warbird1 wrote:
Cool narrative, thanks for that Gunny!
A few questions:
1) On initial takeoff, if you lose an engine, what do you base the decision on whether to continue the take off single engine or abort? Is it strictly airspeed like jets, or do other factors come into bearing?
2) If you do lose an engine on take-off, are you always able to climb out single engine? What conditions can you not? What kind of rate of climb can you get single-engine after take-off?
3) At pattern altitude, is there a certain speed, single engine, below which you cannot maintain level flight? What is that speed?
4) Is there ever a situation in a loss of engine on take-off, where you might have to reduce the power on the good engine, just to keep the airplane under control and still climb with a positive rate?
5) You talk about the P-38 having a lot of torque. I'm assuming you mean single-engine right? Doesn't the P-38 have counter rotating props? With two good engines, do you still notice the effects of torque despite the counter rotating props?
6) Can you always do a single-engine go-around in the P-38? Are there any situations where this is not possible? What are they?
As you can tell, I'm really interested in the single-engine performance of the P-38.
Thanks for taking the time to answer these. I have a few more questions, but I'll let you answer these first.
1) Safety Speed is 120 MPH... if you have that and the gear coming up you continue... if not you abort. Today we call that speed Vmc... back then it was just Safety Speed.
2) Remember we fly these things at far lower weights than they did operationally. So, if you have 120 you can climb out... there aren't any published climb rates and when I did this in the airplane, I must confess I didn't spend much time looking at the VSI... but it wasn't fast.
3) Again 120 is the magic number... but as far as flying the pattern is concerned if you are configured the airplane will not maintain level flight... below 500' you don't have enough altitude to attempt a go around... with Full Flap you are committed to land... don't screw it up.
4) Yes. You aren't in good shape until the gear is up and you can get more than 120 MPH.
5) If you don't have the RPM matched then you are turning... on the ground or in the air... big engine, big prop... it's just physics, lot's of torque. The counter rotating props don't really make a SE situation that much better. As I remember the Piper Seminole has counter rotating props and you don't notice much difference in mis-matched RPM in that airplane.
6) See 3... if you are configured then the answer is no, that SE torque will roll you over in a heart beat.
I hope that helps.
gunny
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