A walk around and flight in a 1946 North American Navion aircraft

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi this is mark from sky wagon university we're going to be doing a flight review and a little bit of a walk around and talk about a 1946 navion so in 46 they were north american made by the same company as the p-51 mustang and they changed to ryan a little a few years later after selling about 11100 of them this one is in a pretty advanced state of uh decay and neglect and needs to be restored the only maintenance it's had in the last 30 years is a new barrel full of water to stop it tipping backwards on its tie down so we're going to try an app called aircraft restoration you should get it check this out first time using it so settings aircraft restoration restore [Applause] three days later with my app i've been having progress reports and it should be being delivered anytime now so let's put settings restoration complete engage there it is now let's talk about that it's much nicer now so it looks like the app worked pretty well i like the paint and the interior and the finish and the engine upgrade from the barrel but here she is it's a 1946 navion north american navion so north american right after the war they finished production of the p-51 in 1946 which was a pity but um and they went on to producing a small trainer that would satisfy the potential boom of pilots like 250 000 pilots coming back from europe who were pilots who wanted to fly in america it actually never really happened there weren't as many flying as they thought there would be so this was designed for that market but also for the the military training market and navion built around 1100 of them and then they sold the company to ryan in san diego who built the uh spirit of st louis plain for lindbergh and they went for production in various iterations and the experts are watching this will know right through the range master and different planes up until 1976 when they stopped production but this is a 46 this is a north american this is the first year they built them 250 were sold to um the us government for military training so we'll have a little bit of a look around in detail so engines when this was built in 46 it had a 205 horsepower continental in it which isn't a lot and you can see this patch right here that's where the exhaust pipe would have come out back then but this one has been upgraded it had an event of some sort it's in the log books in 1958 where it was damaged and then repaired and rebuilt as a b model so there's no step on the front even though it's still got the handhold here now it's you get in from the back it's got the bigger engine and we can look at the engine in my previously loosened cowling this engine has zero hours it's got 14 hours on it and it's a continental e225 so it's 225 horsepower for takeoff which isn't really that big but it's big enough and you can see a few strange things on it that aren't familiar with the 470 series of engines the governor is back here down low on the engine this is the oil reservoir for the hydraulics we'll show you that in the cockpit when we're flying it's flaps and gear and then the usual six cylinder horizontally opposed air cooled and then if you look through here i'll go around the front you can see over the top of the case of the engine here where my finger is this gray area with this hydraulic line in is an added unit onto the end of the engine that makes this prop hydraulic so it acts just like a conventional regular 182 prop which is a nice upgrade for these so that's under the hood all cooler back here cow flaps very conventional it'll be very familiar even though this is 75 years old this plane could be owned and flown and used the way you'd own a piper arrow and it's voluminous inside too well have a look in there let me close her up so without getting too specific on exact rivets and times and specs the way i could perhaps on some of the cessna's we're just going to have a quick look around it it's obviously been built by a military subcontractor because you can tell by the beefiness of the whole thing it's very big solid heavy landing lights on the gear legs it's got military-looking tyres on it very strong long gear legs these planes are also known for a very good short feel capability they can get out of short and soft field and you can tell by this look at the profile of that wing that is like what you draw in your student wing lift diagram a very curved top and then even the underneath is curved and it lessens as it goes down the fuselage so it's a very high lift wing sacrifices a little bit of speed um they cruise at about it's all miles an hour inside the cruise is about 140 to 150 miles an hour that's like 102 to 132 knots so it's sort of a little bit slow on a 182 and it burns about 11 gallons an hour doing that this is a counterweight for the aileron all very sort of sturdy here's the rear step they're climbing in this is a handhold this is added because it's a b and a model wouldn't have this correct me if i'm wrong hand goes in there foot on here up onto the wing don't step on the flap it's got a plate for it and then inside so come on up and have a look so getting in the front you step into the back here into the without having to stand on a seat and then you just walk up the aisle a four seat single with an aisle get in the front and you're sitting quite close under this uh canopy under the fixed part of the windshield so basic look at this because we're gonna fly it in another video you'll see all the um what everything's doing there's like a control panel here with master switches pumps rear stats lights a very retro yoke which feels more like a sort of steering wheel in a in a car from the era gear out up in flaps both hydraulic this is the hydraulic pump you have to turn that on you'll get a light when it's running you can use these things the trim wheel is very small and can be stiff but that's the trim wheel and other than that modernized so it's got some king radios in it there's one here that's being repaired but it does have another king and then just various engine analyzers fuel flow gauges elt um this is a edm 700 so a little bit of a more modern panel in it to make it sort of fit the era of our era but in a plane that's obviously 75 years old so to close the canopy i mean obviously on the ground when you're taxiing it's open like this it's excellent from a hot day when you've got like total ventilation but to close it you just reach back turn the handle sideways pull forward over center it and lock and you can perhaps see up here the over center lock engaged and now this is where it would be obviously when you fly then the range masters the later versions of this had a door here like a bonanza and they had tip tanks on them too so they didn't have this canopy because they say that a lot of the ladies of the era didn't like getting in and out of this version of the of the navian with the high sills in their skirts so the door was more popular with the ladies on the range master tell me if that's true or not on comments fuel quite simple actually in this you fill it up from here only there's fuel in both sides of the wing but there isn't a cap over there so you fill up this it holds 39 and a half gallons and it just it just cross-feeds over there on its own and it just drinks from both at the same rate but the um the pressurized carburetor will return fuel back into that tank but because they're combined it doesn't really matter so it just the gauge will be accurate at all times so this is 39 and a half and then right there on the side of the fuselage is another 20. so your selector in the cockpit which we'll see later as well it says main auxiliary two choices so 39 and a half 20 59 and a half 60 gallons 11 gallons an hour about five hour range in it and you can add if you go with bigger engines 260 horses and you know various other versions of the 470 and the 520 and these as they kind of get upgraded through the years and you need more gas you can put tip tanks on it which hold 20 more each so 60 70 80 90 100. so they're capable of carrying a lot of fuel but in this original configuration if you're just buzzing around locally and not even using auxiliary you just put it in here and you burn it from here okay to start it the normally the radius will be off but i'm going to start it with them on because otherwise the mic's not live so to start it we've got over here battery so that's on there mike working to turn on the battery generator mixture in throttle cracked a little bit of boost because it's a pressure carb throttle back mags on start a button and then so it's not confusing when we're flying this is the hydraulic knob you have to actuate the hydraulics to allow the flaps and gear to move so uh that's off at the moment so i'm going to start it now clear i will shut the canopy [Music] so that it's not noisy trim good for takeoff bags okay the run up very conventional set the rpm at about 15 1600 rpm left mag right mag left back both cycle the prop which is hydraulic as we saw [Music] prop extra edge no flaps hydraulics on light to accurate to show you that it's on there's a gear unsafe light here showing the pump in transit and there's three lights here for the three wheels okay we're ready to roll classical traffic uh north american 9-2 encryption 292 mike delta is departing 2-3 for a local flight placeville nobody on final liner up from the center line if you go straight to full power you get a lot of right rudder to take off so i kind of smoothly feed it in she'll start feeling light at 60. and we're up and the intercom is too loud gear coming up [Music] all three [Music] pressure back to 23 [Music] rpm back to 23. very sensitive between 300 rpm a little bit of trim gears up gear is safe hydraulics oh there we are crosswind to left downwind for 2-3 at placerville but a very solid sort of reliable feeling to it this plane inflate responsive but feels quite heavy but not really subjected to like turbulence and bobbing around as much as a smaller plane would be and great visibility so on downwind we want to start slowing it down to 100 which is gear speed of easing back on the purple [Music] [Music] [Music] going to 100 hydraulics on here coming down we got two green pump is running we got a third green we leave on the pump drop in collapse from neutral to down i'm going to use half flaps about there lassoville two mag deltas on the left base two three full stop plasma doing exactly 80 miles an hour a little bit more flat basketball right two act deltas on the final half mile final for two two three full stop plaster ears down prop is it mixture is set flaps are down speed is correct okay there's always a little bit of a burble over the end of the runway because it's on a cliff like the edge so i always want to go a bit further in and the plane i'm unfamiliar with [Music] on the center line three wheels on the ground idle bops [Music] [Music] so in conclusion we had a little bit of a look around flew it around the pattern a bit um there are 1400 navions roughly left on the us registry uh production stopped in 1961 of the navion not the range master it went on into the 70s but 61 as hurricane clara flattened the factory and they stopped production of it so it's a dying breed i mean this plane is 75 years old and it still flies like it's a like it's a everyday practical plane so this is mark at sky wagons university if you like the videos subscribe on the little link and click on the bell for notification and there'll be a lot more videos like this so thanks very much for watching

Channel: Skywagon University

Views: 51,412

Rating: 4.9593301 out of 5

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Id: Wfqr9lmkE-c

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021