I'm in the mood to stump people.....

[jetmex]

...so lets see if you guys can figure out what airplanes these panels are attached to:


1.




2.




3.




4.





Good luck, and remember that Galvin has posters of all of these on his living room wall........ ;D ;D

[trimtab]

Well here goes

1. P-51

2. Cessna 140

3. Ryan Navion

4. Lear 25

[jetmex]

Trimtab, good guesses!

#2 is a Cessna, but not a 140. The fourth is indeed a Lear, but not a 25. I'm going to be picky today and see if anyone can guess the correct models...... ;D ;D

Not even close on the other two......

[trimtab]

#1 AT-6 Texan

#2 Cessna 170

#3 looks like a sliding canopy ??

#4 Lear 35

[jetmex]

1. No

2. Almost

3. Maybe.......

4. No

You didn't think I was going to make this easy, did you?? ;D

;D

[JimCasey]

#5 is a '78 Honda Accord.
Apparently the ashtray in #3 is not rated for inverted flight.

[jetmex]

Where is everybody?

[jetmex]

Ok, so I guess this WAS too hard for you guys. So here are some hints:

1. It is not a WWII aircraft.

2. This aircraft is still in production today.

3. This aircraft does have a sliding canopy. The ashtray is rated to +4 and -3 G's....... ;D

4. Trimtab is REALLY close on this one......

Good luck!

[Galvin]

2. is a prehistoric Cessna 172 with the old "toy" 120/140/170 style rudder pedals and Johnson bar operated manual flaps that had the endearing trait of sometimes retracting themselves suddenly if the ratchet mechanism was worn enough.

3. is a Globe (More likely Temco) Swift and it does NOT have a sliding canopy. The side windows slide down into the sides of the fuselage like those on the Ercoupe and there is a top hatch hinged at the front that will NOT prevent you from leaving the airplane if your three year old daughter suddenly puts those pudgy little feet on the control column and pushes with all her might. Thank God for seat belts!

My Swift was a 1946 Temco built airplane, serial 2515, N78238 and is still flying out of Camarillo, CA.

I'll give you some more time on the other two before I pounce.

[Galvin]

Regarding No.1: My method of attack.

A. Not a jet because of the mag switch on the left and the engine primer knob on the right. Recip then. BIG recip with centerline seating and all AN instruments so probably military. Fighter or attack or trainer?

B. Not a fighter or ground attack aircraft or there would be a gunsight dominating the top of the center panel. Ergo it's a trainer.

C. Not a T-34 because I once flew Pt. Mugu's Navy flying club T-34 and this cockpit is HUGE by comparison.

D. I once flew a T-28A and this is pretty much a typical North American cockpit layout and pretty much what the T-28 cockpit I remember looked like but checking shows differences. Mag on the left (I've seen them on the right too in T-28 restorations) and primer way over on the right plus the plethora of clocks on the panel reinforce my dim memory of Tony Collitti's airplane when I got to go up in it. I also remember that it had the smoothest set of ball bearing equipped flight controls I had ever experienced until I later got to sit in Frank Saunders' Sea Fury. Stick movement in both airplanes was virtually effortless on the ground.

E. The square center instrument panel and consoles are very close to the pictures I found but the view out the front almost seems like a taildragger rather than the typical nosewheel equipped T-28. And all instruments are front mounted in this aircraft instead if from the rear like most T-28 pictures on the web.

G. Conclusion: My guess is it is an early North American T-28 "Trojan", either a prototype or A model, or possibly one of the two XSN2J prototypes. They were the original predecessors of the T-28 and were taildraggers powered by R-1830 Wright Cyclones. That might also explain the nose high "sit" seemingly conveyed by this picture. Or not. It could be a nose wheel airplane too. If so it's likely a T-28.

[jetmex]

Dave, you got 2 and 3. 2 is indeed an ancient Cessna 172, and yes I remember the self deploying flaps! 3 is a Globe Swift, and you're right about the canopy arrangement. Wasn't there a retrofit STC to install a sliding canopy on that airplane? I can swear I've seen one set up like that.

Good plan of attack, but no on 1. Same general time frame as the T-28, and it is a trainer........ ;D

Anyone else want to have a crack at #4?

[Galvin]

I thought those rudder pedals looked familiar but I thought it was because they were North American and I had seen them in a T-28 I flew. Turns out I HAD seen them but not in a T-28. They are identical to the ones that were on the left side of my Swift's cockpit. (The right pedals didn't have brakes and were different.) I was thinking of a much larger airplane, given the roominess of the cockpit, and I was right about it being a taildragger.

I should have realized that since the Temco TE-1B/T-35, the loser to the Beech T-34 for the primary trainer contract after WWII, used a Swift fuselage but had centerline seating, it would be much larger than than the T-34 inside.

Believe it or not, I have actually sat in the one that the picture was taken in but I never flew it. The two surviving T-35/ TE-1B prototypes from the USAF competition were both housed in John O'Crowley's hangar for several years back in the late sixties and early seventies when I was instructing out of Van Nuys airport and I saw them daily even though I never flew one. The third prototype was destroyed in a fatal crash at Glen Ivy hot springs when the owner, who had installed his own tip tank modification, spun it in while dorking around at low altitude, killing him and his son.

That hangar, by the way, is seen in old photos in books telling of the original Goodyear racers when the sign on it read "Pacific Air Racing". John just changed the "Racing" to "Radio" when he bought the hangar for his avionics repair business. The former all-time champion formula one racer "Shoestring" was built in there by the Ast brothers and I actually saw it before they finished it when I was about eight or so.

John's T-35 was later re-engined with a 210 HP Continental O-360 out of, I believe, a fixed gear Cessna 336 fixed gear Skymaster. The power increase over the original 165 HP Franklin boat anchor it originally came with was a definite improvement.

The other T-35 was owned by a Hungarian engineer who had been a refugee during the 1956 revolt and who had done VERY well in the U.S. His instructor on the TEMCO was, unfortunately a former Hungarian MiG pilot who had also defected and whose idea of teaching him aerobatics was "pull as hard as you can, black out, recover". After Lazlo started noticing that the leading edges of the wings, basically Swift wings with bigger spar caps and more spanwise stringers, were actually collapsing from being overstressed, he backed off and things got a little easier for the airplane.

I say a LITTLE easier because he still ran the hell out of that old Franklin. One day he was over Malibu and the T-35's Aeromatic prop, a plastic covered wooden two position affair actually held in the hub by screws, puked a blade. Given the RPM he was running, it probably ended up in Czechoslovakia. The remaining blade stayed attached and the resulting imbalance broke the crankshaft and the forward end of it, including the remaining blade, broke through the front of the engine going straight up and is probably still in orbit. The engine broke loose and came off its mounts, turning sideways in them but staying in the airplane and the accessories broke off the back of it and went into the sea off Malibu.

Since the engine was still in the airplane it was still controllable but barely so because the cowling looked like it had taken a direct hit from an 88 and was sticking out in all directions. He managed to dead stick it (is it really dead stick if the prop, the "stick" in question, has left the building?) onto the beach with the wheels down and it did only a little further damage when it nosed over but didn't completely flip.

I saw the airplane after he brought it back to Van Nuys and casually asked him what he intended to do with it. "Fix it" was all he said.

He blew all our socks off a couple of months later when he brought it back to the airport and flew it. I have never seen anything like it before or since. He was not an aircraft mechanic but he must have been one of the worlds most gifted craftsmen because he had pounded and riveted that same cowling back together and you had to get right up close to it to see where it had been damaged. Absolutely perfect repair job. I believe he put another Franklin in it at the time but it eventually got the O-360 upgrade too. He eventually sold it to some guy in the San Diego area and it disappeared until I started seeing articles on it in the Airplane mags a few years later.

The Swift was put into the competition for a new primary trainer post-WWII along with the Fairchild T-31 and Beech's Bonanza based T-34 in 1948 or so with Beech winning the contract.

The original C-125 and C-145 powered TE-1A's were way out-classed by the T-34 but the Philippines bought some of the early models and the Saudis bought at least ten of the early lower powered models too. The Israelis tested one but ended up buying something else. I had a student who was an airline pilot who went to the Saudis in the seventies and brought one back. It is restored and is in Saudi colors.

Rep. Dale Milford of Texas had a sort of hybrid Buckaroo that he had cobbled together from a Buckaroo fuselage and Swift wings and tail. It is still around too, as far as I know. There was one other later Buckaroo development that TEMCO referred to internally as the "Armed Demonstrator", built for the possible counter-insurgency contracts of the sixties. It had a tri-gear and a really big engine but was otherwise a Swift in a clean suit just like all the rest of them. The pieces of that one were still around when I last heard of it but I have no idea what, if anything, was ever done with them.

[Britbrat]

That's an interesting story. We had the same thing happen to a Chipmunk at Centralia in June '64.

A Chippy had a prop failure that promptly lead to engine mount failure. The engine & cowling debris was hanging vertically downward by a few hairs & pipes, but the aircraft remained more-or less controllable & was dead-sticked into a fortuitously close abandonned WWII airfield with no injuries.

At the time, the decision to fly it in rather than bail out, was hailed as an act of heroism & airmanship. Personally, I would have jumped -- had the engine parted company at low altitude during the emergency descent, there would have been no chance of survival.

[Galvin]

I had about 6'' of a blade take leave of the aircraft on a takeoff out of Santa Monica in about 1980. Fortunately we had only just started the T.O. roll but the vibration was so bad I had trouble surrounding the mixture knob to kill the engine. I couldn't cage my eyeballs for a while afterwards either.

My friend Ralph Wise, former Marine F-4 pilot and formula one racer, built two different George Owl racers over a period of several years and took the second one to Oshkosh to compete in an efficiency race back in the early eighties. He was just coming out from over a very thick forest when a blade let go and did the usual number on the motor mount, engine, and airframe. He dead sticked it onto a very narrow rural road in a residential area and rolled out on one of the local lawns, leaving a huge oil stain that the owner said not to worry about.

After getting his color back, he went to look at the road on which he had landed and discovered that he had also crossed a small and very narrow bridge. It proved to be just over one foot and a half wider than his 18' wing span. He says he doesn't remember crossing the bridge and clearing the railings by inches on either side because he was too busy trying to keep it in the center of the narrow road.

[jetmex]

Dave, that is indeed a T-35 Buckaroo, and I had a feeling when I read the article that contained the pic that you might be familiar with it.

Anyone figure out what model Lear #4 is yet?

One of our DC-3s chucked a prop blade over Dallas one night a long time ago. It missed the airplane, but the vibration got so bad it ripped the gearbox from the front of the engine. We never found the blade that came off, but the gearbox and the rest of the prop came to rest in someone's back field. I got a phone call about two AM to bring a tug and come get my POS airplane off the runway. Didn't have any trouble finding it, just followed the oil streak....When I got to the airplane, the pilot was sitting in the door shaking his head, the copilot left and we never saw him again. And I got to do another engine change and replace some VERY mangled cowlings......

[trimtab]

Time is up.

What model Lear is it?

[jetmex]

Ok, it's a Lear 24. Told you it was close! ;D

[ctdahle]

You said Trimtab was close, but by my math, he was off by 11

[jetmex]

Hey Chris, read the first post, he was off by one!

[Galvin]

Pretty hard to guess that one. When I went through Lear class in 1979 my instructor, Dave Rummery, told me that a lot of 23s had been upgraded various amounts and some were virtually indistinguishable from 24s. Clay Lacy at Van Nuys had a couple of the very earliest 23s and they were upgraded over the years like this. As things transpired, I never actually flew the airplane so I can't claim to be an expert but that part abut 23s being upgraded to 24 or near 24 status I do remember.

Trivia question:

Why was the Lear 23 called the 23, the 24 called the 24, and the 25 called the 25.