Photos of your planes

NeilC wrote:

Our Tiger has Powerflow and at a similar power setting with 10 gph we would see maybe 133 KTAS. So you get another 15 plus knots which must largely be the gear.

Probably. The Tiger is said to produce up to 140 kts TAS, which is quite awsome for a fixed pitch/fixed gear plane. Not without reason some people muse that this plane was the distant relative grandfather for the SR20/22 series :)

magyarflyer wrote:

Here is my to go burger plane, inherited from the 85 year old mechanic that lived at KHQZ and was a legendary guy, a letter from the FAA stating 70 years of flying without an accident. I guess he did not care much about perspective in color, the guys call this the avocado. I am hesitant to repaint.!!

The OEM scheme looks much much much better than painting it in some swoopy stripe on white nonsense designed to distract from the owner not wanting to pay for a real paint job. My first, first solo (I had three by the definition of the instructors involved) was in N3022X, a 1966 C150 that still flies in mustard yellow and white 40 years after my solo.

The SAAF scheme T-6 looks great too. You apparently misunderstood my comment, which was critical of people who for example inexplicably paint Yak 50s, USSR world aerobatic competition aircraft, in US Navy World War Two schemes. Your T-6 looks great in the colors of the longest term military operator of the type.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

With the PF exhaust however you get about 1-2 inches more than you usually get and Mooney indicates something like 23 inches at 6500 ft as max MP, so with the PF 25 inches are not impossible.

I need to have a think about that – not sure how a particular exhaust system can give you more manifold pressure? If anything I’d have thought a more free-flowing exhaust system (although allowing the engine to breathe better and thus gain more RPM at a given throttle setting) would have tended to lower the pressure in the induction system, assuming there is some valve overlap? I don’t know enough about the camshaft timing of aero engines to offer a firm opinion at the moment.

My knowledge is mainly based around car engines, but I always understood that exhaust tuning (header length, active scavenging etc) was really about improving breathing and performance at high RPM, not the slow engine speeds we deal with in aviation.

My (perhaps overly simple) understanding was that in ISA conditions, unless you have forced induction of some sort, then the max manifold pressure at 6,500ft is 22.8 inches. 6500ft / 27ft = 240mb. 1013mb-240mb = 773mb, convert to " of Hg is 22.8. I didn’t think it mattered whether it was a Mooney or a Model-T Ford, and I always assumed no-one would ever see this theoretical maximum because wide-open throttle in any Otto-cycle engine is a not a true excess of air.

6500ft amsl altitude is probably 3000ft density altitude in a good winter cold dry day in Switzerland but yes for static MP it does not matter which aircraft you are flying, the only thing that you can do for a N.A. engine is to add unfiltered ram air but that would increase dynamic MP from baseline static value, but at best that will be 1" when you fly at 140kts speed and 2" at 200kts and it will cost you some drag & dirt in the engine…

Landing at Badminton Airfield in 2016

A shot of Peter’s TB20 in formation from the weekend.

Nice.
I think everyone should have a piccy of their aircraft in that perspective.
Even the ugly ones look nice at that angle.
(Not that yours falls into that category Peter, and I think that’s my favourite TB scheme)

Most retracts look so nice in the air, like Peter’s. But you never get to see them that way and only gaze at your plane with these silly little wheels sticking out. At least fixed gear planes can be fitted with nice pants so they are presentable on the ground as well. OK, let the debate begin..