I told the wife I'm playing golf

[old man emu]

 

 

 

[Thruster88]

Thanks for posting OME. The red '65 cherrokee 235 is still registered today.  

 

 

[pmccarthy]

The video claims that the Cherokee is stable because it has a low centre of gravity. Surely the COG must be relative to the wings. A 172 has a low COG and is stable because of pendulum effect, a Piper needs a lot of dihedral for stability.

 

 

[turboplanner]

I wouldn't get too excited about the theories and claims of those days;  the US manufacturers were trying to convert people into believing flying was as simple as getting in, turning the key on and being 600 miles away in 4 hours.  In Australia Arthur Schutt used to fly in to any farm that had decent size paddocks and try to sell the owner a Cessna.

 

 

[turboplanner]

The joint Advertising/PR budget between Cessna and Piper was to get families into the air.

 

The "edge" between them was high wing vs low wing - the message being "you can get to all these exotic destinations easier and faster by air; Oh and btw you can wear a hat in our high wing design, see better etc.

 

Towards the end of this era, when Cessna were promoting their high wing design as allowing their aircraft to taxy from the homestead shed out though a gateway and into the paddock for take off. The Creative Director of a Sydney Advertising Agency came up with a Piper Ad which said: "if you want to drive an aircraft through a gateway, buy a Cessna, but of you want to fly, buy a Piper."

 

 

[facthunter]

Pendulum stability is of a fairly low order.( Not a large effect) , Other ways are dihedral and that works differently and sweep back (wing  or leading edge). which has a very strong reaction possible/likely. I think stabilty (laterally) is  over sold. Neutral  makes the plane more controllable as it tends to stay where you put it and works when you are upside down or in turbulence.. An aeroplane is not a car as some have found out the hard way, over the years. As well as going easier through farm gates, long(er) grass can affect low wing planes especially with wing down approaches/limit X wind landings and aileron hinges protruding. Low wing is a LOT easier to fit retract gear to. Nev

 

 

[johnm]

I've read an accident report somewhere that 'thistles' and other vegetation clogged a low wing aileron horn balance and caused the plane to roll and prang ............. found vegetation from a deviation from the runway

 

................. low wing ............. you'd have to try a lot harder in a high wing

 

 

[turboplanner]

I've read an accident report somewhere that 'thistles' and other vegetation clogged a low wing aileron horn balance and caused the plane to roll and prang ............. found vegetation from a deviation from the runway

 

................. low wing ............. you'd have to try a lot harder in a high wing

 

Yes but you hit the tree branches in the high wing on your landing and takeoff rolls, and they are harder to judge.

 

It's amazing what a thumping wings will take.

 

I went out on a mail run with a pilot in a Cherokee 6 around Broken Hill which took most of the day and involved all sorts of rough strips.

 

On one the saplings had regrown to about one and a half metres with stems a bit thicker than your finger, but we crashed through them as two emus raced alongside us wanting to cross in front of us as they often do. Not for the faint hearted.

 

 

[kaz3g]

On a slightly different note...

 

Stuart, a farmer, has a nice little RV. Ros, his wife, wanted him to come to town with her while she went shopping.

 

He declined citing all this farmwork that needed to be done so Ros headed off by herself. Stuart decided flying would be far more fun than farmwork so got the RV out and away he went. The RV was put away and he had his head in the engine compartment when Ros arrived back home.

 

”Been hard at work all day, dear?”

 

”Yes dear, haven’t stopped. Lots to do”.

 

”You lying prick”, she said. “I logged into Ozrumways and saw you had been out flying for more than 2 hours!”

 

So now she is known by all at the Aeroclub as “RosRunways”.

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

The title of this thread reminded me of a book " Don't tell my mother I work on the rigs - she thinks I play the piano at a brothel"

 

 

[Akromaster]

On the topic of old films, I’ve been watching this old TV show on YouTube recently:

 

 

 

[old man emu]

Another example of the Yanks winning WWll: The Rat Patrol was an American action and adventure television series that aired on ABC between 1966 and 1968. The show follows the exploits of four Allied soldiers — three Americans and one Briton — who are part of a long-range desert patrol group in the North African campaign during World War II. The show was inspired by and loosely modeled on David Stirling's British Special Air Service (SAS),

 

which used modified Jeeps( No, they were Chevrolet 1-1/2 ton trucks  armed with machine guns as their transport through the treacherous desert terrain. Such units would not exist as part of the American military until after the Second World War. At the time of the original telecast, many British, Australian and New Zealand viewers took offense at the majority of American characters on the program, resulting in the show's being pulled from the BBC after six episodes. In Australia, the show was quickly relegated to a Saturday afternoon timeslot, when most people were out.

 

 

 

 

[onetrack]

Was the Rat Patrol modelled on the SAS or the LRDG? Because the LRDG were in operation earlier, they were a larger group, and somewhat more successful (certainly initially) than Stirlings SAS.

 

The SAS were true commandos, operating silently behind enemy lines, and initially did not have a motorised base, as the LRDG did. It was not until 1942 that the SAS received their own transport.

 

Everything the LRDG did was based on their choices of highly modified 2WD and 4WD transport, and the LRDG was utilised to drop SAS troops into position for enemy sabotage operations.

 

But the LRDG saw the major advantage of having specifically-modified 2WD's and 4WD's, able to do serious amounts of patrolling and recce work, in country that was otherwise impassable to anything but camels.

 

And the LRDG took every opportunity to wreak havoc behind enemy lines whenever the opportunity presented itself.

 

I think Stirlings SAS did some great work, but the LRDG work was of even greater importance, as they provided vast amounts of recce information that was otherwise unobtainable.

 

Interestingly, the highly modified 2WD Chevies were actually better in many cases, than the 4WD Ford V8's.

 

The Fords always had overheating problems (as did all Henry's sidevalve V8's), and they were extremely heavy on fuel, thereby reducing their range.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Desert_Group

 

 

[old man emu]

I'd say that the TV show was a hodge podge of hero creating Yankie machismo. 

 

The Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) was a reconnaissance and raiding unit founded in Egypt in June 1940.  At first the majority of the men were from New Zealand, but they were soon joined by Southern Rhodesian and British volunteers, whereupon new sub-units were formed and the name was changed to the better-known Long Range Desert Group (LRDG). The LRDG never numbered more than 350 men, all of whom were volunteers. There would have been no unit of the LRDG that comprised either Americans or Englishmen. It was mainly Kiwis.

 

The United States officially entered the war in December 1941 and began direct military assistance in North Africa on 11 May 1942, the Anglo-American landings (Operation Torch) in North-West Africa in November 1942.

 

Operation Torch in November 1942 was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to engage in the fight against Nazi Germany on a limited scale. The operation was at the western end of the Mediterranean coat of Africa, nowhere near where the British and Commonwealth forces and the LRDG had been operating.

 

 

 

 

[facthunter]

The Ford V8s (sidevalves) did run hot as the exhaust ports (3 in each bank, the middle one is siamesed) cross through the waterjacketted block and  the sidevalve configuration is  never as efficient as an OHV due to large combustion chamber surface area as well as gas flow problems, so they do use a lot of fuel. The chevs had a lot of dust excluding filters  on everything, (generator and motor) that were not on civilian  examples which ran plenty of breathers open to the atmosphere and slingers rather than seals on the crankshaft. They also ran  the 'standard" type cast iron pistons until about 1952. which don't get as much dust particles embedded in them as alloy pistons do so don't wear the bore as much.

 

   The desert Fords ran easily replaced steel cylinder liners with a rolled over lip at the top to locate them rather than rely on fit as you could easily knock them out and in without removing the motor from the truck (blitz or whatever).. Nev

 

 

[kgwilson]

My Uncle was a LRDG volunteer. When he got home he gave his LRDG Scorpion badge to my Mother. I remember him going crook about the yank BS on a TV show but didn't know till now what it was. He never spoke of the war. I found out most of the information from my Mother who kept his letters, some of which had stuff blanked out by the censors. He was a good businessman & I worked in his soft drink factory in my school holidays with my cousin (his son) & he knew everytime we were slacking a bit & gave us a tongue lashing. By then he was well overwieight but the photos when he was in North Africa looked like a different person. Young lean and with an air of invincibility. When he died my Mother gave the badge to my cousin who still has it.

 

 

[onetrack]

I can recall talking with Middle East WW2 veterans, who were really pissed off with being supplied junky old Pommy machines (everything from trucks to tanks) - and they were stunned whenever they overran and captured Germans, to find them driving near-new Chevies and Fords!

 

This was due to the Americans selling the Germans lots of new equipment during the '39 to '41 period. 

 

Naturally, the Americans were demanding cash payment, and the Nazis supplied it - looted from countries they'd overrun, and from European families and Jews who had resisted the Nazis.

 

And of course, the nationalised German Ford and Opel factories were running at a good speed, with forced labour, helping to supply the Nazi war machine.

 

These new U.S-supplied German Chevies were a very sore point with many of the M.E. Veterans - that a country that was supposed to be neutral, was still quite happy to make money out of supplying war equipment to an enemy that was set on destroying many of America's allies.

 

But nothing ever changes with American business, their economy runs on the military/industrial complex.

 

One thing's for sure though, as soon as the Americans got clobbered by the Japanese, and they came around to assisting us, the amount of new equipment they brought with them, was staggering.

 

The Americans gave 400,000 trucks, 2000 locomotives, and 11,000 railcars just to the Russians during WW2 - not to mention hundreds of aircraft and other supplies - and the vast majority of this was Lend-Lease.

 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/05/why-america-was-indispensable-allies-winning-world-war-ii-victor-davis-hanson/

 

 

[kgwilson]

The Yanks have never really done anything unless they get a direct benefit which translates into money. They have been in some war or another almost continuously since WW2 which has kept their armaments industry booming. Patriotism is at an all time high in the US even though they well know many of their incursions offshore are based on lies (e.g the WMD that Iraq didn't have) they choose to ignore this. Veterans are now revered unlike in the Vietnam era & now most don't care if the cause is just or not.