Gee Bee Z, ready to fly?

[Sky Quest]

Kermit Weeks has been working on getting his Gee Bee Z back in the air for sometime now. Here's the lastest clip he posted on a taxi and run up. Be nice to see it flying soon.

http://youtu.be/onnIEj51X9g

[SaxMan]

Jimmy Doolittle once described the GeeBee as the most dangerous plane he'd ever flown. When asked why did he fly it if it was so dangerous, he replied because it was the fastest plane in the world at the time.

Two of the Granville brothers were killed flying their planes. Out of 24 GeeBees built, I believe 15 were lost in accidents, 9 of them fatal.

[Stephan Wilkinson]

I thought Delmar Benjamin put all that to rest, whether or not Doolittle actually said it.

[k5083]

I don't think it has been put to rest, although I've really only heard the R-series characterized as so dangerous.

Yes, Delmar said it was not dangerous and he certainly flew it well -- but he's Delmar. I sense that there are lingering doubts as to whether the plane was as honest as he claimed.

Then again, Doolittle also may have exaggerated how dangerous it was for his own purposes.

Unfortunately, the controversy won't be resolved even if Kermit starts flying Delmar's plane and finds it manageable -- because he's Kermit.

August

[SaxMan]

Doolittle's quote about the Gee Bee is in his autobiography "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again" with Carroll Glines. Unless Glines was pulling a "Martin Caidin", I'd say that Doolittle said it.

[Tiger Tim]

I thought at the time Doolittle had nothing but good things to say about the Gee Bee.

-Tim

[The Inspector]

Delmer put that myth to rest about 30 seconds into his first flight when he rolled it inverted on climbout. (should be on Youtube I'd guess, saw the footage @ a clinic he presented @ KAWO) I saw him and a local guy who'd restored Mr. Mulligan put on a 20 minute recreation of a race @ the EAA fly-in @ KAWO (Arlington WA) many years ago both within a wingspan of each other and the Z was steady as a rock. I also saw SAMPSON fly @ the same meet, that was IMPRESSIVE an Immelman from take off and under 500 ft.

[SaxMan]

I think there is a difference between the R series and the Z series? It looks like the R had less wing area? Is anyone flying an R series replica?

[Champ driver]

Kermit owns the Gee Bee Z which I believe was built by Bill Turner and was featured in the movie The Rocketeer.
The original Z model crashed with Lowell Bayles on board. That's the spectacular movie footage you see from time to time in old movies. He was on a speed run and the rumor is that a fuel or oil cap came off at speed and smashed through the windshield. You can't fault the aircraft design for that.

Delmar flew a replica of the R-2, not the Z model, and there's a huge difference between the two. The original Z model was yellow and black and the R models are red and white, and the R-1 was built for closed course races and the R-2 was built for long distance races.

[lotus49]

Kermit's Model Z was built by Kevin Kimball, and Jeff Eicher.
Delmar Benjamin did the first flight, and Kermit has also flown it.

The R series were heavier than the Z, due to increased fuel capacity, and a larger airframe.

Kermits R2 was built by Steve Wolf and Delmar Benjamin. Delmar flew the aircraft almost 10 years, and over 1000 hours, in airshows, cross country, and also in France and Germany.
Total damage in this time, 1 scraped wingtip, exhaust cracking and a damaged LH wheel pant in Germany.
Sounds like a flyable aircraft to me!
Many general aviation types will accumulate more damage in a similar time span.

Steve and Delmar went to great lengths to build the aircraft exactly as the original, to counter the statements below, if they had changed the dimensions, airfoil, etc they knew it would be an invalid comparison to the original.

The Big Radial racers of the 30`s all shared some common traits, big engines, small airframes, large fuel capacity, high wing loading, tall gear, and they were for the most part blind on take off and landing.
They often were operated from poorly prepared short strips, demanding a slow approach speed, and a 3 point landing, and if they had brakes they were generally weak and not very effective.
With all of the above is it any wonder few survived intact.
The 30s racers were single purpose, no compromise machines.

30`s racer replicas, built and flown today, by capable pilots, aware of their limitations and characteristics, from suitable airfields, with good brakes, are no different from any other high performance single purpose aircraft.

[JohnTerrell]

There aren't any Gee Bee R-models flying at this time, but there are three different R-model examples which are currently in different stages of completion to fly. These include an R-2 that is being built by Mac Transtrum, an R-1 that is being built by Harold Forth, and another R-1 being built by Lee Oman (Reno air race pilot). All of these builds are like pieces of artwork, and all appear to be faithful to the original designs.

As has been outlined, the Gee Bee Z that is owned by Kermit Weeks, built by Kevin Kimball and Jeff Eicher, is not the example as seen in the movie The Rocketeer (which is on static display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle), and is a more accurate reproduction with no straying from the original design, where as the Bill Turner example that is seen in The Rocketeer has extended dimentions to make it easier to handle.

Delmar Benjamin, not too long ago, posted an air-to-air photo to Facebook of him flying the Kevin Kimball Gee Bee Z reproduction that Kermit Weeks owns, from back when he was doing the flight testing of the aircraft. As he states, he flew the Kimball Gee Bee Z 12 times, and it, the Gee Bee Z, is his favorite aircraft of all time. He also posted that those 12 flights in the Z were the most fun he has ever had in an airplane. (Besides the R and Z, Delmar has also flown a Gee Bee E and Y.)

Speaking of Gee Bees, Jim Moss' Gee Bee Q.E.D. reproduction should be flying very soon. A few videos have cropped up on Youtube from some recent engine runs, showing the aircraft complete, or very near to it - compared with the other Gee Bee series aircraft, the thing is absolutely huge!

[Baldeagle]

Total damage in this time, 1 scraped wingtip, exhaust cracking and a damaged LH wheel pant in Germany.

You pass over that "one scraped wingtip" incident pretty quickly.......

No doubt that Delmar or Jimmy or Kermit talking about how an airplane flies might be a bit different than the perspective of a more "ordinary" pilot-




-

[SaxMan]

Undoubtedly today's pilots have a lot more experience with high performance aircraft. In the 30s the racers were at the edge of technology. No one had flown in planes that fast or with the kinds of wing loadings that would now be considered commonplace among the more experienced warbird pilots.

Is there is an aeronautical equivalent of a 30s racer out there that would push pilots to beyond the known envelopes today? Maybe the Scramjet program?

[Baldeagle]

In Delmar's words, how much fun does this sound...?:
http://www.avweb.com/news/osh2002/183335-1.html?type=pf

"When I flew it, I had payments to make, so I had no choice but to start flying airshows right away. My first show, we started at Sun 'n Fun in the spring. My first flight in it was climbing in and going to Sun 'n Fun." Since then he has amassed 1138 hours in the R-2, more than Doolittle, more than Lee Gehlbach, more than anybody. And the plane he calls the "shortest, snakiest taildragger ever built" is still a handful. He knows overconfidence will kill him and the first thing he thinks when he gets in the plane is how he's going to land it.

"When you fire it up, you've got this huge engine on a little airframe and that feels very good, like a sportscar. It's rumbling away...it makes you happy just warming up and then when you taxi out to the runway you can't see anything, you've just got to get a little sideways and look down the runway. And then you go for a ways and wonder what's up there again and you look again. And, you can't really go back and forth because you have to go so far to see anything, it's not like a Stearman or something, you can't s-turn back and forth and see something, this one you have to get 90 degrees to see down the runway."

It's got aileron reversal
"First I bring the power up and I use all of it, it really goes nice and straight. You got the stick forward and you're waiting for the tail to come up, because you can't see anything until the tail comes up. And you get the tail up and then you can see down the runway, you need to hold it on until 120 (mph), because it's got aileron reversal. If you dial in an angle of attack around 100 it would fly off, but the ailerons would be reversed at that speed, so if you move the ailerons you would snap in. On my first flight, I got pilot induced oscillations—first in yaw, and then when I rotated, in pitch. I got through that and it hasn't happened since. I was sitting on a seatback parachute…I was moving back and forth and the airplane was out of sync with me. We got the seat fixed."

"You fly with kid gloves...it's a very light touch. It doesn't have any stick pressure and sometimes it uses negative pressure. But once I got accustomed to that, I liked the way it flies. The rudder is 13 inches deep and 6 feet tall, very large when you look at it…and it'll beat you to death. You hit the rudder and your head hits and canopy. See, the canopy's pretty scarred up there, I always seem to hit my headset on the left side for some reason."

"It's so pitch sensitive that you could put one finger on top of the stick and you could break the wings off the airplane, just by pulling the stick back with one finger. That's how sensitive it is. Like yesterday, I pulled for the barrel roll, and pulled about 10 g's just because that thing is so pitch sensitive."

"On landing, you need to keep speed up so you don't get into aileron reversal, and you need to see the runway, so usually when I'm downwind, when I cross the numbers I start a turn and come right down to the runway and level out and touch down and try to touch down easy because the shock absorbers on this thing don't work well, and it'll tear the gear off the airplane. Then your elevators quit working at about 80 mph, so the tail will come down on its own at about 80-100 mph and that is too fast to be going down the runway and you can't see anything in front of you. And there's so many curved surfaces you can't look out one side and tell if you're straight, so you try to put your head back against the headrest and you try to keep the same amount of runway on both sides—-you can only see a little pie shape of runway behind the wings and you try to keep the same amount."

[DH82EH]

Delmar said "how much fun does this sound"
....reminds me of a quote written about flying the Hispano Buchon. "It's like making love to a beautiful woman..... ......with your wife watching. It's a little difficult to enjoy!"
I have to say I never cease to be amazed by the depth of knowledge of all you WIXers. Thanks folks.

Andy Scott