Fieseler Storch - Part One - Kermie Cam

hey Kermit weeks here fantasy a flight and I'm thinking I'm gonna go do a kerr-mcgee I'm in the thesis or store chair what do you think anyway so I got it in the hangar here when they go ahead and put my MIDI lon and I think that's probably adjusted okay first thing I'm gonna do is I still got the chocks in so I'll go ahead and I want to pull through the pull through the engine before we start it the fuel is off the mags are off and the throttle is back I want to make sure the engine doesn't start we got the chocks in you know anytime we have any airplanes that we start that have cylinders pointing down this is an inverted v8 so you can see the cylinders basically you know inside there and they're all pointing down and after you shut the engine down from flying it previously the oil will slowly gravitate down and you want to make sure you don't get a hydraulic lock if the oil fills up in the bottom of the cylinder piston comes down if there's not enough space then you can actually bend one of the connecting rods so anyway so what we're gonna do here is are going to pull through the engine at least six revolutions that's two three five six okay that's all good we can get rid of the chalks don't need those anymore and one of the things I can do is I can actually kind of fly this thing get it in and out of the hangar myself get rid of rudder lock usually stow that back here and also get rid of the elevator lock which is under there do you see that right there pull the stick back a little bit clips right there and I say now the controls are free and I can just push it out myself a little bar sometimes I got to get Rocking and sometimes I'm not strong enough got it there's no wing clear looks clear once it gets out the hanger I got it yeah all right there we go all righty it's pretty good a nice little toolbar stopping Z okay you just clips out right there oops that who inside now we're doing the towbar that there for now isn't she a beauty I love this airplane this is such a great airplane okay double check that the double check that the fuels off okay so do pretty flight first thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna check to make sure we got fuel and oil coming up here you stand on the tire down here stand on the deal here stand on the strut there's a stand here there's a step right here now we check the right tank yeah it looks like there's a little less than half in there there's also a fuel side gauge it's like a little cork system will also check okay I should be able to kind of walk over to the other side here I step right there visually check it yeah this one's got a little bit more that one's about two-thirds or half maybe it holds about 20 gallons per side so it's about 40 gallons total burns about 15 gallons an hour cruising but so you can divide that into 40 and figure out which time you got I'll be on the ground about two hours looks like it's got plenty of oil in there it's got a dipstick but if you take it off you can see it as well and of course that's probably the airplanes been sitting for a while so it's probably gonna smoke a lot when I started and the the oil that's sitting in the engine will get collected and it'll go back up and well will actually go up a little bit this is actually a hand crank starting in case the battery's dead you can actually there's a thing in the cockpit and you can actually crank it like this and it'll turn it through and you can start the engine manually I just kind of double-check everything all the let's get in there this is the stacks this is the oil cooler right here I just look at everything for any problems the Germans actually they have two different types of cylinders that they used and in this particular one we're in a pretty hot climate and because of the fact you can look back in the North African desert where Rommel used to fly this these things are flying in them anyway and and they all have the cowlings off on the side when I picked this airplane up at the AEA Museum in Oshkosh Wisconsin it had the cowlings on it and behind my first stop I pulled them off I found some bubble wrap I threw him in the back of the airplane and I flew at home this way and we just pretty much flat with the cowling off all time we've got the counting and if you're flattered in the you know on the eastern front it wouldn't be a problem but here in Florida on the western front we basically leave them off okay just you know checking the landing gear this has got really long holy-o's and you know their hydraulic you know so it's got like a metering valve that's tapered that goes into a hole and when you take off the landing your legs actually drop down about got a foot and a half or something so they're designed to come in at a a really high angle if you need to to make a short landing because this is a stole airplane at short takeoff and landing and does a freaking great job it's a really really good airplane so because the landing gear legs are really long when it's flying I have big long legs the German thought Germans thought will look like a stork so they called Addis torque historic store Chuck that's what they call it one of the things that's really cool on this airplane is the fact that the Germans were absolutely ingenious they the wings actually fold on this airplane okay and if you look at the little red t-handles up there right here it's got a little safety wire on it if you cut that safety wire and you know pull this handle out you got a couple of guys working on it with a like a ladder out there on the wingtip but basically these little things here move up you can see where the wing hinges right there and it basically you know it's got like a little bit of a ball in there as well and and what happens is you pull that pin on in the front which actually holds the front spar and you know the ailerons are all connected and everything on swivels and stuff and the wings swings back and if you look up here you can see the this little plane back here the wing swings back here it rotates sideways up against the side here and this little bracket right here and there's one on the other side hooks up to that deal there and you can actually store the airplane inside so it's a very very practical airplane it's all we're just checking for you know the pins are in here's the fuel gauge like I said and remember this just tank we had more fuel in it there's actually a cork that floats inside the the fuel tank so this confirms what I saw which is about two-thirds fuel checking the slot up there I'll explain that a little bit just kind of look and make sure there's no dings or anything there's the ailerons checking fer cotter pins there's a balance weight right here for a neuron flutter Germans figured out that they needed that so they out of that another balance and you can see that there's a actually a and aunt I know actually a servo tip as a servo tip so that actually helps lighten your controls and it's geared to the deal there so as the air comes across the deal as it comes down or actually if it goes up this actually helps push the trailing edge up which lightens up the control of course there's the landing light the pitot tube also this connects right here when you fold the wings back to I think lay back down that way anyway so obviously if the wing folded back this will hit the ground so that actually pins up over to this little thing right here so really really cool it's all fabric you know just basically steel tube fuselage the wings are made out of wood with wire bracing and you know tubes for push rods there's some cables and stuff as well tail wheel is a full swivel it does not lock and of course you can see that the the trim for the stabilizer actually goes up and down so it actually rotates on the rear spar and that goes up in that slot up and down you know to be able to fly low because this airplane flies not only at low angles attack like a normal airplane but it flies are very high angles of attack and so you need to be able to have that stabilizer adjustment to be able to trim it very big elevator it's balancing as well and you can I mean you can see that it's pretty light they're checking for cotter pins here and here the rudders light it's also balanced with a horn balance and what that does is that actually that actually helps the the rudder pressures when you're when you're using it and what will happen is since the that its hinge right here what happens is when the runner gets kicked over this way this obviously creates pressure but since this is for to the hinge line it actually helps and it continues the use as a rudder to the fly the tail to the left if right rudders in like this but it also acts as a counterbalance which lightens the controls and this is the reason why pterodactyls had that that big thing behind their neck they were reptilian you know flyers and Nature had figured out that they could actually build a lighter bird if they put that in the back there so it didn't need a lot of strong net neck muscles to overcome this aspect and by adding that at least in the case of the bird you know the the beak was in the front and they added the counterbalance basically hinged on the bird's head to you know lighten the controls for a nature so it didn't get a stiff neck anyway so this all looks good here it's got a little fixed trim tab if you need it it looks pretty neutral than they like I'm wondering why that's even on there because it's got a stabilizer the most another reason for that that I'm unaware of a little place here first we're going in there probably a band-aid or a bottle of schnapps of course the inspection things are in a zipper the the German airplanes are very easily understood that their German they actually built these in the occupation of France during World War two and there was a factory north of Paris in Rouen that the Germans forced the French to build the airplanes and of course when the when the Germans got pushed out towards the end of the war the French found themselves would the knowledge the tooling and a lot of spare parts to actually build Feaster storages it was such a great airplane that the French Air Force built feasor storages after the war and when they eventually ran out of the German August engines they actually came up with one that used a French radio this particular airplane happens to be an original German airplane although most of the ones out there flying are French but the easiest way to tell is the fact that German airplanes are all going to have a machine gun and back because they were wartime airplanes the French ones it was just basically covered over there it's got a seat here in the back which actually the the observer can sit in and of course you can see the the windows are basically kind of on the side because it was an observation airplane this is actually where you would put the different color flares if you're flying around for different purposes anyway so you'd sit there but if there was a in enemy territory or there was some potential you know you know airplanes coming after him then you would under your seat belt this folds forward and then you would actually just sit back so you'd sit here like this I don't think you'd use the seatbelt this basically I think we've wired that so nobody would steal the gun anyway this is all the parts are real except the receiver in the United States ATF takes a dim view these days on having real machine guns and airplanes so this was actually all made from scratch and it meets you know the fact that it's a non gun got the ammo cans of course this was on there just would collect the deals and you would basically and you can rotate this around like this and of course you can swivel the gun so that's how the gunner would defend himself and hopefully he was on his own to not choose his tail trying to think what else this is a place for an external battery to start we'll go ahead and drain a little bit of fuel out of here I've flown it in a while you tell by the dark blue dot I've not drained any fuel out of there in a while in fact the airplane just came out of annual so I need to do it Tessa wait smells like fuel it's not water and of course you can also see the the lacing was another way that they would inspect the airplane as well so you can see how allow you to get in to see into the fabric belly pretty cool of course here's the pitot lines going out to the the pitot to the static and the pressure lines going out there okay so we've pulled it through check the fuel done the sumps that's how we get in one of the things we noticed was we try and step here as close as we can to the strut if you do it out here we've already had to weld that once it just puts too much leverage on the deal there you know so if we try and get in there more on the end course they get shoulder harnesses here there's a flare gun right there and of course as I mentioned all the flares would be over here see yes we don't wear a parachute on this airplane fly any higher than I'm willing to fall okay so seat belt back here I'm pretty sure I flew this airplane last I did because anybody else flies it is bigger than me let's just leave it that and again you can see the fuel level there so it's about a half there's one more fuel on the other side there's a little latch right here that clicks for the deal to lock the door and there's the handle there now hopefully this thing has got a charged battery so the first thing we do always tend to zero the altimeter from flying locally so we'll just zero that there first thing we do is we put the fuel want the fuel on the pre-flight in this airplane is pretty easy other than the fact that you want to make sure that the controls are you know free and clear before you take off it's basically one two three the Maggs are here one two and both okay and over here this is up and this is there's two different fuel pumps on the engine and you could isolate them if for some reason one was leaking or something but you generally run with both so the pre-flight and this is pretty easy one two three make sure that the controls are clear [Music]

Channel: Kermit Weeks

Views: 222,730

Rating: 4.9074512 out of 5

Keywords: Kermit Weeks, Fantasy of Flight, Kermie Cam, Fieseler Storch, Storch, German Aircraft, GoPro

Id: 8e8rwgm5sFs

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2016