Monday 9 June 2014

Hawker Typhoon

Photo taken June 23, 2002 at the Welland Fun Fly

This plane was acquired from Don Prentice ( hence DGP on the side of the plane! ).  It was 1/6 scale ( 83" wingspan ) and was powered by a Quadra 50, turning a Zinger 20 x 8-14 propeller.  As I recall, we only got about 5700 rpm out of this prop, but it was the best one we tried.  It weighed some 25 lbs and flew quite scale like.  To my knowledge, it never flew while Don had it.  I recall flying it at the *old* Kitchener field, probably in 1996 or 1997.  On a seemingly soft landing, the gear went through the top of the wing!  So, the structure was reinforced.  It finally met its demise on one hot, humid day.  Our field was about 500 ft long with tall trees at one end and a river at the other.  The takeoff was uphill and the plane didn't want to takeoff, so I aborted.  As soon as the throttle was cut, it lifted off and so the power was quickly applied again, only there was insufficient room to clear the trees and it clipped a tree and spun in on the climbout.  I suppose it could have been repaired, but it never was.  Of course, Don witnessed the incident.



I found the airplane to be quite mushy on the elevator, especially during landing.  I don't know if the prop drag combined with the split flaps just blanketed the elevator, or what, but it took quite a bit of practice to get the speed just right with just the right anticipation for the flare, as there was a significant delay and then the tendency was to over do it.  But, as you can see in the above video, it had very gentle stall characteristics with no snap rolling tendency.  I think it was built from Claud Baskin plans ( Imp Scale ).

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