Flying the P-40N Kittyhawk

[Music] hi so the mission here this morning is to fly this newly serviced p40 kitty hawk at got no airport mike potter aircraft collection vintage wings of canada and i'm the privileged guy who gets to do this for which i'm very thankful and it's time to climb in and go i like to put my parachute on outside the airplane and that way there is absolutely no confusion about straps and you're not tied into the airplane by having a strap loop through another strap the wrong way probably can't see any of this which is just as well considering the straps i'm pulling i'm calling crotch straps for nothing all right eyeball heights very important in any of these airplanes and i checked this out earlier and this should be exactly what i want the cushion the log book and the seat back parachute [Applause] and then before we get too strapped in we make sure that the rotor pedals are at their fullest extension for my abnormal legs there we go let's just check the canopy and see if i have room for the helmet and i just think that p40 is you always lock the gear which is a two-armed operation you gotta push the landing gear handle down the hand pump on the hydraulics make sure it's stiff indicates the gear is locked and then the lever back to the off position to lock that pressure in it is the one cardinal rule on a p40 a lot of world war ii pictures of p-40s by the side of the runway on their belly i'd rather not join that rank okay good oh this feels good i haven't been in a p40 since last year all right so controls are free landing gear selected down hand pump until firm and then back to off it is flaps are extended already so we're in the pre-start check brakes it's kind of old-fashioned that brakes on those the toe brakes you kind of pump them up with an old volkswagen battery switch just going on generator as well going on landing my test now someone needs to fix that horn and the coolant light right there is good it also turns on the fuel pressure light and i should have the landing gear warning also works that light trim definitely right rudder trim two units and take off throttle for start up a bit make sure an idle cut off perhaps full fine fuel going to the front wing tank generator line circuit breaker is in propeller circuit breaker is in it's got an electric prop this thing propeller selector switch is auto carb air i'm gonna fly with it cold today but all selections do work okay shutter the shutter is working okay there yeah thank you shadows and ground cooling which is wide open start procedure so we are in idle cutoffs the fuel boot is going on mags on both hand primer [Applause] good ones leave it out and we're ready to go am i chopped paul no okay i'll hold it there [Applause] [Music] foreign now that the allison b12 has roared into life i'll add some voice over the 1710 loves to start and rarely lets us down hot or cold you know as soon as you start the engine in one of these spiders your iq drops by about half so we use checklists the p40 is easy to taxi it has rudder pedal steering tow brakes it's not light in the tail like a spitfire and if you push one brake the tail wheel free casters a lot like a cytabra i need 40 degrees on the oil temp before the run up and 85 degrees on the coolant fuel the rear wing tank because we have no fuselage tank make sure to auto rich car bear cold [Applause] and canopy to a less windy position then it's pump up the brakes stick back and open up to 2200 rpm being a curtis airplane it has a curtis electric prop so we cycle it once in the constant speed system and then while we're waiting for it to come back up check the mags for roughness and drop then i use the direct pitch control to make sure it works as well ammeter it must work if you want your prop to work and then a low idle check we like to keep this whole run up as short as possible because these big v12s generate a lot of heat and we might have a fair way to taxi okay pre-take off check trims are set for takeoff flaps are going to be retracted for this one throttle friction will set up later at the end of the runway mixture goes to auto rich props pull fine and in auto fuel boost pump we select on double check the pressure ready to go in the fighters we don't have any special priority in got note and we do have to fit in with everyone else sometimes that's difficult with the training aircraft but they've got a right to be here too and in that 150 in front of me there's a little girl half asleep in the seat i i think it's kind of amusing and i i laugh and i wait for the guy anyway time to get serious so i close the canopy and make sure it's firmly latched increase the throttle tension and move the shutters to combat climb i stop with the nose cocked off to one side so i can see down the runway and wait for that 150 to clear so so there were a lot of things happening there let's run that whole take off all over again with voiceover first thing is line up and get the tail real straight get your right foot ready and pre-position the aileron right for torque the stick is back although it doesn't really look like it in the video but we smoothly advance the power to 45 inches of manifold pressure keep it straight the tail comes off the ground all by itself due to the power of the engine but we don't let it rise too high and we just let the aircraft fly off hit the brakes to stop the wheels left hand pulls the gear lever up and my pinky finger on the stick activates the hydraulic pump for the gear the gear comes up in an uneven fashion and turns sideways so there's some pretty significant yaw effects which we just live with while we bring the power back to 35 inches of manifold pressure and 2500 rpm then take stock check the engine look for other traffic this is the first flight of the year and maintenance wants to check with the proper rpm so i pull out this fancy gadget and i check the reading and i hold it in front of the camera so everybody can read it later and i point at the rpm and they can work out the correlation back on the ground later and my goal in general is to fly at cruise power settings for about 20 minutes observe the engine parameters and then come back of course just because we're at a cruise power setting does not mean we have to fly a straight level that would be a waste the p40 rolls superbly you can bury the stick in your leg with one hand and when you do something really happens the rule rate is higher than the spitfire higher than the hurricane and much higher than the mustang not a pits it's not an extra but it is fun for a loop i need a bit more power so i'm increasing the rpm and the manifold pressure to a high cruise setting and then keeping the nose down to get at least 280 miles an hour for the entry and then a smooth pull up about 4g ease off a little bit at the top it's a standard loop it's just that the diameter is bigger than in light aircraft and i leave the power alone on the downside but the speed does increase quickly back up to the horizon use that extra speed for another four point and then it's fun making a left turn with a right roll loops and rolls are great but it's actually more difficult to fly an accurate lazy eight or wing over where the rates of roll and pitch are smooth and continuous you come up through the horizon each time wings level drop the nose down through the horizon at the 90 degree point with 90 degrees angle the bank and then up the other way again and all the time you try and keep the ball in the center smooth coordinated and even it's very good training and tells the pilot a lot about the characteristics of the aircraft well 20 minutes sure went by in a hurry and it's time to land left hand moves the gear lever down right pinky finger activates the hydraulic pump and this being an n model p40 we have no gauge so we look over at the little pins which you can see in the picture and they extend up out of the wing to tell us that the gear is moving then we swap hands and check the hand hydraulic pump to make sure we got full pressure move the lever back to the op position to trap the pressure and now the gears extended even though i don't really want to put the gear down way up here i'd rather do a fighter break but it's just not an option today with all the training traffic in the circuit so i've edited out about five minutes of stoogening around behind a katana and now i'm where i don't really want to be which is in a long straight in final in a prop fighter as soon as the speed gets back you can't see forward my helmet cam is two inches higher than my eyeballs and has a much better view that was a pretty typical landing for a p40 it lends itself to a tail low feeler he crossed the fence at about a hundred miles an hour and i was a bit late getting the power off but this is my first landing in the p40 for a year so i was being careful the p40 tends to track straight but you would never want a swerve to get established it would rapidly overcome your ability to straighten it out and we don't hammer on the brakes to make the taxiway not ever but the big gotcha is that the flap weaver is right beside the gear lever in a p40 so after landing we just leave it alone for a while [Applause] the shutdown check is pretty simple in a p-40 flaps i'm going to leave extended as for maintenance requests today the shutter confirm it's in ground cooling electrics offload throttle leave it at a low rpm while we do a live mag check and increase the throttle to about 1300 rpm make sure it's smooth make sure the spark plugs are clean not fouled then make sure to idle cut off and as the prop winds down it'll open the throttle once to empty the accelerator pump oh is that nice i mean i love the spitfire but this thing rolls twice as easy what a nice airplane smooth too you guys did a good job on the prop vibes master mags fuel i just love getting helmet here in one of these great airplanes [Music] [Music] you

Channel: dave hadfield

Views: 152,308

Rating: 4.9574804 out of 5

Keywords: Curtiss, P-40, Hadfield, spitfire, supermarine, hawker, hurricane, mustang, P-51, vintage wings, Rolls Royce, Allison, merlin, dave hadfield

Id: xTQkaTgJLt4

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020