OPPOFLOP: Cessna 337 Skymaster

"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
06/16/2020 at 23:50 • Filed to: None

We’re still moving in team ranking, but there is also movement on our team board. As well, our overall folding rate is creeping back upward and I am aware of a couple of new GPUs that have been recruited.

DISCUSSION (26)

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 00:05

My dad has flown a military one of those, he owned a single engine Cessna when I was a kid. The one I really like is the Bronco. When I was a kid we flew in a Bronco with his BLM friend who used them.

Kinja'd!!!

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)
06/17/2020 at 00:19

That aeroplane is undeniably more cool.

InFierority Complex > 415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)
06/17/2020 at 00:45

One of my favorite aircraft . I found out not too long ago that California has qu ite of few of them around t o act as spotters during wildfires.

Kinja'd!!!

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 00:51

That is a sweet plane!

When does your new 1080 ti show up?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jminer
06/17/2020 at 00:52

I believe it is due Friday. My brother-in-law started folding last night with a something-something $400+ 5700 something GPU. I got him to join our team.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 00:59

I’ve been making a bigger push lately to get WUs out the door. I think my points/day went from 300kish to now closer to 500kish. The old faithful 1070 keeps slaying!

jminer > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 01:06

Nice! I run a pair of them and depending on the variation it’ll put out either 900k or 1.2 million a day when run full tilt

barnie > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 01:23

The Acer got here today!! But, my monitor is only DVI or VGA. Acer is DVI|HDMI|DisplayPort. Local Wally doesn’t have a cable so it’s off to Best Buy tomorrow. And this thing only has 1 red USB (?) in front so a powered USB hub is in the offing. One day at a time, I guess. At least they have a Panda Express down there! Yea, high cuisine for this area. Doc and Clunk’ll go with me and we’ll make a roadtrip of it. Surely they’ll want Wally World and the smoke shop, too. Soon guys, soon (Alex ) Tomson will join you. (All my comps are named after famous sailors.)

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > InFierority Complex
06/17/2020 at 01:28

Yeah they were made for that basically (for more destructive scouting), the Bureau of Land Management has them too. I flew in it and you can see really well, I would have one if I were a rich pilot like Harrison Ford.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 06:16

I’ve always loved the Skymaster, but it has some flaws that would keep me from buying one. There are engine problems with the pusher due to inadequate airflow. Although there are benefits to having them both in line, those are somewhat offset due to low power if one engine dies. You’d think they would have designed it to perform like a regular single engine with the added boost from the second, but the extra weight and drag make it perform very poorly on just one engine. So the second engine burns extra fuel, adds to the maintenance costs, and doesn’t boost performance by much. It’s a bit of a letdown.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 09:58

They also had a tendency to crash when the rear engine lost power, or failed, and the pilot didn’t recognize it... This was the one flaw in a very cool design— plus cooling was always tougher to the rear engine.

We had one crash out at the airstrip years ago. Rear engine failure at the wrong time.... but the pilot walked away.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > TheRealBicycleBuck
06/17/2020 at 13:02

I really like twin-boom aircraft... but it kind of makes more sense to put the engines in the booms.... like Bronco, P38, and Rutan’s Pond Racer (which was maybe a tri-boom design? , since the fuselage meets the tail plane and the wings.)

Pond Racer and P38 are gorgeous aircraft... as are Velocity Twin-EZ and Beechcraft Starship... if you flip the airframe geometry around the other way.

I always kind of wondered why we haven’t seen many of those that are turbo-prop powered, or with modern small turbofans from the likes of VLJs or business-class aircraft. (Beechcraft Starship was a twin-turboprop pusher)

Aero engines are good... automotive engines kind of caused a bit of a problem in the Pond Racer... but people sometimes have good luck with aero-repurposed turbocharged wankel rotary engines.... or just stepping up to a turbine.

I have not heard much about he Adam Aircraft A700 jet upgrade version, but the A500 is a twin engine push-pull centerline piston and prop aircraft, similar to the Skymaster, but with a lower wing configuration.

Only Vespas... > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 13:15

The Skymaster was the first plane I ever flew. It belonged to girlfriend’s father. It was heavy, very loud and pretty small inside for a twin. Before we took off I remember him telling me to advance the rear engine’s throttle first so one could tell if, I guess, it was working properly or not.

TheRealBicycleBuck > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast.
06/17/2020 at 13:39

It’s no secret around here that I’m also a fan of twin-boom aircraft. Through my pilot training, I’ve learned that there are some significant dangers with twin-engine aircraft where the engines are mounted on the wings. Engine failure on one side leads to a dangerous as ymm etric thrust condition which is most worrisome during takeoff when an engine failure can cause a snap roll. Loss of a single engine in flight doesn’t just lower the power by 50%, the excess drag from the dead engine and the induced yaw from the asymmetric thrust leads to a much greater loss of total power. On takeoff, if the gear are still down and flaps deployed, there may be more drag than a single engine can overcome and the aircraft cannot climb until the aircraft is “cleaned up” by stowing the gear and raising the flaps. The more offset the engines are from the fuselage, the worse the problem.

That’s one of the reasons behind the Skymaster’s design. The inline thrust at the centerline of the aircraft eliminates the asymmetric yaw problem. Unfortunately, the other problems still exist - extra drag from the dead engine, extra weight, etc.

Everything in aviation is a compromise. The additional performance gained by adding another engine is offset by the extra fuel and maintenance costs, as well as significant dangers during certain phases of the flight, especially on smaller general aviation aircraft.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t own one if I had the budget for it! :)

Jim Spanfeller > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 15:45

... I didn’t know that was a thing. I love it!

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > TheRealBicycleBuck
06/17/2020 at 16:00

I never knew any of that about the Skymaster. I’ve been an airplane buff all of my life and I look up at almost any aircraft I hear fly over*. I’ve only ever seen one in the wild that I can think of and at the time, many years ago, it struck me as especially noisy.

*When I joined the Army, I did my basic training at Ft Dix, New Jersey, which is across the street from McGuire AFB. There were fighters taking off at all hours, afterburners, et cetera, and I always looked up at them and frequently had drill instructors yelling in my ear as I did so and we were marching. Well worth it, says I. I don’t know what model of acft they were, though. I do remember something with a delta wing up flying around one day, but that wasn’t the norm.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
06/17/2020 at 16:02

I never would have thought that the thing couldn’t keep flying on one engine. Shows you how much I know.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Only Vespas...
06/17/2020 at 16:26

I have learned a lot today about the Skymaster.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Jim Spanfeller
06/17/2020 at 16:27

I think they are relatively few and far between.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 16:31

Most of what I wrote was in reference to twins with wing-mounted engines, although the performance hit in a Skymaster with one engine out is the same.

“The single-engine climb rates of all the light twins tend to be very similar—200 to 300 FPM—because engine-out climb rate is a certification point around which the airplane is designed. The FAA requires a certain minimum climb, figured by a formula relating to stall speed, and the manufacturers typically bump up the gross weight to the point at which the airplane just barely meets the FAA minimum. Any excess engine-out climb capability is, in effect, wasted payload. And payload numbers sell airplanes.”

Also, the Skymaster takes an additional hit when stowing the landing gear. The gear doors create additional drag that can reduce climb rates by 250 FPM - a dangerous hit if you just lost an engine.

Jim Spanfeller > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/17/2020 at 16:35

I still want one. If, you know, I could afford an airplane...

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > TheRealBicycleBuck
06/17/2020 at 16:46

So if the single-engine climb rate is 200 FPM and gear doors exact a 250 FPM premium, then the arithmetic is not good.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Jim Spanfeller
06/17/2020 at 16:47

Tell you what: if nobody else wants this one, you can have it.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > TheRealBicycleBuck
06/18/2020 at 00:29

I am not a pilot, just interested in general... but that makes perfect sense.

Safety is no joke whatsoever, but the flip side is... a measure of risk is inherent in doing things like leaving the ground and counter-acting gravity for extended periods of time.

and if safety were everything, nobody would leave their padded cells, and we’d all stay out of arms reach of each other...

Oh, wait a sec...

;-)

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/18/2020 at 13:55

Where it hit pilots was in the takeoff roll. As the other fellow pointed out, the “stats that sell airplanes” are all about payload and runway needed to clear 50' at the end of the runway.

So, if you lost a rear engine (or didn’t recognize you were short HP from back there), your required takeoff distance went way, way up. And, if you managed to get it off the runway, your performance was severely compromised-- even as you had the negative effects as you tried to get the gear stowed.

I think, assuming you’d burned off fuel, you could maintain altitude and safely get it down but where it was dicey was on takeoff, where an already stretched set of performance parameters ‘broke’ with inadequate power to get you to flying speed.

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/35801

https://www.news-journalonline.com/article/LK/20130220/news/605062079/DN

https://www.news4jax.com/news/2019/09/24/2-hurt-in-plane-crash-at-st-augustine-airport/

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
06/18/2020 at 14:53

I knew practically zero about the Mixmaster before this post, beyond that it existed and that the single example I ever saw in the wild struck me as being very loud. This has been very informative.