Anybody excited about the prospect of a two seat Hurricane

[JDK]

Quite right Dan, that'll teach me to post without checking, as I was heading out yesterday! Indeed the Merlin XX was a two-speed, supercharged version.

Interestingly the Wiki page on the Hurricane (referenced to my friend Melvyn Hiscock's Hurricane book) gives:

Hurricane Mk IIA Series 1
Hurricane Mk I powered by the improved Merlin XX engine.
...
The new engine was longer than the earlier Merlin and so the Hurricane gained a 4.5 in "plug" in front of the cockpit, which made the aircraft slightly more stable due to the slight forward shift in centre of gravity.[85] ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hurricane#Variants

Regards,

[Dave Hadfield]

The C of G issue is not a hard problem to solve. It's simple arithmetic, and I'll do it tomorrow using the wt and bal docs of our Hurri IV. It'll be a fairly close solution.

I suspect having an extra body aft will help. Our IV runs out of back stick at touchdown. In fact if you reduce to idle power a feet off the ground the nose drops and the thing goes on with a thunk. Shifting the C of G aft would make a 3-pointer much easier. The caveat is what-will-it-do-to-the-stall?, but we'll see.

Dave

[Dan Jones]

I'd be interested to know what the arm of the ammunition boxes is Dave, if the info is handy tomorrow.

Dan

[Firebird]

On another, less comforting note, MacIndoe's experience of plastic surgery with Hurricane pilots was often a much more challenging job than with Spitfire pilots in 1940 as the mixed construction fuselage was not a good place in a fire. Not really a major consideration in the modern environment of course.

Al Martin might disagree with that last statement....... even though he escaped from LF363 with only minor burns and a broken ankle.

[Dave Hadfield]

So, I just played with the C of G. I estimated the "arm" where a second seat would be, using 35" aft of the pilot. Using the Wt and Bal spreadsheet we have for the MkIV Hurri, a 200 lb passenger takes us to the aft edge of the envelope.

We stay within the envelope if we keep the fuselage tank full as long as possible. If the passenger seat can be kept to 30", even better.

I don't have the actual Wt and Bal document. I only have the spreadsheet we work with. Thus I don't know the actual datum. But it appears to be about the front tip of the spinner ( 85" arm for the pilot). Our gun bays have been converted to extra fuel tanks. They have an arm of 70", the main wing tanks are at 71".

So, this is only a guesstimate, but it looks do-able.

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

Also, the other variable is I'm not sure where the envelope limits are derived from. They may be modern. If we were allowed another .5", then absolutely no sweat.

Dave

[Fleet16b]

With all due respect to the Museums out that have or are thinking of converting fighters to twoseaters, I hope they don't.
I remember clearly when the CWH was turned their Corsair into a two seater and there were many mods done to achieve.
And for what ? The sake of a little more revenue ? It looked horrible and later was thankfully converted back.
Some of the larger aircraft out there like the B25, Lanc , DC3 etc can easily be converted with very little mod work but not so the fighters.
The responsibility of an aviation Museum is to preserve and maintain example as accurately as possible not modify. Over the years this we have seen incredible strides taken to be historically accurate with aircraft restorations ...they set the mark for all of us to work towards in our own restorations.
One must think of the aircraft in terms of an artifact. Museums do not take their artifacts and make major alterations to them for the sake of a few dollars. Yes hard to do with vintage aircraft as we must also think of safety but to me second seat in a single seat fighter has not place in it any more than a post war crash helmet does . Looks wrong and is an inaccurate portrayal of the aircraft. And yes before someone flames me, I have heard all the reasons and horror stories about injuries from lack of crash helmets.
There is also the question of authenticity , yes maybe there were two seat Hurricanes but the VWC one for example never was thus never should be .
IMHO it should be restored as it was , a CCF Hurricane , so that the future public ( Canadian and other ) can see an accurate example of our wartime Canadian achievements.
I guess it all adds up to the mandate of the owner or Museum that has the aircraft and what their
mandate is - accurately preserve and maintain or chase the $$$$
Not trying to disrespect anyone or any group ... just my 2 cents worth

Last edited by Fleet16b on Wed Dec 05, 2012 1:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Red Baaron]

I guess it all adds up to the mandate of the owner or Museum that has the aircraft and what their
mandate is - accurately preserve and maintain or chase the $$$$
Not trying to disrespect anyone or any group ... just my 2 cents worth

Sometimes accurately preserving and maintaining most of a collection (no matter how wealthy the owner is) involves having to chase the $$$$.

[Fleet16b]

True but it does not have to be at the expense of altering an historic artifact .
There are other ways to raise fund
We see Museums all over the world do it.

[bdk]

With all due respect to the Museums out that have or are thinking of converting fighters to twoseaters, I hope they don't.

So just about every Mustang out there should be converted back to a single seater? Are they as much for actual flight revenue or for experience flights to attract members and donors?

[Red Baaron]

True but it does not have to be at the expense of altering an historic artifact .
There are other ways to raise fund
We see Museums all over the world do it.

I'd be very interested in any plan you can think of that will raise more money than selling rides in a museum's airplanes. Excluding generous rich people giving away money, of course.

[JDK]

I'd be very interested in any plan you can think of that will raise more money than selling rides in a museum's airplanes. Excluding generous rich people giving away money, of course.

From the figures I'm aware of - and I've been on a couple of ride programme aircraft recently (as a guest / journalist and as a paying customer, in, ~let's see ~ four countries in the last two years) most of them are priced competitively to get customers. After actual costs are included, they will show some revenue stream for the organisation, but a very poor one compared to, say, corporate donations with would only have admin deductions, as opposed to the majority of the cash earned in rides being burnt on fuel, servicing, parts and logistics.

Most aviation museums continue to exist; don't fly their aircraft and don't have a rides programme. That doesn't mean rides are a 'bad' thing, just very much neither a major option, nor the only one.

Regards,

[bombadier29]

I think they are talking about flying museums versus static museums. I can't think of many flying museums that don't depend on the revenue from rides to a large extent.

[JDK]

I think they are talking about flying museums versus static museums. I can't think of many flying museums that don't depend on the revenue from rides to a large extent.

If you limit to museums that fly, again, globally, those with rides programmes are vastly outnumbered by those without.

(Of course if you call every pleasure flying operation a 'museum' that's not the case. But most don't represent themselves as such. In some countries, the US model for the Waiver program is not even legal.)

In the USA, I'd like to believe that the tickets bought for the Planes of Fame backseat rides, or Collings' tours, or the CAF offers, was 'the' major revenue stream, but if you have even a cursory look at the numbers, that simply can't be the case. Far more important to continued operation (as well as paying for fuel and consumables) are deep pockets, either on the Colonel CAF model or, in the case of most of those museums offering rides, one, rich, guy. Sponsorship is crucial in its various models as well.

To stack it another way; we'd lose a number of current flying operations and a proportion of the flights if rides were stopped tomorrow. Much would still fly. Conversely, if rides were to become 'the only' income stream there would be a much greater curtailment in the numbers able to fly on that cash.

But all that's actually beside the point. Very few flying ex-military aircraft are historically important examples in their own right, and even fewer of those that are offering rides. Mostly they are representative examples, and owe their survival to being restored to flight and thus able to provide thrills and so forth.

Fifi, the B-24s and most of the B-17s and CWH Lanc are exciting because you can fly in them. Their own history is simply not significant enough to be a drawcard for them specifically beyond the fact they represent their peer types and crews, many of which didn't come back.

The static museums look after the original, historic machines, and some of the active museums offer rides - which is a good balance, IMHO.

In the bigger picture, flying aircraft get people moving; to airshows, the museums, and just to the fence to see Collings' hit their local airport. While vintage aviation runs on volunteers and money, that interest is what gets the cash moving.

Regards,

[JDK]

On another, less comforting note, MacIndoe's experience of plastic surgery with Hurricane pilots was often a much more challenging job than with Spitfire pilots in 1940 as the mixed construction fuselage was not a good place in a fire. Not really a major consideration in the modern environment of course.

Al Martin might disagree with that last statement....... even though he escaped from LF363 with only minor burns and a broken ankle.

Good point, might scare the punters though!

That was indeed good airmanship and a lucky outcome for the pilot; however most of the fire-damage seen in the image was post-crash - if the fire had got going in the air, the pilot (we hope) would've bailed out. Staying with it is simply not an option.

I was thinking that outside combat and in the modern operating environment and conditions, the risks of setting Hurricanes on fire has lessened considerably.

Regards,