DRACO - The Most Badass Monster Bush Plane EVER!

alright guys so if you haven't seen this plane yet I don't know where you been but Mike's will has been getting a lot of attention and a lot of you guys have commented in the comments section that you'd like to see more about it so I got Mike here I'm figuring we should take this second to check out his incredible her I'm Trent Palmer just like drones for a living and Bush planes for fun follow along as I journey off the beaten path of aviation [Music] [Music] [Music] sup Mike how you doing buddy show me the welcome let's do it alright first of all just tell me the basics of what the plane is what it started as and then how you got here okay so so will the pzl 104 it's a backcountry bush plane developed in 50s I think long time ago and it's always intrigued me normally they have a 260 horsepower radial on the front of it and it's a great plane it was developed to pack gear into warriors where there's no runway no improvement so it has a really crazy suspension that was my platform yeah and then what have you done to it yours didn't have the radio correct what did you have what did you do to it okay so in 2006 they decided to reintroduce the will good that hadn't been in production for a long time they made 24 from 2006 to 2008 and I initially showed up here at Oshkosh and saw the new version of the we'll go with a lycoming 540 I fell in love with it and they said they wouldn't sell it I was fortunate enough to talk him out of it and I bought serial number one in 2006 and I flew it for about a thousand hours loved it sold it because I like to try a bunch of different planes thinking I'll just buy another one later right after I sold it they discontinued making it and I tried for 10 years to find another well good 2000 is what it's called there was the newer version and after 10 years of hunting I found the last one ever made so the bookends I had the first in the very last this is serial number 24 last will get ever made and I bought it and I wanted to fix the problems I had with my first one great plane at sea level it just really was on the back side of the power curve as soon as we got up to the backcountry I live in high altitude hot and heavy it just couldn't quite do it so I had this silly idea here alright so my silly idea was if I don't have enough power well it kind of got amplified I was flying this plane around knowing I want to do a turbine I wanted to upgrade it but I was in a formation flight for a photo shoot with a bunch of planes over the water and this engine blew up on me and the piston engine it threw two rods out of the side I almost put it in the water fortunately I I got what cylinders were left kind of running alive enough to bump it up off the water and then it just blew apart I blew smoke and smoke in the cabin and I dead sticked it with just about 50 yards off the shore into a farmer's crop field of corn yeah and jumped out of the plane didn't hurt it got it on great billowing smoke come out hot coming out of the airplane and I thought well now's the time let's put a PT six in it so yeah I kind of pushed it let's get it done yeah and then of course Mike just putting a PT six on it wasn't enough what else did you do not everything all right so we'll start the PG six is a Pratt Whitney pt6 - 28 makes 715 thermodynamic horsepower uh-huh gearbox limits me to 680 so 680 horsepower is what I use and it worked out great a lot of fun so that's the powerplant prop was made by mt it's a hundred and two inch for blade who has a huge fighting court on it and it launches more like a drag car than any plane I've ever had it's it drops you in your seat and it's gone so that worked out really good it was a great package around here I changed the suspension system remade the trailing link gear mm-hmm machine my own axles because you couldn't fit thirty fives on it they came with little 950 issue size tires so I machine new axles put big tires the brakes weren't big enough to stop a 35 so while I was making the axles I made new hub assemblies made a new braking system and add doubled up on the brake so we redid all the brakes the axles and put on some big tires putting on a PT six there gas guzzlers but not relation relative to so pt6 they drink a lot of gas because they make a lot of power they're actually extremely efficient I actually get a longer range surprisingly with this a member with this relative fuel with this motor because I can go to only 28 gallons an hour go up high pull the power back go 700 miles range I'm only burning 28 gallons an hour my other plane had to stay down low it didn't have enough horsepower to go up I yeah and so what I had to do was I'd burn 26 gallons an hour which is less but I went 40 miles an hour slower than what this does up high okay I'm actually per mile I do better with the Pratt Whitney than I did with the lycoming that had in it but I wanted to add more fuel because if I'm really gonna Huck the coal to it it can guzzle it down respectively so I made this gear tank this is all fuel inside here yeah there was two reasons I did this the wings have very little dihedral they're a very flat wing and before I did this engine if I got into some really Rick wicked slot canyons that I had to walk a slit back and forth down in and I'm chasing the fuel selector side to side to drop it down the walls in southern Utah it was really easy to get it to suck air into the fuel system and start the sputter so that made it really interesting so I decided I'd do a gear leg like this this is still one wing or one fuel tank on this wing but it's this wing feeds this tank through a large line my fuel pickup is at the bottom of this funnel so if I have even one gallon of fuel I have almost 12 inches of fuel above my pickup and I can't put this in an attitude including inverted that can get air to that this is 100% fuel air vents at the top so there's no way to suck air no matter how radical I put this plane so I got my fuel stuck it in the tank so gotcha I'm wings this plane I couldn't land well I couldn't go where any of my carbon cut buddies would go it had a really long ground roll for takeoff is a big heavy plane if I was up in the high mountains with my friends that could use two thousand feet of runway sea level was only 400 but as soon as you went up it the curve against the power and weight was was horrible so I cited the power fixed the ground rule they had the power to get off but my approach to land was fifty seven mile an hour stall speed on this aircraft so I decided I wanted to build a new wing and change the earth so decide I want to build a new wing and get my stall speed down my goal was to get at least ten miles an hour slower yeah I made every effort I could to get as low as possible so I actually lengthened the cord of the wing I added cord over a foot to the wing I completely changed the airfoil when I remade the wing so I added both cord I added six inches of length per side I enlarged my flaps and large my ailerons I stretched my ailerons and I was hoping for that 10 mile an hour reduced stall speed and ultimately after flight testing I ended over 20 miles an hour slower stall so I'm into the 30s now instead of 57 so that really helped it's never landing thing so that worked out good I'll see what else we do we put in a new panel you still have steam gauges oh yeah way more fancy stuff than I know how to use so I put in autopilot three access yard am included so that's been really nice for getting up high and cruising I put in a night-vision camera up on the wing up here so I can see in the in the at night I put a backup camera I use it actually a lot when I'm pairing up with all my friends to see him joining I put a really bright backup light on it so actually kind of use it like moths to a flame we we sometimes all the flying cowboys or from several different states that we all like to fly with we join up in the sky often it's hard to find planes so I actually put airline landing lights on it's the brightest lights you can get so they're the upgraded lights for 737 and then I put a really bright light on the back it's like turning on the Sun and so I'll get up in the air will turn on the lights and then anybody within 15 miles can see me and we converge and then we find each other so we just go for the light so that worked out really good yeah and I will tell you the light flame like I could not believe how easy it is to see you we get you know especially when there's harsh lighting conditions or weird contrast it's really hard to see some of these planes and they're different colors even my plane everyone says it's invisible aside for my white stripes but here's with that light you're not missing it that's really cool yeah I get the I get that Mike turn your life so I can find you let me get closer they might turn off the damn lights now you're gonna burn my retinas so it worked out good on the back of the plane we we redid the back I felt the crazy tail wheel back here I enlarged the elevator I enlarged the rudder to give me more control at slower flight the tail wheel will guy already has 325 pounds of weight on the tail wheel with nobody in it since all your weight or people and your bags is all behind your front tires yeah you can get that tail wheel over a thousand pounds and so here's what happened to me on the beaches everywhere I went I come in land on a beach my 35 could ride on top and the little tail wheel on the back would just dig a trench and I've come to a stop and you couldn't see the tire there's just gone cutter yeah pizza cutter went in the ground so this chunk of aluminum right here was a hundred plus pound block of solid aluminum carve new forks made new pivots a new bearing set machined the whole thing then I put a shimmy dampener on it it used to the stock will get anytime you landed that back wheel would shimmy like crazy is nothing you could do about it you could tighten the bearing set you could do everything stop it for a week and then it just starts shaking so I built the shimmy dampener with a pivot system in it and now my tail wheel doesn't move at all so that's done you see my backup light up there I don't know what else Mike I just realized we forgot two things one is what the heck's going on on the wingtips the second is what's your takeoff or landing distance yeah well if we're Bush line is probably the most important question so I think I know exactly what well I know exactly what my take-off is the way I've got to set up now last night I was flying at about 3,000 pounds empty weighs 2,400 gross weighs 4,000 so I had a bit of fuel and just me so at 3,000 pounds my three runs on competition scored 124 feet 118 feet in 118 feet so within six feet and two matching I think I'm pretty well it's about what it's gonna be until I don't know I find a new trick landing roll well I'm definitely not as targeted my range fluctuated over 20 feet I'm right around 160 feet landing roll then so I got some room to perfect my abilities there but we'll get there so hundred shoes the hundred 18 and you're using beta and reverse on landing yeah isn't a lot of reverse so I'm coming in I'm still coming in pretty fast I'm not quite comfortable getting to the horn on my plane yet so when I when I set the mains down I click it into reverse and I give it at least 300 horsepower reverse thrust and it stopped me fast so it makes up for my flaws and the wing tips though it gets just the quick and dirty on those and then we go 30 tips may I never use this carbon composite basically it's a leaf spring I've made a giant machined part that tied into the all three spars of the will go the willget has three spars in it and I put a giant machine bracket in tied that in this can take 800 pounds of upward force before it will touch the tip of my aileron that's in case I screw up and I ground loop my plane and so the idea is almost every will get in existence has been grounded there there a bit of a challenging plane to fly with this really radical suspension so they tend to get ground looped easy most of the time they come down hit the wing they crunch the aileron break the tip they have to turn it apart inspect the spars so I decided you know what let's get it 16 inches of suspension absorb it soften the impact or even if I'm lucky I can come down like most wingtip ground loops they just kind of drag it for a second and come back up if that's the case I won't hit anything touch anything I can't hurt this bar at all unless I really wreck it so may you never see a bunch of rock scratches on the bottom of that but if you do maybe my wing will be safe so that was the idea let's hope it's a complete waste of my time all right so now for the questions everyone's wanting to ask what are you getting for climbrate cruise stall fuel burn okay so climb is the funnest if I take off my normal pitch angle on rotation is just pitch right for 30 knots or sorry 30 degrees okay and I don't rotate till about 45 miles an hour yeah which is about 10 miles an hour above my stall so 45 miles an hour I rotate I pitched for a 30-degree deck angle and right on rotation that will hit immediately 4,000 feet a minute and and and at 4,000 feet a minute my airspeed will be gaining I can get about 50 miles an hour increase airspeed wall at 30 degrees deck within a thousand feet geez so it's really it's really weird I usually on any of the bush planes I've been flying yeah you get it off the ground and you pitch for stall and you try and ride that and clear an obstacle this is the first bush plane I've it's fun to fly where I I don't even look at the airspeed indicator because you're sunk in your seat it's gaining speed and you're just looking for your deck so it's been fun so 4,000 feet of minutes is a real-world number top speed is 180 miles an hour to do that the will get has a redline of a hundred and about 150 miles an hour 140 knots is red line 150 miles an hour so I can't do any faster than that B and E down low so down low I can do 150 miles an hour I'm using about half throttle about 150 mile an hour cruise so down low you burn more fuel on a turboprop so I'm burning 28-29 gallons an hour down low at 150 miles an hour if I want to save fuel 4,000 feet a minute I can be in the nice cool there and in two to three minutes sixteen seventeen thousand feet level it off now I'm 170 hundred eighty miles an hour at almost the same fuel flow just thinner air I'm not in the red line and I can push it up and you have oxygen I have oxygen I got four place oxygen onboard I got two massive tanks we came out here from Salt Lake City to Oshkosh and I used a third of a third of my onboard oxygen so I can come all the way across the country and return and still have a third left roughly of oxygen on board Wow so what else we met stall speed it's it's actually unknown yet I I took it out for all my flight programs it's been flying eight days now so I'm still wringing it out I took it up to where I got what I believe to be first onset I always normally take it to a full break but that that part of the flight test was the one of the first ones I didn't have a parachute on on my initial flight test I had parachutes I was doing all kinds of more radical things than one day I said let's let's just kind of get it near a stall and I'll bring it over the deck and go was steep enough that I actually got uncomfortable my airspeed got 220 mile at 29 miles an hour and indicated I can tell you at the deck angle I'm at that that is not accurate yeah I'm not getting a true reading I'm pitch too steep so it's something north of 29 so I'll have to do a calibrated box to find out what that is but my best guess right now is 35 to 37 mile an hour stall thanks I don't know what it is though but I can tell you when I got it at that deck angle and it was installing I was I was convinced when I do take it to a full brake stall it's going to come over probably backwards and right so the thing is that that at that deck angle I could never even land thing it is it's hanging yeah and so even at the competition here the other night I calibrated my angle of attack at that and I marked that as a stall even though I'd never stalled it I marked that as my stall coming in here I'm not hitting my horn and I'm ten miles an hour above that number and and I'm still rolling my tire for twenty feet on the ground before it comes down the wings nowhere near letting go so I feel good about it but I don't know what the stall is yet we'll find out give me another week sweet all right so how much should I pay to build it so we say well I told my wife what really what well let's see you know I I took the motor I fixed I sold it and I used that money to buy this other type of motor so it's pretty close I think that's what I said no I would I don't know what it cost me I haven't added it up i if I don't put a price on my time it's probably about a million dollars to build is my get best guess and I'm worth at least a dollar an hour's for maybe a million and three thousand dollars yeah all right thank you Mike that was awesome I'm so excited to see this thing fly and I'm gonna come fly with you guys I think I need to well yeah why cowboys unite let's go we're doing it hope you guys like this video if you did you know the drill hit that like button subscribe if you haven't see on the next one peace [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Trent Palmer

Views: 3,585,690

Rating: 4.8285351 out of 5

Keywords: mike patey, wilga, wilga 2000, DRACO, PT6, bush plane, turbine wilga, aviation, airplane, flight vlog, trent palmer, freedomfox, kitfox aircraft, airplane crash, Kitfox, instruction, tailwheel, landing, plane, pilot, flying, flight training, helicopter, oshkosh airventure, oshkosh 2018, airventure 2018, STOL, low and slow, student pilot, first solo, freedom fox

Id: PqhI4MeCn1c

Length: 20min 37sec (1237 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/mountainaviator1]

Just 1 million dollars for him to fix it to its current freaking amazing state.

[u/punter16]

Twins used their ADHD to become millionaires

Here's a pretty interesting read about the owner, Mike Patey, that I found while trying to satisfy my curiosity about what a "cowboy" does to afford a million dollar hobby.

Obviously an ADHD diagnosis is not the death sentence for aviation related dreams that many seem to think it is.

[u/stuckinanigloo]

What's the fuel burn, cruise speed and range? It looks cool. I think the radial equipped ones get 80 knots with 15 gal/hr. I think Draco will be very expensive to operate. I do love how big that gear is.

The helio courier with a turbine will probably outperform Draco for takeoff and landing.

[u/Peddyslate]

Shoutout to Trent Palmer too! His channel has some of the most entertaining and most well made flying films out there. He has also done a lot of work on his Kitfox V, not as mental as the Draco, but a kickass little plane to inspire us who fly at the lower end of the scale!

[u/slacktron6000]

as a glider pilot, I have to say that would be the best tow plane ever

[u/SpeedyGonzales69]

Mike Patey is the man

[u/Peddyslate]

Bushplanes were what tipped me over the edge and made me actually begin taking lessons! Since then flying has expanded and become so much more, but they'll always hold a special place in my heart.

(This time posted with no humor. I'm not good enough at that!)

[u/TheOriginalCoda]

It's like Monster Trucks for Aviators.

[u/longlive737]

As someone who has a lot of time in a PT6 converted aircraft, I must ask if the -28 is flat rated to something more reasonable than 680 SHP for this airframe. We had a -11AG on a Cessna 206, which is a much heavier airframe, and we were flat rated to 325 SHP for 5 minutes, 300 continuous, because the FAA was skittish about the stall characteristics.