Flying The Mozzie

it's a huge honor to be here and be asked to talk to the aviation historic society on flying in the ski day it's fantastic any questions I am extremely honored to be able to fly this airplane there's no question about that there are any two of us flying it Dave Phillips and myself in Dave's also got a place on Tarawa he spends a lot of time down here and he also owns it Hawker hunter over there excuse me so a very capable guy to get into one of these you have to be invited like most of the airplanes unless you've got the big checkbook and luckily I was invited to fly this airplane many many months ago of I was talking to Glenn thirty years ago when he said he's going to build an airplane I thought he was nuts but I'm really pleased you persevered and now we have this wonderful machine behind us the requirements really at this stage you've probably heard about what I've been doing but it pays to sort of been around on the aviation scene for quite a while if we get into one of these particularly a bit of tail dragger time that's the tail wheel at the back and I've been lucky enough to test life here planes with Merlin's and Spitfires and Tomales as Huracan so coupled with a bit of Air Force time and Bristol freighters and and dc-3s and things I sort of fitted the mold that they were looking for and I was also lucky to meet jury many years ago when I flew his p40 but still some pretty well known chaps around here couple here tonight Dave and no garden foo-foo mosquitoes after and they've only got extremely acute memories and they were able to tell us some quite amazing stuff but we read every single book we could find on the airplane and there's lots of books written about the mosquito most of it good but in fact it's not good it's quite bad in a lot of ways and one of these big fans stops here as my competitor Dame Philip says the airplane starts to grow horns and it really does but they developed a system whereby on takeoff the pilots notes say lead with one engine and that means that the propellers but if you look at them closely the pillars go both one way which create quite a lot of gyroscopic effect and if fly over the tail plane which makes the airplane swing they all tell Dreger hope out airplanes but fires hurricanes and so on all do that and the writers got to try and keep it straight and the guy working the rudder but these are particularly prone because such large engines big bladed propellers huge played repellers air and the small rudder so once you open the power on the airplane it's got a tendency to start swinging the only way to keep up scrape is with break at that stage the brakes are drum brakes you medically controlled with a handle up here with spring loaded on March there's a better one second delay between and what happens and they're not very good because their disks anyone who's driving the Morris Minor recently will know what I'm talking about I know what dumb sorry I mean drums sorry so before we even get going I got a big swing going which is dangerous so George got onto instance here to us the way we taught the guys was to go to a zero beast in what we say zero booster city inches of mercury doesn't matter the technical side of it but it's about half power 30 ish the beast make sure the brakes are set evenly and let it go and we've had no problem at all the airplane has kept perfectly straight on all our takeoff so far we take it up to what we call 13 inches which is a hella lot of power 56:58 it go minute a lot of power it's more of ever used in a Spitfire or hurricane it's about the seams are using the course here and even if those power settings airplane stays remarkably straight if we get airborne the cockpit is not designed for a pilot believe it or not it was designed like most of the Second World War British airplanes and someone's already described it as an ergonomic slum there's bits and pieces all over the place the Americans designed airplanes beautifully the Germans designer it plays beautifully whereby the pilot had the control column in the right hand and the throttles and the propellers in the left hand only the Brits could ask you to change that over to bring undercarriage up the rest of the world you just moved your hand to move the lever so after we get airborne in the mosquito we put the brakes on and off to stop the big wheels turning around and then we have to change hands and then bring the undercarriage out you'll notice the wobble after takeoff that happens listen and we went to them to accelerate to 190 miles an hour 190 mile an hour born and I stopped sweating because that's safety speed said between liftoff and 190 mile an hour if we have an engine failure we've lost the engine basically and this were extremely practice extremely fast and everything works properly and I don't put myself in that category at the moment but basically what happens is if the motor stops the huge amount of drag from propeller that from the engine that's failed so the airplane will turn towards that the bread is not big enough of the Audis head to keep the airplane straight and a huge amount of drag with the undercarriage hanging down so the first thing we do if something like that happens is pulley undercarriage up unfortunately there is a hydraulic pump on each engine and these hydraulic pumps provide pressure to bring up the undercarriage if you lose one engine you've lost one hydraulic pump so it takes 45 seconds for the other undercarriage to come up at the mean time the perspiration starting to flow if you can being pick enough to get your hand back to take some power off the live engine to stop the airplane turning because there's too much power on that side you'll start the descend into the weeds if you're then really fast I've got a good man the right hand and seek to help me what we call feather the engine and we then change hands again and press a feather back that which stops the most optimal pella interns repeller into wind so it creates no drag so if we can get the undercarriage up get the power off in the live engine get that engine feathered and get to 190 mile an hour we're sweet sad 190 mile an hour we stopped aspiring but so what you're speedin that lift off it give you that worried e100 2327 evolves and every one an hour it's quite away quite away after the airplane gets here born we are using a cruise power quite a high power setting I'm talking to the historic guys here now we're using 2,400 and plus four inches in which is really climb power in a Spitfire and with the reason we use the high powers you'll notice that the propellers are very very close to the fuselage here and it creates a vibration and the propellers and forms a problem that one can tell you about in the gearboxes so we run up in a very high rpm which stops harmonics is that what sort of sounds good and that gives us a speed of about 260 270 mile an hour and cruise as you're probably well aware this was the fastest piston-engined aircraft in the world when it was first built and the enemy hated it because it do well over 350 mile an hour street level we never ever use that power it's available here we can go to plus 18 inches which is another five inches more of boost that doesn't mean much to you but believe me it's a hell of a lot more power so as my competitor it said you wouldn't really want to start a dogfight with anything here preceptor except perhaps a Mustang which cut dogfight and leg it full power and go we are looking after the airplane very very carefully we're not using much power in it we're not really going more than about 320 330 mile an hour which is all I was using here today it's very very maneuverable it's not light on the controls and at low level at low speed it's very likely controls but at high speed I took a couple of friends for a ride this afternoon on that aside both hands on the control column to turn the airplane but once you get it turning it's got a lot it's got quite a nice rate of roll you'll notice that today we were turning quite a nice rate of Bank so a very very nice airplane to go to Warren is that right Dave very nice your plan to go to Warren because you get a Liggett and you can get away from the bad guys most World War two airplanes did what they call a buzzin break and that's to come in fast across the field with a lot of power on and then close Huddle's at the end of the field and reduce speed by climbing very quite sharply quite high and almost do a glide approach and come down in the land the idea of that was for two reasons really the first one was to keep energy up in case you're being chased by the bad guys so you arrived over your field going as fast as you possibly could so you had the energy to turn around and go back and fight the bad guys chasing you what it came in to land the other reason was that earlier on in the war the airplanes were a bit prone to engine failure and it was a good idea to glide the aeroplane at them stopped you're always going to make the runway we haven't got that luxury in this airplane so it's quite a performance the under coach comes down at 200 mile an hour and we start using flat at 170 mile an hour and we come around what we call base to come to land at 150 mile an hour and we have to decide by 800 feet we're going to land it on any low that 800 feet if we have an engine failure we can't go around so we committed to land so the air traffic control has to say to us we are clear to land or landing the airplane is to be honest it's quite simple putting it on the ground is quite easy we what we're doing at the moment is called a wheeler and that is relenting on the main wheels and allowing the tail wheel to drop during the war there was a difference of opinion whether your three point aeroplane which means landing it with the tail wheel and the mains at the same time and the people who did that maintained X saved straighter easier but they were operating off big square grass paddocks into winter we always got a crosswind here or most eardrums in New Zealand we wheel it on and keep it straight in the air and let the tower will drop down would it's fish around the veer speed and that's when it gets exciting because once again the brakes at one second Shh and they're controlled by rudder differential braking in the tail wheel at the back is non lockable so it's a castering tailwheel just like the supermarket trolley most airplanes these days have a tow will then at the tail with a lot so once a tow wheel was on the ground europe lane straight beer remains straight so i start perspiring from about 40 mile an hour downwards and we've had a few interesting times unfortunately in the last few weeks or so their plans start a good bounce I'm not sure why but it's getting on to that one again now so at all it's a it's a light flare plane to fly it's a huge honour to fly the thing there's no question about that and I think we all particularly that all of yous in of the aviation people in New Zealand really have to give jury aegon all the kudos I mean he just said to us today I said I'm talking to the aviation Historic Society in Teheran ah can we bring the airplane down Warriner sand Julius you'd take it down and take a couple of friends for a ride in quite amazing

Channel: Vision Productions NZ

Views: 123,452

Keywords: De Havilland Mosquito (Aircraft Model), Tauranga Classic Flyers, Vintage aircraft, warbirds, Keith Skilling, New Zealand

Id: lCUk2L7RTnE

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 10 2014