Mike Busch at OSH 2021

[Colonel]

The weirder an airplane is, generally the more pilots hate it, and the more I love it.

F-104
MU-2
Beech 18
Pitts

All of the above have reputations as "fire-breathing dragons" amongst the pilots
that are un-interested in making friends with unusual airplanes, whom ironically
insist that everyone get dual.

Egalitarianism is a giant pain in the @ss. Airplanes are different. So are pilots.

Being different is ok. It's ok for airplanes and pilots to be different. I have no idea
why this is so offensive a concept, to so many. My rather cynical view of both aircraft
and pilot certification (and training and operation) is that they both want to make
everything the same. Different is bad. Burn the witch. Dumb it all down to the lowest
common denominator.

Blech.

[Squaretail]

is that they both want to make everything the same.

There is something to be said for gaining a wide skill set. I think Heinlein summed it up best: "specialization is for insects."

[Colonel]

a wide skill set

Well, that's certainly a good thing for a well-rounded person, but in the specific
case of a pilot, it has to do with being interested in learning what's actually
happening when they fly an aircraft (as opposed to just following a checklist).

An airplane pushes air down with a wing, and pushes air back with an engine.

That's pretty well it, actually. When I look at a new aircraft, the first thing I look
at is how much wing it has, in relationship to it's weight. Wing loading, we call
it - lbs/sq ft can tell you a lot. Then, look at the wing from the side. Is it fat,
with max chord well forward? Or skinny like a treacherous super-model girlfriend?
Looking at the wing from the top, is it blocky with a low aspect ratio like the
girl next door, or does the wingtip taper (with even winglets)? That tells you a
lot about the Cl and Cd curves and how they behave as alpha increases. Flaps?

I know I'm weird, but that's what goes through my brain when I walk up to a
new friend that I haven't met yet, and we're about to go flying. Preferably solo.

Then, there is the engine. Tanks? Pumps? Plumbing? Most engines really really
like to keep the avgas/kerosene flowing, and get really unhappy when it doesn't.

Suck / Squeeze / Bang / Blow - that the litany of my Church of the Internal Combustion
Engine™.

Engines are air pumps. Gotta keep the air going in, and going out. What are the
max temps? Fluids? Levels? Resonant RPM's to avoid?

Props. Fixed pitch? Constant speed? Do they go fine pitch or coarse when they
lose oil pressure? Blades heavy metal with lots of gyroscopic precession (pitch-yaw
coupling) or light wooded composite blades?

I remember my friend Kevin, went through 4,000 RPM in his RV-8 one day in a
descent. IO-360 wet sump oil sloshed forward, oil pressure went to zero, prop
blades went full fine, and that was the end of that engine and prop.

Landing gear. If retractable, how actuated? Failure modes?

I know I'm a heretic in the 21st Century, but a checklist isn't a replacement for a brain.

[digits]

I'm really weird. I LOVE geared engines!

Why? At best they aren't worse than non-geared engines. What's the advantage or loveable quirk of having a gearbox?

[Slick Goodlin]

MU-2

Crummy IFR platform, zero tactile or auditory cues for aircraft state, hard to find a decent mechanic.

I like them, but it might just be that I like the ego trip of not being murdered by one (yet).

[Colonel]

At best they aren't worse than non-geared engines

Wrong. See below

What's the advantage or loveable quirk of having a gearbox?

POWER

Every aircraft that I have flown, with a geared engine, has had a substantial
power advantage, because of the extra RPM that the engine can spin up,
without the prop tips going supersonic. You have unlimited BMEP? I think not.

If you have ever just barely cleared the trees on takeoff, heavy on a hot day,
you will learn to appreciate more power. Here's a LetterKenny moment for
you from BC:



I have never flown a piston/prop airplane with too much power. Even this
could have used a few more horsepower, to be honest - it bled speed off like
crazy when you were pulling any G at all:




Plus, geared engines sound SO much better. I know that doesn't matter to most
pilots who don't give a shit about what they fly - flying is just a paycheck to them.
They'd fly the Goodyear Blimp if it paid a million a year.

This sounds incredible, flying overhead:

(mu-2 is a ) Crummy IFR platform

Try a Maule M4-210C. With no autopilot. Did my initial group 3 IFR on it, so
many decades ago. I can't imagine a worse IFR airplane, but I loved it and
punched cloud every chance I got. Not all of us learned to ride motorcycles
on Ducati's, I guess.

I know that this pilot probably wouldn't like an MU-2:



I'm ok with that. Airplanes and pilots are allowed to be different, ok?

Hold on. There was this odd little guy called Bill Carter that flew a Pitts S-2B
with a metal two-blade prop, for God's sake, IFR from airshow to airshow.
Worse IFR platform than the Maule. The only autopilot would be a bungee
on the stick across the cockpit. You would be upside down with tumbled
gyros in a heartbeat, and good luck.

TC is very very insistent about the dangers of flying a Pitts S-2B in cloud,
I learned. Especially aerobatics in cloud, even if there are no gyros to tumble,
for safety. Arlo Speer was very insistent about that, at the Tribunal, Tribunal
Review, Federal Court, and Federal Court of Appeals.

I love the moo-too. Fast, dangerous, loud, weird, ugly. My kind of airplane. I
might buy one yet!

[Colonel]

You think this guy would be interested in another 50 hp?

[Scudrunner]

You think this guy would be interested in another 50 hp?

Maybe a turbo charger and a few thousand feet less density altitude.

But hey he probably got like 1,000,000 likes on the gram and is an influencer like our hangar buddy in Oshawa.

[Colonel]

a turbo charger

Right. That increases the BMEP and hence torque at the same RPM, which also increases horsepower.

Power is like twins, Basil.

a few thousand feet less density altitude.

And that's the problem. You can turbo the engine, but the prop and wing aren't.

If you wanna fly in the hills with any kind of wind, you better have two afterburners
and a tolerance for a LOT of fuel burn.

[Squaretail]

They'd fly the Goodyear Blimp if it paid a million a year.

Hells yeah! That thing is way more maneuverable than you think. Not sure about you, but if it flies, I want to try it. If I got a million per year to fly it even better. That funds a lot of other toys.