full blown crash. It'll happen to aircraft of any era. The age of this aircraft didn't have a damn thing to do with this crash. |
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Quoted: Gotta wonder why they rebuilt 3 engines and not 4. View Quote Engines don't get rebuilt every year - they get overhauled after a certain number of operating hours (actual hours and what is done vary by engine), if inspections reveal any problems, or if problems are encountered during operation. As a result, multi-engine aircraft will often have their engines receive their various preventive maintenance procedures on different schedules. Presumably the three engines would have required that maintenance before the end of that year's airshow season while the mishap engine would not, based on the scheduled number of hours the aircraft was to fly. It had almost certainly received that maintenance more recently than the other three. Mike |
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Frankly, I think it would be a good idea for enterprising individuals to produce new manufacture of these airframes to historical specs (Which are all public domain) so that people may experience history without the immense logistical hardship of keeping half a century old airframes flying.
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Quoted: You do it regardless. What experience do you have flying and working on aircraft? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Gotta wonder why they rebuilt 3 engines and not 4. 838 hours on #4 since its last overhaul, is that a lot of time? They’re expensive enough that if operating hours, oil analysis, and any inspections performed showed it to be in good condition then I wouldn’t replace it either. You do it regardless. What experience do you have flying and working on aircraft? That engine may have been overhauled after the others in the past. Multi engine aircraft often have engines that have different dates of overhaul or replacement due to previous maintenance history. |
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I flew on the Nine O Nine about 15 years ago. It was incredibly cool.
When it was still on the ground, someone commented to the flight mechanic that the engines leaked a lot of oil. His response was "if they ain't leaking, that means there isn't any". |
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View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The airframe didn't fail. Only the engine did. Do you think it'd be OK to fly these airframes but with new engines? BTW, people with knowledge of such things agree they're safe to fly. But, for the sake of healthy debate, lets ignore that fact. I want to go down the road of using age as a reason to ground an aircraft. I like where you head is. A B-17 with four PT6s would be great. Good God... *shivers* That would be a sin against God. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/66085/B17Dart_jpg-1336190.JPG I feel like you shit in my mouth with that picture. Just couldn't get the taste to go away until I used this for mouthwash. Attached File Attached File |
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Quoted: I flew on the Nine O Nine about 15 years ago. It was incredibly cool. When it was still on the ground, someone commented to the flight mechanic that the engines leaked a lot of oil. His response was "if they ain't leaking, that means there isn't any". View Quote To be fair, that's probably all aircraft though the definition of a lot of oil is subjective. Unfortunately sounds like a culture of shade tree mechanics doing shade tree stuff combined with a not so small amount of complacency. |
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Quoted: And, yet, despite more reliable engines, it crashed. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: And, yet, despite more reliable engines, it crashed. Borate bombing is a risky endeavor, no matter the form of propulsion. |
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Quoted: Borate bombing is a risky endeavor, no matter the form of propulsion. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: And, yet, despite more reliable engines, it crashed. Borate bombing is a risky endeavor, no matter the form of propulsion. Yep. Most of us remember the C-130 that suffered a spar failure fire bombing. The retarded response to that accident would've been "We need to ground all C-130s. The design is too old." |
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Quoted: Frankly, I think it would be a good idea for enterprising individuals to produce new manufacture of these airframes to historical specs (Which are all public domain) so that people may experience history without the immense logistical hardship of keeping half a century old airframes flying. View Quote Has already happened with FW-190A, P-51A, some Russian fighter, ME-262. Larger ones present much more of a challenge, and even with the examples I site, it is not an easy thing. |
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Quoted: I feel like you shit in my mouth with that picture. Just couldn't get the taste to go away until I used this for mouthwash. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/261993/Screenshot_20200327-113925_Photos_jpg-1336259.JPG https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/261993/Screenshot_20200327-113935_Photos_jpg-1336261.JPG View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The airframe didn't fail. Only the engine did. Do you think it'd be OK to fly these airframes but with new engines? BTW, people with knowledge of such things agree they're safe to fly. But, for the sake of healthy debate, lets ignore that fact. I want to go down the road of using age as a reason to ground an aircraft. I like where you head is. A B-17 with four PT6s would be great. Good God... *shivers* That would be a sin against God. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/66085/B17Dart_jpg-1336190.JPG I feel like you shit in my mouth with that picture. Just couldn't get the taste to go away until I used this for mouthwash. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/261993/Screenshot_20200327-113925_Photos_jpg-1336259.JPG https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/261993/Screenshot_20200327-113935_Photos_jpg-1336261.JPG They used them as a test bed for lots of odd stuff. Testing the motor for the A-1 Skyraider here I think. Attached File |
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Quoted: They used them as a test bed for lots of odd stuff. Testing the motor for the A-1 Skyraider here I think. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/1670/b-17_test_jpg-1336291.JPG View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The airframe didn't fail. Only the engine did. Do you think it'd be OK to fly these airframes but with new engines? BTW, people with knowledge of such things agree they're safe to fly. But, for the sake of healthy debate, lets ignore that fact. I want to go down the road of using age as a reason to ground an aircraft. I like where you head is. A B-17 with four PT6s would be great. Good God... *shivers* That would be a sin against God. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/66085/B17Dart_jpg-1336190.JPG I feel like you shit in my mouth with that picture. Just couldn't get the taste to go away until I used this for mouthwash. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/261993/Screenshot_20200327-113925_Photos_jpg-1336259.JPG https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/261993/Screenshot_20200327-113935_Photos_jpg-1336261.JPG They used them as a test bed for lots of odd stuff. Testing the motor for the A-1 Skyraider here I think. https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/1670/b-17_test_jpg-1336291.JPG Yep. I like this one too. Attached File |
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