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  Video: R/C B-29 with X-1 rocket

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Author Topic:   Video: R/C B-29 with X-1 rocket
ejectr
Member

Posts: 1751
From: Killingly, CT
Registered: Mar 2002

posted 10-11-2006 05:16 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for ejectr   Click Here to Email ejectr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Kind of a neat video...

Jurg Bolli
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Posts: 977
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 10-11-2006 06:42 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Jurg Bolli   Click Here to Email Jurg Bolli     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Way cool!

FutureAstronaut
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Posts: 372
From:
Registered: Mar 2006

posted 10-11-2006 07:27 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for FutureAstronaut     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I WANT ONE!!!

KC Stoever
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Posts: 1012
From: Denver, CO USA
Registered: Oct 2002

posted 10-11-2006 10:27 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for KC Stoever   Click Here to Email KC Stoever     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Just sent the link to my dad. Awesome.

Rick Mulheirn
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Posts: 4167
From: England
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 10-12-2006 11:55 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Rick Mulheirn   Click Here to Email Rick Mulheirn     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Great fun and not a little skill.

Scott
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Posts: 3307
From: Houston, TX
Registered: May 2001

posted 10-12-2006 12:10 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Scott   Click Here to Email Scott     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Oh yeah. I like.

machbusterman
Member

Posts: 1778
From: Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Registered: May 2004

posted 10-12-2006 02:49 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for machbusterman   Click Here to Email machbusterman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
By the way, on October 14th, 1947 at Muroc the REAL B-29 was indeed ROLLED in celebration by the pilot (Bob Cardenas) after hearing that Chuck Yeager had punched through mach 1. Not sure you'll find that tit-bit in any history books... but it DID happen!

FFrench
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Posts: 3161
From: San Diego
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 10-15-2006 01:31 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for FFrench     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I was presenting a workshop in LA yesterday, and to my pleasure I found the guy giving a presentation in the room next to me was test pilot Bob Gilliland. Had a great chat with him, and we got on to talking about Cardenas. I mentioned this story to him, and Bob said he'd never heard it before... "not that it couldn't have happened, but I think I'd have heard it." I was wondering what your source might be?

SpaceAholic
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Posts: 4437
From: Sierra Vista, Arizona
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 04-19-2008 08:48 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for SpaceAholic   Click Here to Email SpaceAholic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The "coolness" meter is pegged off the scale... engines on the B-29 are apparently powered by 4 chainsaw motors!

golddog
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Posts: 210
From: australia
Registered: Feb 2008

posted 04-19-2008 04:11 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for golddog     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
And she even had retractable gear! What a magnificent model. Whereabouts in the States was that, do you know? I'd love to visit that show one day!

ejectr
Member

Posts: 1751
From: Killingly, CT
Registered: Mar 2002

posted 04-19-2008 07:05 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for ejectr   Click Here to Email ejectr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Regarding rolling a B-29... I sent the same to Gen. Chuck Yeager's email address after posting the video here on cS and got a reply that the General said you can't roll a B-29.

Aztecdoug
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Posts: 1405
From: Huntington Beach
Registered: Feb 2000

posted 04-19-2008 11:25 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Aztecdoug   Click Here to Email Aztecdoug     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
It would be interesting to get Cal Worthington's opinion on rolling a B-29.

machbusterman
Member

Posts: 1778
From: Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Registered: May 2004

posted 04-20-2008 01:55 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for machbusterman   Click Here to Email machbusterman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by FFrench:
I mentioned this story to him, and Bob said he'd never heard it before... "not that it couldn't have happened, but I think I'd have heard it." I was wondering what your source might be?
Francis, sorry its taken me 2 years to reply to your post!! My source regarding the roll was BGEN Cardenas himself.

machbusterman
Member

Posts: 1778
From: Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Registered: May 2004

posted 04-20-2008 01:58 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for machbusterman   Click Here to Email machbusterman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by ejectr:
...got a reply that the General said you can't roll a B29.
That's a pretty glib comment from General Yeager. Did he try to roll one? I don't think so. By the way, even the B-36 has been rolled so not sure why he thinks it wasn't possible.

FFrench
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Posts: 3161
From: San Diego
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 04-20-2008 04:33 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for FFrench     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by machbusterman:
My source regarding the roll was BGEN Cardenas himself.
Interesting... thanks!

ptraney
Member

Posts: 49
From: Port Townsend, WA USA
Registered: Oct 2010

posted 04-08-2018 07:18 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for ptraney   Click Here to Email ptraney     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Wow...takes real guts to fly an expensive RC plane like that upside down so close to the ground! Bell X-1 is fantastic!!

David C
Member

Posts: 1014
From: Lausanne
Registered: Apr 2012

posted 04-08-2018 10:15 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for David C     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by machbusterman:
...even the B-36 has been rolled so not sure why he thinks it wasn't possible.
Digging up an ancient thread, but you can roll just about anything — provided you (and your crew) are willing to pay the price if you get it badly wrong.

Robert Pearlman
Editor

Posts: 42982
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 04-08-2018 10:30 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Cardenas was interviewed by the Orange County Register in 2010, two years after this thread was started, and addressed the "rumor" of his rolling the B-29:
There are some details the best test-pilots never give up. Like the day Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound. It was Cardenas who flew the B-29 launch plane that carried Yeager's X-1 aloft. Afterward, Yeager did a victory roll. And Cardenas?

Legend has it, he did his own victory roll in that big old B-29 – something strictly forbidden.

Did he?

"I swore the whole crew to secrecy," he says, a twinkle in those old eyes. "Or I would've been grounded!"

p51
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Posts: 1642
From: Olympia, WA
Registered: Sep 2011

posted 04-08-2018 10:48 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for p51   Click Here to Email p51     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Many years ago, I lived down the road from a retired B-29 pilot. He told me many stories, including the night that he got attacked by Japanese fighters coming back from a fire bombing raid. He said at one point his co-pilot was wounded, fell over on the yoke, and rolled the plane beyond 90 degrees. They were at a pretty high altitude, so he decided to carry the roll all the way over, losing altitude at a frightening right the entire time. By the time he leveled out, he said, he was only about 5,000 feet from the water.

Rolling an aircraft that large carries all kinds of hazards, the two primary ones are causing stress on the wings beyond their design capabilities, and creating an inverted conditions inside the fuel tanks, where the fuel is interrupted.

You quite clearly can't do a barrel roll like you can in a modern fighter plane, you pretty much have to corkscrew it to create a positive 1G condition inside the aircraft the entire time. The famous roll of the Boeing 707 demonstrator aircraft over Lake Washington shows how to do it very well. In that case, the plane was rolled in a corkscrew manner, and created a 1G condition inside the aircraft the entire time. The engineers, in consultation with the aircrew, confirmed that such a maneuver would cause absolutely no problems with the airframe at all.

The B-52 crash at Fairchild Air Force Base in 1994, shows the opposite. The pilot involved was a real hot dog, and should have been grounded years before, due to all kinds of unsafe conditions and a climate of tolerance on the part of the chain of command. He had told people on numerous occasions his lifetime goal was to roll a B-52. He was scheduled to fly at an airshow the following day, and many people at the base were convinced he was going to try it, as his retirement was very close at hand at that point.

Many people who were there at that time are convinced that had the crash not occurred on a Friday (while executing a unsafe hard left turn, around the tower, to avoid over flying the storage facility where the "special" weapons were stored, causing a loss of airspeed and stall condition at a unsafe roll condition, causing the plane to roll over to the left and lawn-darting itself into the ground) killing only the people in the aircraft, he would have tried to roll it at the airshow at way too low of an altitude. Had he done that, there's no way to know how many hundreds, if not thousands, of spectators who would have paid the price that day.

David C
Member

Posts: 1014
From: Lausanne
Registered: Apr 2012

posted 04-08-2018 03:17 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for David C     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Those wishing to avoid massive thread drift please look away now.

Anyone unfamiliar with the "Bud" Holland mishap that wishes to know more should read this.

quote:
Originally posted by p51:
You quite clearly can't do a barrel roll like you can in a modern fighter plane, you pretty much have to corkscrew it to create a positive 1G condition inside the aircraft the entire time.
Not really true, and I don't like publicly discussing it, but incorrect information on this subject actually kills the unwise. I know you're not suggesting someone has a go, but this is the internet and who knows what ideas people get when they read something. After all, guys like Holland do exist.

As you hint, rolling large non-acrobatic types risks exceedance of one or all of four parameters: the airspeed/Mach limit, the normal load factor ("g-limit"), engine fuel feed capability and available separation from Mother Earth. Overlaid upon this are the facts that most (but not all) large airframe drivers never had much acro training, are not acro current, don't really understand the maneuver they are trying to fly and, obviously have no training in rolling the type in question. Another consideration is that most large airplanes lack an accelerometer, forcing the pilot to fly by the seat of his pants. Of course, not being an acrobatic pilot his "seat" is uncalibrated. The maneuver will also require control forces and deflections that feel "unnatural" for the inexperienced pilot, potentially causing them to unintentionally back off at the wrong moment.

For most types, large props or jets, the problem is a matter of trading roll rate — which varies with speed, against the tendency of the nose to want to fall through. The option to hold the nose up with negative load factor is generally unavailable because it will induce engine fuel starvation, (which can also have secondary and unpleasant hydraulic and/or electrical consequences in modern types).

There is absolutely no requirement to maintain positive 1g all the way round, and attempting to chase that target can result in an extremely dangerous nose low condition. Many very experienced guys talk about "maintaining 1g all they way round", they know how to fly but they don't mean what they say literally. You are best off entering at high speed and then raising the nose prior to initiating the roll in a "barrel roll-style" entry, with the airplane trimmed for an intermediate speed. Note that this is not an attempt at a perfect air show or academic barrel roll.

How high to raise the nose depends upon how quickly the type looses speed, and how quickly it can roll. Generally the slower the roll the higher you'd like the nose to be at the start; and the quicker you loose speed the less you can raise it. Of course, the higher you raise the nose the quicker you slow down and the slower you roll. The relationship between these is not linear. As you slow down and your maximum roll rate reduces — you may find this happening much faster than you expected. Use the rudder to minimise sideslip, but do not "peddle" it back and forth, that can take the whole vertical stabilizer off a large airplane. Use back pressure to maintain positive g, but allowing it to reach a fairly low figure depending upon your loss of speed — which may well fall significantly below 1g stall speed. It's not a problem, angle of attack determines stall, not speed.

Done right you will stay well within placard limits, not shutdown the engines and loose little altitude. Done wrong, you will at best loose tremendous altitude and almost certainly overstress the airframe in a "high g" spiral as panic sets in. The post-grad version of this is being able to do it at night. Always build up gradually via steep turns then wing overs so you know, rather than guess at the airplanes handling characteristics. Have a plan of how to abort the maneuver at any stage.

Better still, don't do it unless you know what you're doing or it's a war and you have nothing to loose. I've seen too many guys exceed their own abilities and knowledge, sometimes with fatal results.

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