P-63 Kingcobra Walkaround Tour

this video is brought to you by hanger 360 aircraft services [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning everyone this is Mark Allen with the caf behind me is the P 63 F it was built by Bell in 1945 in Buffalo New York it's a very unique airplane it was the only F model built by Bell it was produced for the specifications for the Russians and the Russians were going to order about a thousand of them but the war ended before it got past its testing phase so the airplane itself was never transferred to the Air Force and was held by Bell until 1946 when it was eventually sold to the public the airplane is very unique in itself in that it has a there's a 1500 horsepower Allisyn v12 and it has a very unique tail it has a very pointed tail to help counteract the extra power from that engine so it's unique in that point the Bell itself the p63 itself was built primarily around a gun the 37 millimeter cannon in the nose that fires through the center of the propeller and also in the nose it has 250 caliber guns in order to have all that ordnance or those guns and the nose of the airplane they had to put the engine behind the pilot so if you look closely you'll see that the the the engine is behind the pilot then the pilot and then the big gun so let's go into some detail about that as you can see the nose has the 37 millimeter cannon in it the top has the two 50 cals in the top and behind here from from the engine behind the pilot runs a prop shaft a shaft that runs directly down the centerline of the airplane to a gearbox that sits here the gearbox then drives the propeller and through the gearbox runs the 37 millimeter cannon so behind all these panels are the 37 millimeter gun and the 2 50 cals the interesting thing is the 37-millimeter had about 40 rounds in it and they were held in the magazine and stayed in the magazine but the 50 cals had to eject its shells but clearly to eject the shells that end up going through the radiators of the airplane so the cartridges were kept internally and then ejected when they got on the ground so a little unique factors as you can see if you look in the radiators down through here the radiators keep the aeroplane cool and keep the oil cool the other unique thing about the p63 as you can see it has a nose gear it's not the traditional tailwheel airplane that most fighters were in world war ii so this big long nose gear to handle the very large 13 foot diameter propeller the cockpit itself as you can see has traditional car doors with roll-up windows the aeroplanes widest point actually is the exhausts coming out of the engine so it's a very narrower airplane and it is quite tight in the cockpit and we'll look at the cockpit a little later the other unique thing about this airplane too certainly copied the p-51 has a laminar flow wing the the airplane that pre deceide is this was the p39 as you know it was not a laminar flow wing the airplanes look similar but they're quite a bit different the p63 is quite a bit bigger than the p39 going around the airplane it has quite a wide wing as you can see you also know that it has a fairly long elrond with fairly small flaps the reason it has large ailerons is that it is quite a heavy aeroplane on the road in the roll control so it has that because the wings the wings hold all the fuel and the fuel as you Shia's outboard of the landing gear and the landing gear is quite wide out so the ailerons are quite heavy because you're moving this mass of fuel that is quite far out on the wings on the other hand though the pitch control is very very light and that was due to primarily the weight of the engine is behind the pilot so it's in the center of the airplane the center mass of the airplane on an airplane that has the engine in the front of it when you you intended traditionally have quite heavy pitch controls because you're trying to move that mass of the engine as you can see on the tail very high tail on it with a fairly big rudder to control the extra torque of that engine also it has this big strike on the bottom also to help with with control it has traditional fabric controls in the back rudder and elevators in the center of the fuselage was held all the avionics so it has a radio compartment on both sides that held avionics for the Europe as you can see conventionally the engine in the back the big scooper the top was for the for the for the carburetor that's where it got all its air from all these access panels as you can see are labeled for the various things that are used so I'm going to jump in here you can see it's it's quite tight getting into the airplane the first thing that strikes you about the airplane not even though it's quite tight is that the wing is sort of behind you traditional tail wheel aeroplanes you're you're right in the center of the wing and when you look down you don't see the ground you see the wing when this aeroplane when you look down you see the ground so it's a little a little different from that point of view as you can see conventional instrumentation standard engine instrument standard flight instruments we've got to allow armament controls over here we've got a GPS in this and there's standard radios it's got your fuel controls down here your trim controls over here as you can see with this you can see the standard traditional car door with the roll up window so that works pretty nice it's nicer for air conditioning you can open those and taxi and take off before takeoff it is a castering tailwheel so it's it's worked either by traditionally by brakes so you can get a little rudder Authority in the turn but initially you're tapping on the brakes to control left and right turning you can but you're not going to be able to roll them up so you know then at some point it's gonna get cold look you you once you get them once they're open its you're not going to be able to roll them up you could roll them up halfway but there's too much air pressure in the airplane to to allow you to roll a month the visibility is not as nice as a say for instance a Mustang you've got a lot of framework around here exactly think you've got a you know a thick windshield looking through we don't have a gun side and therefore for safety reasons but you'd never big old gun stock would stick out here so the visibility is not great the airplane the Russians use the airplanes both in in fighter rolls hand in ground to air-to-ground traditional tank Buster's type type rolls the cannon was very effective in that with the and you know it could carry bombs and rockets as well so it was pretty pretty pretty good ground attack airplane so this aeroplane is that all-electric airplane the flaps the landing gear obviously pumps all those kinds of things all are electric the only thing that's hydraulic is the other brakes so if you have an electrical problem you can manually crank the gears down it takes it takes quite a while and it's quite a bit quite an effort we've done it you know in testing flight it may be even more difficult so on the V speeds the the the V&E on the airplane top speed in the airplane is about 400 425 miles an hour it stalls very conventionally it's got a straight wing stores apart flaps flaps up about 70 miles an hour with flaps down about 65 64 miles an hour flap and gear speed is 100 is 170 miles an hour so you can come in pretty fast and lower the gear and get yourself slowed down for landing it lands very well that's like the big old sister yeah you got to keep the nose nice and high keep the nose off planet on its main just let the nose come down [Music] it could be but it seems pretty strange strength pretty strong and itself I've I've had some circumstances we dive really ate a hunk on the brakes and it handles it pretty well well thank you very much for joining me on this tour of the p63 hopefully you'll see it on the air show circuit shortly come over and visit and we'll we could talk some more about the airport [Applause]

Channel: Erik Johnston

Views: 194,148

Keywords: Aviation, Aircraft, Airplane, Flying, Airport, Runway, Taxiway, Hangar, Walkaround, Tour, Pilot, Aviator, Wings, Prop, Propeller, Veteran, Interview, Trent Palmer, Flight Chops, Just Plane Silly, Aviation101, Mike Patey, Mark Patey, Baron Pilot, Flying Doodles, In The Hangar, P-63, Kingcobra, King Cobra, P-39, Aerocobra, Aero Cobra, WWII, Fighter

Id: ruoDK2MlAlg

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2020