Gnome Rotary Engine run

Biber · 2 November 2006, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PC777

Well here it is as promised, my first video attempt to youtube.

Hope it works out OK for everyone.

Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_JMGO5NzuI

Regards

Paul

ARE YOU GUYS NUTS???!!!!!!!! THAT LOOKED FREEKIN DANGEROUS!!!!!!!!!

Appreciate your risking all for the cause though. Thanks for the treat!

B

Ransom E. Olds · 2 November 2006, 11:24 AM

There are some figures for the ratio of rotary to stationary engine procurements in the Great War. During the war (per History of Technology, v. 11, 1986) Great Britain acquired about 58,000 aircraft engines, of which 19,000 were rotaries. This 1-in-3 ratio was pretty consistent for the entire war period. About a third of these 58,000 engines were of French manufacture.

For Germany I have seen only a list of procurements by manufacturer, not by engine type. Germany manufactured about 39,000 engines during the war, and of these about 2900 were made by Oberursel. Since the lion's share of German rotaries were made by that firm it's probably reasonable to assume somewhat less than ten per cent of Germany's engines were in fact rotaries. These figures for German engines are from Bernard Bellon's Mercedes in Peace and War (1990).

Taz · 2 November 2006, 12:02 PM

Ransom- Thanks for the numbers on the UK engines. I had not seen those. French numbers would be interesting, too, but do not know where to get them. I just read the German numbers, but cannot remember where I saw them. Will update when I find them. Siemens-Halske and Goebel also built rotaries, but, as you said, in much smaller numbers than Oberursel.

Taz
Terry Phillips

YavorD · 2 November 2006, 01:21 PM

NACA-TN-56 (1921) Hoff, The development of German Army airplanes during the war.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1993080850.pdf
See page 4, please!

Regards,
Yavor

PC777 · 2 November 2006, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Biber

ARE YOU GUYS NUTS???!!!!!!!! THAT LOOKED FREEKIN DANGEROUS!!!!!!!!!

Appreciate your risking all for the cause though. Thanks for the treat!

B

He He, the only incident was that the engine stand it is mounted on lost one of it's wheels, you can see the stand moving from the torque of the engine.

Other than that it was pretty tame, I kind of expected to see a lot more exhaust smoke and oil being flung out, but was surprised at how cleanly it ran.

I will post some more video of the Omaka Sopwith Camel sometime if people are interested, that made a very distinctive noise when it was on the ground and a lot more smoke!

PC