soaring (gliding)

[galtdurnford]

Hi All, I live in the mountains of British Columbia. We sometimes get great lift here and I've made lots of soaring flights with the engine idling. Has anyone tried soaring with the engine shut down. If so: will the engine stop windmilling in slow flight and, more importantly, will it restart easily in a dive. I plan on doing this in close proximity to a soaring aerodrome with lots of altitude in hand but it would be nice to hear from someone with prior experience first. Cheers, Galt. BL65 (with original lycoming)

[Victor Gisclair]

My T-Craft has a 65 in her. In order for the prop to stop spinning after shut down I have to just about stall the airplane. I have restarted in the air again. I have to dive the plane and get speed up to 120 before the prop will turn over again. Make sure you try this next to an airport and with a lot of altitude

[Richard Boyer]

The engine will stop windmilling in slow flight. I have not been able to get mine to start spinning again without using the starter.

I actually learned a very valuable lesson on that particular flight. (I seem to have learned a few due to momentary insanity) If the engine doesn't stop on it's own (due to a catastrophe) don't let it. You see, even though I have a starter on mine, I didn't realize that the battery was just about dead!!! Can you imagine my suprise when I decided to go ahead and start the engine again and the prop just barely moved!!!!! I put her in a dive, and with the help of the wind the battery had just enough to turn the prop through.

Now, I have a wood prop, so I don't know how a metal one would react. I have noticed, thanks to my friend Rob Lees, that hand proping a metal prop is much easier. (I hear it is hard to hand prop at 2000 feet).

Now, Randy Henderson does a really cool routine with his engine turned off, all the way to the ground.

[Richard Boyer]

Vic,

do you have a wood or metal prop?

[Chet Peek]

This goes back to before WWII when we were young and a bit foolish. We would stop the A-65's and start them by diving over 120 MPH. If it didn't want to turn, you gave it a hard left aileron and it would kick over. The O-145 Lycoming will turn over much easier.
Chet Peek

[galtdurnford]

soaring

Thanks for the comments. The prop on the plane is wood. Judging by what I've read maybe I'll let my brother try it first. (just kidding Dave). Incidently, thanks to Chet for the defense of the Lycoming in another thread. I think it's a fine motor too!

[captjon]

Right Chet!

I remember my young and foolish days too when I used to take Tami T-Craft up and shut her down. 120 indicated is a good number for a wooden Sensenich 72CK44.

It does take a lot of altitude though!

Cheers,

[Victor Gisclair]

Richard I have done a restart with wood prop and also a metal prop. The magic number seem to 120 MPH to get it to start spinning again.

[Richard Boyer]

Interesting! I think I'll go up and......er....nevermind.

I did find a thermal today that had me climbing 1200ft/min today! Very cool. Once I hit 4K I pulled back to idle and just did big circles. At one point I was climbing at 100ft/min!

Quite fun!

Then I had to come back down...

[jrzangger]

Soaring

Wood vs Metal. I haven't done this much, but a metal prop is much easier to start windmilling again at the 120-130 range. Wood is next to impossible without exceeding Vne, depending how good your engine's compression is!

[Acroeric]

My clipped wing T used to re-start at around 100 mph but it was a climb prop (74x43 metal) I would go up and do some dead stick acro- it always seemed to start up fine. As for the thermals- I flew from NC to PA and was parallel some ridge lift for almost an hour. When I landed and fueled up the 0-200 had only been burning 3.5 gph average for the 3 hour flight. I was only turning 1500 rpm when in the lift and 2300 for the other 2 hours. I bet for the hour I was in good lift I only used 2 gph.

[mikeg]

Not a T-Craft incident, but I did see it myself at a Waco fly-in a number of years ago. I saw a guy loose his engine (now we are talking about a 350 hp Waco Taperwing) during a low altitude aerobatic routine. Much too low to dive. He simply snap rolled the airplane against crankshaft rotation and the big Wright started. I think he had done it before. Did look slick.
Mike