Round Engines

W5 · Post by W5 » Tue Aug 08, 2006 3:01 pm

Received this in the mail the other day:

DEDICATED TO ALL THOSE WHO FLEW BEHIND ROUND ENGINES

We gotta get rid of those turbines, they're ruining aviation and our hearing...

A turbine is too simple minded, it has no mystery. The air travels through it in a straight line and doesn't pick up any of the pungent fragrance of engine oil or pilot sweat.

Anybody can start a turbine. You just need to move a switch from "OFF" to "START" and then remember to move it back to "ON" after a while. My PC is harder to start.

Cranking a round engine requires skill, finesse and style. You have to seduce it into starting. It's like waking up a horny mistress. On some planes, the pilots aren't even allowed to do it...

Turbines start by whining for a while, then give a lady-like poof and start whining a little louder.

Round engines give a satisfying rattle-rattle, click-click, BANG, more rattles, another BANG, a big macho FART or two, more clicks, a lot more smoke and finally a serious low pitched roar. We like that. It's a GUY thing...

When you start a round engine, your mind is engaged and you can concentrate on the flight ahead. Starting a turbine is like flicking on a ceiling fan: Useful, but, hardly exciting.

When you have started his round engine successfully your Crew Chief looks up at you like he'd let you kiss his girl, too!

Turbines don't break or catch fire often enough, which leads to aircrew boredom, complacency and inattention. A round engine at speed looks and sounds like it's going to blow any minute. This helps concentrate the mind !

Turbines don't have enough control levers or gauges to keep a pilot's attention. There's nothing to fiddle with during long flights.

Turbines smell like a Boy Scout camp full of Coleman Lamps. Round engines smell like God intended machines to smell.

Pass this on to an old WWII guy (or his son, or anyone who flew them, ever) in remembranceof that "Greatest Generation".

zero · Post by **zero** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:26 pm

I love you, man!!!!!

I'll think more highly of the round engine I sit behind this season for the first time and love it even more...it's a man thing.

Excellent post.

TG · Post by TG » Tue Aug 08, 2006 5:58 pm

You are right clunkdriver but beside this, round engines are only good for noise.
And who was saying that they are built round so we can roll them more easily to the dump ?

ODDERGUY · Post by **ODDERGUY** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:08 pm

No shit, aside from the whole"Round Engine" thing they are about as useful as a MRC grad. I mean they are cool but way to much trouble for what they are worth in this day and age. Go Turbines Go.

Big Pistons Forever · Post by **Big Pistons Forever** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:24 pm

Ah the round engine era..... when flying was dangerous and sex was safe

Cat Driver · Post by **Cat Driver** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:28 pm

Yeh, radial piston engines are really unreliable, what ever you do never fly any airplane with a P&W R-985 in it.

Doc · Post by **Doc** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:39 pm

Or an R2000?

Cat Driver · Post by **Cat Driver** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:44 pm

Yeh Doc and those P&W R-1830's are so dangerous don't even run one on the ground.

cedar tree · Post by **cedar tree** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 8:04 pm

Well if anyone has any R1820's they plan on rolling to the dump, don't, roll them over my way!

Cat Driver · Post by **Cat Driver** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 8:35 pm

You own a T28 or a C117 Cedar Tree?

phillyfan · Post by **phillyfan** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 9:33 pm

Let's see one of them turbines do 25 stops a day on the West Coast, all of them between 0.1 and 0.3

ettw · Post by **ettw** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:27 pm

Borek is doing that in the Indian Ocean everyday with the Twin Otter on floats.

Lurch · Post by **Lurch** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 11:18 pm

ODDERGUY wrote:No shit, aside from the whole"Round Engine" thing they are about as useful as a MRC grad. I mean they are cool but way to much trouble for what they are worth in this day and age. Go Turbines Go.

Hey don't group us all together because of a couple of miscreants.

Hedley · Post by **Hedley** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 6:39 am

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0174114/M/

ninjacrumb · Post by **ninjacrumb** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 7:26 am

I bet flying radials cost Doc a full head of hair.

linecrew · Post by **linecrew** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 7:51 am

Radials can really take a beating and still keep on ticking.

Case in point! In 1955 a Douglas C-124 Globemaster crashed at Frobisher Bay and the #1 engine was still running the next day!!

ODDERGUY · Post by **ODDERGUY** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:05 am

Yes, 50 years ago Radials were the Cats ass, But I fail to see how just because a Airplane crashed and Did not actually damage the engine upon the crash why the engine would stop running unless of corse the engine ran out of fuel or mabe the pilot should have used is head and shut the stupid ting down before it killed someone. Get clue dumbass any engine is designed to run period. Turbine engines run non-stop on pipelines and they dont cost an arm and a leg to keep maintained.

Lommer · Post by **Lommer** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 10:11 am

Um, Odderguy, did you even look at the pictures? It doesn't look to me like the pilot had much opportunity to shut the engine down. It's questionable whether he even survived.

linecrew · Post by **linecrew** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:54 am

ODDERGUY wrote: Get clue dumbass

Slow down their a$$hole..why you gotta be like that?

Rowdy · Post by **Rowdy** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 2:50 pm

Two round engines here that give a LOT less trouble than the inline and most turbines!!

IIRC the last 985 here went right to TBO without nary a hint of trouble. Can't say that about the engine in my bird

That huge gaggle of em still plowing on the west coast in that crazy environment of short hops and corrosion gotta prove something

t34ag · Post by **t34ag** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 5:24 pm

Not only are round engines nice to listen to ,ride behind and do maitenance on .....the color of yellow is also nice !!

photoguy · Post by **photoguy** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 11:26 pm

Speaking of engines running after crashes.

Anyone remember (well who can forget) the Dryden Incident.

Rumor has it, the engines of that F-28 ran for quite some time after the crash, and it took a fire truck full of water to get them to quit.

I've flown in round pounders that were so sensitive to moisture, you open your damn thermos in the cockpit and the stupid thing backfires.

Lost in Saigon · Post by **Lost in Saigon** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:24 am

Apparently, there were no fatalities.....

http://www.pinetreeline.org/photos/p17-55b.html

Comments by Ray White: - I am taking the liberty of sending these photos of the crash scene of the C-124 that occurred in Frobisher in April 1955. I was stationed at the Canadian Navy Radio Station in Frobisher and saw the crash as it occurred. I was coming off watch from the Navy's HFDF site at the north end of the runway and was walking along the runway toward the base where the combined RCAF/RCN barracks were located. About halfway along the runway I could see a large aircraft in the distance, over the water of the Bay. It was banking to starboard and then straightened out and I could see the landing lights. As it approached the lip of the runway, the aircraft dipped below the level of the runway, then I could see it rising to get to the correct level. It almost made it but the landing gear caught on the very end of the runway and the plane did a cartwheel which tore off the starboard wing. As you can see from the photos the nose did not touch the runway, but the entire plane flipped over, broke up into many pieces and caught fire. I ran toward it but as I had the better part of a mile to go, the emergency vehicles were already there and in action as I approached the scene. The few spectators around were not permitted close to the aircraft. As seen in the photos, the outboard port engine continued to function for a day or so before the decision was made to shut off the fuel supply. Although the comments on your web page indicate that the cargo was "tracked Snow Cats" one can see that they were in fact Bombardier Snowmobiles. (Perhaps Snow Cat is the US term for them?) I took these shots the day after the accident. I told our Chief that I had seen the entire event from start to finish and he reported this to the board of enquiry but they did not call me as a witness. This was certainly a unique experience for me. Although your notes indicate that there were no fatalities, there were several serious injuries who were flown to Goose Bay the following morning in a USAF SA-16 aircraft.

CLguy · Post by **CLguy** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 9:12 am

Photoguy stated:

Anyone remember (well who can forget) the Dryden Incident.

Rumor has it, the engines of that F-28 ran for quite some time after the crash, and it took a fire truck full of water to get them to quit.

That is not true, if fact if anyone remembers the Crash/Fire Resuce guys where severely critized in the board of inquiry for amount of time they took to get hoses into the crash. The Chief was fired over it.

photoguy · Post by **photoguy** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:19 pm

could've been an urban legeand.

But I have heard that about other crashes, where it took a rather large ammount of water to get the turbines to quit working.