replica spittfire watts bridge

[GAFA]

Looking at the video again, what appears to be the left hand flap extended appears to me to be the left hand intake scoop and it's flat rear outlet (see the photos I've attached above).

 

Further once the plane is on the truck there us no major damage to the left hand flap, so it it was extended it would have a lot more damage and perhaps dislodged.

 

 

[turboplanner]

Looking at the video again, what appears to be the left hand flap extended appears to me to be the left hand intake scoop and it's flat rear outlet (see the photos I've attached above).Further once the plane is on the truck there us no major damage to the left hand flap, so it it was extended it would have a lot more damage and perhaps dislodged.

In the photo I posted, you can just see the LH wing intake. The under-engine intake and the two under-wing intakes are all streamlines and all slope upwards to the rear, so we would expect to see a small profile at that angle, and although the photo is blurry you can just see the LH intake and it's slightly lighter colour in front of a sharp rectangular outline angled down. If you were to draw a perspective line across to the vanishing point to the left, you would expect to see matching hardware under the right wing, but there's none.

If you go to your second photo, you can see the flap, split from the black and white section, and painted plain blue, and there is an actuator showing at the split.

 

 

[GAFA]

Some more photos I've found of this aircraft and other replica Spitfires. In these photos you can see the wing in takes are large and have a large flat extendable rear opening.

 

They also show the replica does not use the split flap as per the original Spitfire ans have a plan flap fitted. In the video when the aircraft starts to bank there is no flap extension on the left (or right) wing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following photo you can clearly see the rear (flat) blue outlet on the rear of the left wing scoop open and it looks like a flap. I think in the video this (from a distance) makes it look like a wing flap.

 

 

 

 

[Tex]

[GAFA]

[ATTACH=full]37567[/ATTACH]

This photo shows there is no flap extension on the left (or right) wing. The replica has plan flaps (as shown in the photo I posted above), so if they were extended you would see the deflection (gap) between the left aileron and the flap and there is none.

 

 

[Oscar]

If thgat is - as it appears - an S26B, they are crashing at a rate that is really seriously ridiculous. According to the VH Register, RFD is a C 180... is there a story here?

 

 

[GAFA]

If thgat is - as it appears - an S26B, they are crashing at a rate that is really seriously ridiculous. According to the VH Register, RFD is a C 180... is there a story here?

Rego is VH-SFG ( located just above the tailwheel. The letters RFD are to do with the owners name.

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Bloody nice looking replica by the way.........

 

 

[Keenaviator]

Yes, RH flap wasn't down.

Neither was the left. Trying to compensate the right roll with left stick - right wing stalling. Lowering the nose would have been his only hope.

 

 

[Oscar]

Rego is VH-SFG ( located just above the tailwheel. The letters RFD are to do with the owners name.

Ah, then probably not a Mk 26B but perhaps one of the Fox-Connelly knock-offs.

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Good point. I can't really see the r/h flap down. Can you ?

It looks like flaps were asymmetric., i caught that as well but it only looks that way because of aileron deflection left wing aileron is slight up and right wing is slight down.

 

 

[Tony]

So, which way the prop on this particular machine is turning ?

 

 

[kgwilson]

The damage as at 10:00am this morning. The wings were removed while I was watching. Both appeared to have survived any major issues. Not so for everything forward of the firewall and the undercarriage. Very sad to see such a beautifully built aircraft in this state. Definitely repairable though but I imagine quite an expensive process.

 

 

 

[GAFA]

A pilot I know was there yesterday and they are saying there was no asymmetric flap or any other issue with the flaps. Apparently the pilot has stated an environmental condition caused the accident.

 

 

[Blueadventures]

Ah, then probably not a Mk 26B but perhaps one of the Fox-Connelly knock-offs.

No. It's not finished yet.

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Someone on FB may have cracked it. Forgot to reset trim to TO. And with that tail low lift off i think he is right.

 

 

[risky_airways]

Was the different PIC actually a licenced PPL holder with the correct design feature endorsements and a current medical certificate, or was he just a certificate holder?

 

 

[ozbear]

Someone on FB may have cracked it. Forgot to reset trim to TO. And with that tail low lift off i think he is right.

A common trap some trim systems can be quite powerfull to overcome especially when trimming out nose down attitude on full flap landings.

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Speed looked ok....an uncontrolled roll at liftoff....I'd like to know how much time he had in the aircraft. Enviorimental issues ?.......I thought I had heard them all.

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

By means of a protractor and the first image in post #23 you can verify that the angle of incidence with the tailwheel on the ground is 15 degrees. Consequently, at rest the Spit's wing is at the critical angle. I also know this from extensive discussions I had with Mike O'Sullivan of Supermarine. Also, there is no geometric or aerodynamic washout (or on some of them only 1 degree) toward the tips and the wing is elliptical which means that the wing chord effectively reduces to zero at the tips.

 

The shorter the wing chord, the lower the Reynolds number that part of it is operating under, and the lower the Re, the lower the stall angle, consequently the Spit's tips stall before the root of the wing. That is quite the opposite to what you generally want from a 'friendly' sport plane but the Spit was designed as a fighter and the 'snappy' characteristics were seen as an advantage in dogfighting and for evasive manoeuvring.

 

The Supermarine replicas are well known for their tip-stalling tendencies, several people have come unstuck (and nearly unstuck) on landing and take-off. At one stage I spoke with Mike about it and asked whether he might consider changing the wing significantly to change its characteristics so that the stall would propagate from the root instead. The most efficient way to do that would be by progressively changing the airfoil section toward the tip, rather than by introducing the significant amount of geometric twist that would be required to achieve the same effect. When I flew with Mike in one of the first two-seaters it was very evident how extra careful he was during the take-off and landing phases.

 

Having such a very small tip chord it would require having a very thick section at the tip to achieve sufficient aerodynamic washout and that would be very noticeably un-Spitty. Mike said his intention was to build true replicas, not stand-off lookalikes, so those who flew them would have to respect their characteristics and learn to fly them accordingly.

 

Given that the angle of incidence is 15 degrees with the tailwheel on the ground, and given that the video shows the takeoff was conducted in such a way that the last thing to leave the ground was the tailwheel while the flightpath was still horizontal (i.e. climb had not been established), it indicates that both tips had to have been stalled at the moment of lift-off. These planes do have plenty of power, quite sufficient to get airborne with the wing partly stalled. I would suggest that the pilot's mention of 'environmental' meant a gust of some kind and his reaction of applying left stick would then have unstalled the left tip rather than stalling the right tip, since it was already stalled. This un-stalling caused the left wing to immediately produce a lot more lift and hence produce a strong roll to the right. Had he used rudder instead, or centralised the stick again (re-stalling the left wing) he would probably have got away with it.

 

It's also possible that his 'environmental gust' might well have actually been an increase of P factor as the tail dipped just after the first lift-off. Big props and big horses cause big off-axis forces ...

 

 

[Ada Elle]

I also know this from extensive discussions I had with Mike O'Sullivan of Supermarine.

Is this the same Mike O'Sullivan of whom a coroner had this to say:

 

Mr O’Sullivan has demonstrated a willingness to be dishonest

[Keenaviator]

Or use some flap on take off to effectively introduce washout.

 

 

[BLA82]

I just read that coroners report into the Spitfire Crash in Gympie. Gees it doesn't paint a very nice picture of Mr O'Sullivan. Some of the false claims made on speed/weight and stall speeds is dam right scary

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

Or use some flap on take off to effectively introduce washout.

Good concept but they're split flaps so they introduce a lot of drag which isn't a good idea for take-off, especially not using more than about 5 degrees flap which would only change the chord line angle by about 1 to 1.5 degrees.

 

Even then, unfortunately it doesn't seem to work for the elliptical wing of the Spit because even with 40 degrees used for landing, if you get too slow the tips still stall first causing a vicious wing-drop.

 

I've heard brown trousers stories from several folk who have allowed the speed to bleed off while still 10 ft off the deck.

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

I just read that coroners report into the Spitfire Crash in Gympie. Gees it doesn't paint a very nice picture of Mr O'Sullivan. Some of the false claims made on speed/weight and stall speeds is dam right scary

That's right it doesn't, and though I'm not defending him in the slightest, what he said about being encouraged from within the organization is probably not all fabricated, based on others' anecdotal evidence of what went on in RAA at the time. It's been the subject of considerable discussion and angst over the last few years ...

 

Regardless of that, though, and purely my opinion, is that the coroner seemed determined to find any reason at all that he crashed, except that he didn't fly the plane. She describes him as an extremely experienced and talented pilot when other respected instructors werent altogether impressed with his handling even in much simpler aircraft.

 

As for his level of experience, he had less than 1000hrs as PIC, I'd call that novice level in terms of a Spit, with its known vices ... and less than 3 hrs on the Spitty in the previous 2 yrs IIRC.

 

The coroner's finding was that he crashed because of an engine problem or a landing gear problem, or both, whereas in my humble opinion he crashed because while he may or may not have had some airborne problem he forgot to fly the aircraft, stalled and spun in.

 

O'Sullivan's dishonesty regarding the aircraft weight on the registration documents really had nothing to do with the crash as far as I can see.