Can anyone please identify the function of the component referenced in the attached photo?
Thanks.
It's so cool to look at that picture of a P&W Wasp and no cowling, and a two-bladed propeller. You can almost hear it flying over your head at 1000 ft. 2200 rpm x 2 blades / 60 = 73 Hz. Anyone with a piano, walk on over and plunk the first D and there you have it. Thanks Tim, and apologies for thread drift.
Well agreed, John - "poetry in motion"... well, maybe not as elegant as the topic of that song, but certainly a symphony in D as you say...
Drift... I guess I was so captivated that I overlooked it - BAD moderator! I guess I can split this into its own well-deserved string.
Yes, thanks Tim - you made me recall days in '76 - '78 at A&P school at a WWII era hangar on Souther Field in Americus, GA with two old navy C-45's ('twin Beech' or "18" models) that I got well greased on from overhaul to ground runs. I wonder if my uncle actually flew one of those two birds... wish I had looked that up.
My power plant instructor was a heck of a great fellow - great teacher and like a father to many of us who were young and 'far from home' (seemed like it then). He wore a belt buckle with that same lovely Pratt & Whitney eagle on it very often. I can still remember him talking over my shoulder while I was learning to use a timing tool on those 985's - well, talking from the ground while I was on a work stand to reach the master rod cylinder to get the 'Time-Rite' set up... and I remember him talking me through my first engine start on that bird - and gently helping coax it to life by moving the 'shiny knobs' in wizard-like ways after 'six blades and mags on' - and then that lovely starter whine and chug yielded up those lovely belches of first combustion - and then she would come to that 'D' drumming John mentioned as a shaky engine 'took' and settled in... takes me back.
Just to add a bit MORE drift before moving on - Souther Field in Americus is where Charles Lindbergh bought his first Jenny and soloed not long after WWI.
I spent quite a bit of time roaming the woods there back then before the 'modern' airport pushed all that out and away - lots of Waco glider bones back there and other old stuff I never did identify. Long years before I knew anything about TIGHAR - too bad, I think Ric might have enjoyed picking through those weeds before that stuff got raked out for scrap. I salvaged a few things - six old WWII era airport runway marker 'cones' (huge) - they are the primary markers on our private strip to this day; a control yoke from a GI glider - lower cross-tube and left vertical 'stick' with a mostly still intact wooden control wheel attached. It hangs on my dad's hangar wall to this day out on our grass strip - I thought it was a fitting keep-sake for an old army airborne special forces vet who served in the CBI theatre in WWII. I'll try to get some pictures this weekend and post them in case anyone cares about that kind of stuff.
Sorry for the drift and day dreaming, but this stuff really does get into your blood after a while...