Scudrunners

Scud mentioned the badass prop on a Convair 580 in another thread.  That made me flash on my favorite era of my favorite Reno racer:  Rare Bear!

Lyle Shelton started with the F8F Bearcat which was the littleest airplane Grumman could build around an R2800 and 4 20mm cannons.  Pretty bitchin airplane to start with.  Along the way he lost the Pratt and shoehorned in a Wright R3350.  Making as much as 7K hp with the nitrous flowing, it was the winningest racer of it's time.  The pictures show the era where Shelton was preparing for the 3km speed record.  The prop is off a P-3 Orion the blades were cut down.  He set the record at about 528 mph, but fell just shy of 500 in the closed course racing.  I read an interview with Shelton back when, He said he had two feet on the right pedal when in the turns at Reno.  P factor was off the scale.  He went back to the Skyraider prop for much more manegable flying qualities.

Images are unabashedly stolen from the internet.  First photo is by Craig Jellison, second is (I think??) by Jan Peters

Any other badass prop faves?

Gerry

Holy crap.  That prop on that airframe is insane.

In addition to doubling the size of the vertical fin
and rudder, imagine the pitch-yaw coupling from
those metal blades as you raise and lower the
tail during takeoff and landing!

That aircraft would so badly want to go into the
ditch.  None of today’s pilots could handle something
as badly behaved as that.

That short fuselage is insane!

Yeah, all takeoffs and landings were done 3 point as far as I've seen.  By the look of it if it was rolled on the runway tail-high, either prop would have been digging asphalt.

I saw Ron Bucharelli fly it in 2006 at Reno, he forgot to turn on the oil cooler spray bar water for the qualifying run.  Two laps and the engine was trash, the Bear was languishing in the pits for the rest of the week.

The following year the Old Pro[sup][size=8pt]TM[/size][/sup] test pilot John Penny flew the beast to a win at about 478 mph.  The guys who painted it just before that year's event touted themselves as pro aircraft painters had bondoed over the static ports.  There was also enough bondo on the cowl that a 2 square foot patch broke away around lap 2 of the final that year.  Much of that bondo blew into the carb intake port on the right wing root.  After the crossing the finish line, Penny discovered the carb wouldn't close, eventually discovered to be jammed by the bondo residue.  He calmly flew around for a while, but quickly running out of fuel he lined up and came across high key over the threshold of rwy 32 at about 400 mph and shut off the mixture and mags and made a graceful arc landing a third down the runway just like the text book says to do.  Dude never broke a sweat.  BTW the Bear hasn't had flaps since the '70s, locked up and faired in for speed.  If any airplane would qualify as a 'fire breathing dragon' this would be it.  A pro just takes it in stride.  ;^)



G

Some 4 bars can’t pull off a smooth landing like that with calm wind and a 10 mile final.