Great Day at Addison,TX ....B-29 and B-24 out and about

[Sunny9850]

I am in the Fort Worth,TX area for my day job and had time on my hands on Saturday since I could not work at my customers shop.

So I did what I normally do, I asked Siri for the nearest Air Museum to my location and she came back with the Cavenaugh Collection at Addison Airport.

I toured the museum (i'll upload pictures to my flickr account later) and then took the shuttle over to the CAF Ghost Squadron. You know the guys and gals who operate the only flying B-29 "FiFi" and one of only two flying B-24s "Diamond Lil"

I toured both aircraft and as luck would have it the B-24 had just received a new #4 engine and needed to get out for a post maintenance test flight.
Well...in order to get her out the B-29 had to be moved out of the hangar. Then there was the fact that a new FO had to be checked out in FiFi in order to be able to fly her on the upcoming East Coast tour so she would go for a flight as well.

Needless to say that I stuck around until all that had been captured on video. It turned out that I knew one of the B-24 Loadmasters and that got me a lot closer to the airplanes than usually allowed.

Here is the B-29s startup. I apologize in advance for the occasional wind noise. This was all truly unplanned so all video was taken straight with the Ipad ....

http://youtu.be/043Zs2fQa8U

http://youtu.be/Zs7RY30p9Y0
Taxiing out on #2 and #3 ... thanks to the deficiencies of the Ipad camera you can clearly see how the crew steers the castering nosewheel around by powering up #3 for the left hand turn.

http://youtu.be/Z-ABcE4L38g
And finally the moment...44" MAP and 2900 rpm (those were the agreed upon numbers for takeoff) and she is off.

Cheers
Stefan

[stansdds]

Fifi's new, hybrid R-3350's are great. They make more power at a lower MAP, are more reliable and run cooler than her original engines.

[Sunny9850]

I don't know if they make "more power" than the original engines, provided that both are fed the same 100LL there is a significant loss over historical performance either way.
However the new "hybrid" engines are far less prone to failure since they incorporate all the upgrades the R-3350 family of engines received over time and still fit into the cowls of the B-29.

In the end the reliability is the most important part because in her current role she will hardly ever need all the power a R-3350 can produce. Of course if in fact she does make more BMEP at a lower MP and RPM setting that will help with the longevity of these $800,000.00 engines.

Here is the link to the rest of the pictures I took at Addison that day for those interested.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan-...7629712234716/

Cheers
Stefan

[Cees Donker]

Thanks for sharing! Wonderful footage!!

Cees

[Wing_Z]

Fif does take her time to get off the ground, eh? you quite lose the soundtrack before the thing appears above the horizon!
Sounds like a great outing, and thanks for sharing it.

[PeteHam]

Thanks for sharing Stefan

Great vids and pics

Pete.

[Sunny9850]

She was fueled for a 2.5 hour flight to check out a new FO. That's 1000 gallons roughly. Plus the standard crew of 10. Not sure where that puts her final takeoff weight but with 100LL she just can't
make the same power she did with 145.

The sound was of course much better in person, but once airborne you really did not hear her anymore.

I will post a video of the B-24 later today. The start sequence of the engines came out better on that one and just might have usable sounds for Sir Nigel to create a new soundset.

Cheers
Stefan

[Volker Böhme]

Hi Stefan,

I note that during the taxi video, the outboard props were stopped and the blades rotated to a diagonal position - for maximum ground clearance, I assume?

Best regards,
Volker

[Sunny9850]

That's correct Volker, the taxiway is relatively narrow and the outboard engines overhang into the grass on either side. I assume that rather than risking FOD by something sucked out of the grass they taxi on #2 and #3 only.
I did not see anything being clo
se or high enough to become an issue, such as signage, but better safe than sorry.

Cheers
Stefan