Model Airways 1/16 Sopwith Camel

[sydeem]

Darn - I forgot about the cowl and aluminum side panels. Guess those would be worth the price of admission. I just don't have the room for such a large kit.

[sydeem]

Anyone have experience with Arizona Models? http://www.arizonamodels.com

They are larger scale than 1/16 - more in the Hasegawa and larger size with prices like Hasegawa. Pretty interesting site.

[mouppe]

They look great! I may try something in the 1/12 range. I do not have the room for another 1/8.

Mouppe.

[ScaleMotorcars]

Anyone have experience with Arizona Models? http://www.arizonamodels.com

They are larger scale than 1/16 - more in the Hasegawa and larger size with prices like Hasegawa. Pretty interesting site.

Thanks for that link. Im looking into the kits now. DANG 1/4 SCALE!!!!

[hot ford coupe]

Dang!!!!!!!!Thems is some big replicas alright.

[fuzzy]

Wish there were 3 view type plans of cars available like these aircraft. It would make life a little easier trying to get contours and shape closer to correct when scratchbuilding car bodies.

[sydeem]

mouppe - did the Hasegawa kit have a throttle on the left of the ****pit? I am starting to research in detail now as I have a model coming from another vendor. Model Airways has a throttle and I see other model examples with the throttle but then I read this: "This was because rotary engines did not have throttles and were at full 'throttle' all the while the ignition was on." I read that the pilots blipped their engines or shorted out certain cylinders to reduce speed so why the throttle?

[sydeem]

The attached drawing clearly explains the “Throttle Quadrant”. It has a lever for mixture control and a throttle lever to the carburetor. Interesting that messing with the fuel/air mixture could be used to slow the aircraft during formation flying and blipping, if engine is off too long, could lead to fire and/or explosion. It was dangerous to play with these settings as no parachutes were available then.

Some references show two magneto switches on the dash. Possibly one for blipping and one for selectively shorting selected cylinders as one reference states “Clerget and Bentley rotaries featured a selector switch for using 9, 7, 5 or 3 cylinders to adjust power.”

Other references:

“The “blip switch” mentioned is connected to the rotary engine’s interesting, and for the Camel, appropriate, characteristic of having only two “settings”: off and “full throttle”. The pilot could only reduce power temporarily by “blipping” the engine using an ignition-cutting blip switch mounted on the control column, so producing that distinctive intermittent growl of an engine seemingly about to stall. Otherwise, he rode the whirlwind—and such the rotary was.”

“Then, to make matters much worse, it had no throttle. An on-off switch on the spade-shaped stick was used to momentarily kill the engine when power reductions were needed. Of course, the airplane rocked every time the pilot let go of the button and all that rotating mass suddenly started firing the fuel that had never stopped flowing.
The result of what appears to be an awkward power control situation was an airplane that was anything but easy to fly. While it would turn left in a more or less conventional manner, right turns, while quick and wonderful combat maneuvers, were potentially lethal to the pilot. When turning right, the airplane wanted to snap over the top and the pilot held almost full left rudder all the way through the seemingly simple maneuver.”

It has been stated the “Camel” killed more allied and enemy pilots than any other WW1 airplane. A rather dubious distinction.

[Don Garrett]

Great info Syd......love it.

[mouppe]

Sy, you basically covered it. Rotary engines have no throttle, speed is controlled through cutting the engine. That accounted for the blipping sound of a camel. As for the casualties, more camel pilots died during training than during action. Once you mastered the plane, it was superior to anything the Germans had at the time.

It was said that a camel offered you the choice of a Victoria cross, the Red cross or a wooden cross.

Mouppe.

[hot ford coupe]

And to think of it, they didn't use parachutes in those planes until about 1920 I believe. Talk about going down with the ship.

[sydeem]

The more I read about flying the WW1 aircraft the more I marvel at how far modern engineering has come. Amazing how you can watch a NASCAR wreck flip 8 times at 200 mph with the driver walking away or an Indy wreck - then these guys with no parachute flying something that would burn your legs off if it had a carburetor fire (carb was between your legs) or blow up if you didn't "blip" it right trying to land. I know this is a car site but thought the following excerpts also interesting:

Radial engines are known to have the oil settle into the bottom cylinder when left sitting for a length of time, like over night. So in the old days, before the first flight of the day, a mechanic would turn the prop by hand to circulate the oil that had pooled in the lower cylinder. The mechanic would holler to the pilot, "switch off?" The pilot would reply "switch off" to let the mechanic know it was OK to turn the prop through a couple of times. Then the mechanic would yell "switch on!" The pilot would yell beck, "switch on", or "contact!" This would let the mechanic know that this time when he pulled the propeller through, the engine would be starting (through magneto grounding etc). Since the Sopwith Camel had no brakes, the mechanic would then position himself to pull the chocks that kept the plane from rolling forward until the pilot was ready to go.

Coming down from altitude is usually accomplished by shutting off the fuel, but not cutting off the ignition. With the propeller windmilling, forward pressure on the stick is needed to hold the nose at a fairly steep angle toward the earth to maintain a safe airspeed. It's important to keep the propeller turning so that when you turn the fuel back on, the engine will restart If the propeller were to stop while in the glide, there would be no way to start the engine. If you were at a really high altitude, you might be able to put the Camel into a very steep dive and, with the resultant pressure of the air against the propeller, it might crank over. The operative word here is "might."

If, to descend, you shut off the magneto to the engine but leave the fuel on, you are flirting with danger. While the engine is turning over, fuel is being fed into the engine and exhausted from it into the cowl. Turning the engine back on could ignite the raw fuel collecting in the cowl. Even with the fuel off, however, there is still a problem to contend with: the oil pump is geared directly to the engine, and even when the engine is off, as long as it is rotating, oil is being pumped into the cylinders. This could oil up the "sparking plugs" (as they were referred to in 1917), and this could prevent them from firing when the ignition is turned back on.

When the fuel is turned back on, the engine doesn't usually start right away. It takes a few seconds for the fuel to get to it, and even then, only one or two cylinders will fire. With each firing of the cylinders, the engine runs a little faster and the spark gets to each cylinder at a faster rate, and eventually (usually), all nine cylinders begin to work as they should.

Blipping the engine often enough to keep it running and still maintain a safe glide speed is something that seems to come naturally. It's important to keep the touchdown spot clearly in your mind even when it is lost behind the cowl when you're flaring to land.

[hot ford coupe]

Syd, this is great aviation history. Most of us have absolutely no idea what it took to keep one of those flying coffins in the air let alone keep it flying in battle and shooting down another aircraft at the same time. The pilot has always had a certain arrogance about him (or her) that most people find obnoxious. After reading many books and articles and even talking with some of these "arrogant" pilots, this so called arrogance is the exact thing that makes them good at their jobs. You have to have that innate sense of invinceability and over confidence to get into a flying fuel tank with machine guns and get close enough to another flying gas tank with guns and knock it out of the sky without getting killed. I'm also a member of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, an 8th Air Force veterans' group and the 100th Bomb Group Association. I have been to a number of their meetings and met many historical figures like James England of AVG fame and the P51B Ding Hao, Gabby Gabreski and Robert Johnson, the two top aces in the ETO, Leon Johnson who led the Ploesti mission and countless other names that keep showing up in books. Each one of these people I thought were egotistical, arrogant and even slightly obnoxious but thank God for these men who had the nerve to get into those death traps and do a job that I could never do in a million years. Without them, the free world wouldn't be the free world.

[sydeem]

Maybe my Camel will show up tomorrow. In the mean time an excellent detailed set of drawings of the Clerget Engine was posted by Brian Dolby at http://www.modelenginenews.org/plans/Clerget.pdf The basic cutaway is the first image. He detailed everything including the oil pump and carburetor.

The second image is the actual engine. The third image shows how close Mouppe's Hasegawa came to it. The fourth image is Model Airways effort. Before commenting on the detail - the fifth image shows Hasegawa next to the MA in scale. It is half the size and it would be tough to scale the fins down any further. The spark plugs and valve rocker arms are way oversize - might have to think about that.

[sydeem]

HFC - you are into cockpits presently. Attached are images of a Camel cockpit and a modern fighter cockpit. One takes a lot of brains the other takes a lack of concern. The horizontal tube in the Camel is the air inlet to the engine. The vertical tube downwards from it goes to the carburetor right about at your feet. If you screw up the mixture and a backfire from "blipping" starts a carburetor fire you get the hot foot! Or if you leave the ignition off too long while descending gas can accumulate in the cockpit and blow up when you switch back on.