Aircraft engine model

I remember buidling one as a kid.

In a fit of nostalgia not too long ago I looked on e-bay. There's one there now, too.

At $ 550 you have to REALLY want one!

BobbyG

I know there was a visible gas turbine. I THINK there was also a radial available, but don't remember whose it was. The Allison GT may have been Renwal.

Revell has those molds now. I ~think~ that it was reissued as a "History Maker" kit (but could be wrong). Getting it in that box would be a hellava lot cheaper...

I wonder if the recip comes complete with safety wire and the ever present oil leaks? John

Renwall did a "visible" quarter-scale (not 1/48th, rather 1/4th) Wasp radial engine which was later reissued by Revell after they acquired Renwall's molds.

The later 1/11th scale Allison was original with Revell and not a re-issue of an earlier Renwall kit.

I've a listing which indicates Monogram did a 1/12th scale Cyclone radial (kit #6052) but I don't remember that one at all and don't know whether is was of the "visable" persuation or not.

Cheers and all,

"Bill Shatzer" wrote

It was 1/12, actually.

It was redone as a Revell kit, but they kept the trademark Monogram exploded view in the instructions. The only visible feature was one cylinder that showed a cylinder going up and down.

KL

I believe it actually scaled out closer to 1/11th. At least that's what my listings all say.

But I've not scaled it out myself. Indeed, I've never owned one to scale out.

If you've scaled it out and you get 1/12th, I'll certainly take your measurements on it.

Cheers,

Cylinders on a radial don't go up & down unless they're broken. :)

Actually, they do. My pop was a wrench on B-24s back in the Big One. He said the tolerance on how much the jugs would separate from the block was more than most people would think was safe.

WmB

i've read some were so well built they ran with a jug shot off for hours. one pilot said it ran "a little ragged".

Well, technically they don't, & where I was headed was that maybe you meant piston.

It has to do more with air cooling than anything else, as it is still able to keep it's temp somewhat under control, unlike a liquid cooled engine.

this engine had one cylinder completely shot away and still made power. apparently the pilot's main concern was the oil being lost but he did recover his base and they repaired the motor.

if you wuz speaking to me...piston and jug were gone. otherwise i think he meant piston as well.

Well I wasn't the original poster that made the cylinder remark and likewise I think he meant piston too - but my point about the jugs moving up and down (sometimes dramatically) remains. So technically they do move. ;-)

Under extreme operating conditions the studs attaching the jugs to the blocks would stretch, allowing for the jug to rise up and down. Of course it was not the design intent for power generating purposes to have the jug lift - that's the piston's job. But they knew the rods would stretch and they factored that into the design, so technically speaking the jugs do go up and down on some of the old WWII mills. Better to bend than to breakI guess.

Now how much can they move? The old man said they pulled jugs off returning Liberators and determined some had stretched cylinder studs to the extent that they had allowed for as much as an inch in jug travel. That's not to say they pulled off studs that were an inch longer than when the B-24 took off. They measured and observed the elongation of the studs and any existing gaps between cylinders and blocks to arrive at the conclusion that under some worse case scenarios the jugs had moved up by as much as an inch, and continued to operate. I didn't believe it either but the old man was a USAAF engine mechanic from 1941-45 and I wasn't.

I vaguely recall him mentioning placing damaged engines on test stands where they observed some amazing performance from some severely damaged engines. They sometimes had a lot of boring down time to deal with judging from some of his R&R stories. Other times they worked days on end w/o much sleep. Such is the life of a mud mechanic I guess. The old man loved the radial engine, he never shook off the amount of damage they could withstand and he was certainly in a position to form a qualified opinion of them from his time spent south of the Gustav line.

Another thing I clearly recall him saying was the engine service life. He said bombers were always top priority, they did not fiddle fart around with sending bombers up with gimpy engines - the supply of new ones in the crate was usually quite abundant. He said all the pilot would have to do is say the engine didn't sound right and out it came. They might have cobbled shit together in the Pacfic and on "BlackSheep Squadron" for dramatic effect, but the bomber boys over Europe were never short changed on equipment - except maybe in lack of long range fighter escort, early on. :-(

The local wrench at the airport today might say bullshit, no way about the jug thing - but looking at the comparison between military engine service life during WWII with post-war commercial results ( I've seen some service life data on P&W R-4360s, WWII and postwar) often demonstrates the mil guys were absolutely brutal on their equipment. And not just the pilots. The mil mechanics were not trained to operate under the financial constraints of a commercial airline struggling to make a buck, nor were they burdened by concerns for civilian passenger safety. The USAAF kids were playing the life and death game on a day by day basis and it was often played fast and loose.

And then there was the story of the Italian chick with the big BAH-ZOOMS...

WmB