And finally the end of the line. For a period around 2006 to 2008 another friend -- Dan Martin -- had a chance to chase the dream by leasing The Princess. Mike Barrow provided a truly monster Sparrowhawk Allison rod motor. Dan and Mike collaborated in developing a new set of blower gears -- ratios somewhere between -7 and -9 gearing to harness the torque production of that motor. Dan spent something like 30 grand on custom nose case gearing -- significantly longer than the .420 transport gears that had been thought to be the longest that would work. It was an amazing package -- but just as it was finally all coming together the airplane was literally pulled out of Dan's hangar, trucked away, and disassembled. Dan had only a lease on the airplane, and the airplane was sold to a new owner with plans that did not include Dan Martin or Mike Barrow.
That was a really sad moment for the sport of airplane racing...
The motor and expertise did go into Dan's daily driver stock airframe P-51 the next year, though, and ran at speeds of up to 490 mph! With a stock canopy and gun blisters in the wings! That was truly something to behold, and left a lot of us wondering what could have been done if Dan and Mike had just had one more year with the Princess.
_PRN4137 by
Neal Nurmi, on Flickr