Dornier Seastar

[trey kule]

Hell, I'd even take half of my usual wage to do a rotation flying it

.
Way to lower the bar. If you are now willing to work for $4.00 an hour why not consider one of the new LCC startups? Leave the big buck jobs to the rest of us.

[esp803]

Way to lower the bar.

That really depends. If I made a million bucks a year (and i'm not saying RBF does), and someone offered me 500k to spend half my winter (rotation) somewhere tropical, I'd be on it like white on rice... I realize I don't make a million a year but there is a certain point (much lower then a million a year) where you can still live very comfortably, and if you can escape the winter... Just my thoughts. I guess I'm saying it depends what half your going rate is for the lifestyle you want. It's not lowering the bar in my books if you take a paycut for a vastly superior lifestyle...

E

[shimmydampner]

I guess I just committed the Canadian sacrilege -- never was a fan of any DHC product

AHH! HE'S A WITCH!

[trey kule]

It's not lowering the bar in my books if you take a paycut for a vastly superior lifestyle...

Is not having good reading comprehension skills lowering the bar? Or is the humour to subtle?
Read my whole post...If $4.00 is 1/2 the normal hourly wage, what is the hourly wage? That is the 'big bucks' I was referring to.

As to the poster not liking DHC products..Either a DHC virgin or they are just pulling your chain.

[hangar3]

I guess I just committed the Canadian sacrilege -- never was a fan of any DHC product

AHH! HE'S A WITCH!

Burn him!

[ragbagflyer]

Is not having good reading comprehension skills lowering the bar? Or is the humour to subtle?
Read my whole post...If $4.00 is 1/2 the normal hourly wage, what is the hourly wage? That is the 'big bucks' I was referring to.

Not to brag, but I just got a raise to $12 per hour.

[esp803]

Or is the humour to subtle?

Haha it was indeed to subtle for my simple mind, someday I too hope to be at 8/hr.... 12/hr that's just crazy talk.

E

[SheriffPatGarrett]

Oh! Well, the Dornier is dead, long live the Frakes Mallard:


http://www.mallardaircraft.com/

ScreenHunter_250 Jun. 11 00.06.jpg (109.25 KiB) Viewed 2562 times

[SheriffPatGarrett]

The TC that Frakes bought from Grumman was for a piston engined plane...the Turbine was a Frakes' mod.
A new piston driven Mallard would be lovely...(tried to fly the turbo once with the same fuel flow
and fell off the sky in five minutes!)



The Mallard owners' nightmare:
http://theflyingboatforum.forumlaunch.n ... m.php?f=34
What they dont mention is that the fuel tank sealing was for gasoline...turbine fuel
melt the sealant and caused recurring leaks...the leaks were sealed by adding sealant which masked
corrosion and cracks, thus the Chalk's crash.

[rigpiggy]

I thought the Chalk crash was caused by a bad repair where somebody drilled the spar

[SheriffPatGarrett]

The wing in question:


Wiki:

The cause of the accident was a fatigue failure in the right wing initiated by a crack in a span-wise stringer close to the wing root. The crack had been detected running through a slosh hole (an aperture in the wall of the stringer that allows fuel to flow from one side of the stringer to the other) and seemingly repaired earlier, but the repair was eventually to prove ineffective.

The Mallard was designed in the 1940s with a so-called 'wet wing' where the fuel tanks, instead of being separate items within the wing, are constructed from sealed-off portions of the wing structure itself. This eliminates the additional weight of the tanks and also allows more fuel to be contained within a given wing size. The drawback of this form of construction is that all the joints around the tank seams have to be sealed, so as to make a fuel-tight tank. In addition, as the wing flexes to some extent during flight, the movement has a tendency over extended periods of time to open seams leading to fuel leaks. Grumman, the manufacturer, had issued warnings as early as 1963 about fuel leaks from the Mallard's wing being indicative of possible structural problems, however for unknown reasons the airline did not consider this particularly relevant to its own aircraft.

I smelled something rancid in mine at the lake...opened the electrical comp door by the gear and found fuel cascading over the relays...
Flew home with the generators and battery off. Lost track of the plane after as I went on different projects, but it was sold(given away) and Frakes rebuilt the wing with more compatible sealants...(I hope) Saw it for sale fifteen years later in the Caribbeans, with all new radios, radar and instruments(I had WW II steam gauges n radios.)

The Irony here is that the Dornier's management was the same personnel as that of the Adam aircraft(which had zero payload with one pilot on board)
and that of Chalk...no shit!