I just returned from a Marcoo Plo hunt in Kyrgyzstan. I had the following experience, and thought someone here might get a laugh, and also know the type of aircraft involved.

Our outfitter had the great idea that we could avoid the 15 hour drive from Bishkek (capital) to the camp, 400 miles south, just off the China border, by flying. So he arranged a charter with Golden Rule Airlines, owned by a young American (Robert Schuerman) and Russian partners. We arrived at the airport at 0600 and watched them attempt to start this thing. I was told it had a 1000hp radial copied from the DC3. They primed, spun, pumped, swore, brought in more batteries, and 1/5 hours later it fired and ran. It went through a series of farts, pops, backfires (through exhaust as well as intake, and shot oil down the fuselage. The exhaust backfires shot flames 6 feet.

It finally smoothed out, and eight of us climbed aboard and sat on the benches mounted fore and aft. There was a pilot (reportedly an old Aeroflot guy with 20,000 hours) and Schuerman, licensed, but with small hours. The take off went smoothly and we headed E and S toward the first mountain range. They tried four times to make it, up four different valleys. The co-pilot puked (as did 5 of us), the outfitter had a heart attack ( No BS.), and I was sure the wings would fly off. The pilot was arm wrestling the yoke, and it was winning. We cinched our belts as tight as they'd go, for good reason. When we finally gave up and turned around, we made it to Bishkek in 1/4 the time it took to get out there. I guessed the winds to be over 100knots. I've seen some hairy-assed flying in Alaska, but nothing to match this.

The upper wing was about double the area of the lower, in case anyone has an idea what this beast was.

I dont have any idea what type of aircraft it was but its a great story.

So how did your hunt go after that?

Brice,

I'm betting it was an AN2?


Despite being a primitive design, they have a reputation of being a tough rough strip aircraft and I believe quite a few are still in service..

Regards,

Pete

Yeah, I think you're right. They're set up in several configuratins for air ambulance, crop dusting, skydiving, passenger service and a bunch of others. Those old former Soviet bloc countries aren't famous for their maintenance. Personally, after about an hour of watching the gymnastics just to try to get it started, I would have located other means of transport.

Pete,
That looks like the bad boy. Jetdrvr, we sure thought about it. Actually, the engine ran strong after it fired up. It was cold the previous night, and the batts were pretty sick. The plane was tough as whang leather, it was the weather that got us.

Do appreciate your comments. I'll ask more questions next time.

RE the rest of the hunt. Things kind of went downhill from there, logistically. We had to cross the Chinese border and the travel permit was incomplete. We wound up staying the night with a shepherd and his family in the middle of nowhere. They were quite hospitable, and it was a unique experience. We traveled in two very old Russin vehicles, a jeep type and a 4 wd van. Both were junk. We all had CO headaches. They had bad gas (water), etc., etc.)
I did get a nice ram, though. All's well that ends well. (And the women in Bishkek are unbelievably gorgeous.)

There are at least a couple of those AN@'s in Ak. now. Tough as nails old bush planes! There are a couple of dozen of them parked at the airport of the town in Ukraine where my wife is from also. I'll bet they pack a big payload.

A couple of years ago I was working in ANC and somebody had bought some of these things from the Russians and flown them over. They were in the process of trying to get them certified to operate here in the US. I got to smoke one over and I think the floor panels were about 1/4" plate! I have never seen an aircraft with no safety wire anywhere, all the screws were round headed slots, etc. We listened to the engine being run up several times and it sounded like a real brute. I even found the sound of one cranking off for you!
http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/bgc-systems/projects/web_TCOS/wav/AN2-startup.wav
And to top things off, they were tazxing this thing round and about and we saw them take off - across the runway! The four blade prop on that thing looked like it might have last been at home on a C130. I would really, really like to fly one of these aircraft.
You can go to http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/bgc-systems/projects/web_TCO...s/miscellaneous.html for some more info and really good pictures of an AN-2.

Thanks, TrapperP, that sure sounded like the one, except ours was very rough for 2-3 minutes until (I suppose) the mixture leaned out. I'm not a pilot, but guess that was the case. And yes, that prop was huge. I was told it was rated for 12 passengers plus 2000#.

Very nice of you to provide the pix, sound.
Brice

Small world TrapperP.
My next door neighbor and a buddy of his were the ones that brought in the first 2 to ANC.

In December after the Grenada invasion that happened in October, I got forced down in Cuba after blowing the #9 cylinder off the right engine on a DC-3 full of PVC pipe headed for Montego Bay. We landed at Varadero a bit nervous, since the 82nd Airborne guys had been shooting Cuban troops in Grenada two months prior.

The Cubans treated us well, as we were on an IFR flight plan and had declared an emergency with Havana Center.

The Cubans had a spotless AN-2 on the ramp and they invited us to look it over. Got to sit in the office and look at the dials and gauges. I, also, would love to fly the beast. It is truly a fine airplane and is built like an Abrams. That was a treat.

(We got a call at the hotel Kawama from the Swiss Embassy, who were a bit worried about us. The Cubans treated us like guests, but we were followed all over the hotel grounds by a guy from G2 who tried hard to look like an employee but had cop written all over his face. The Jamaicans actually treated us less courteously than the Cubans, after we had a jug flown down from Miami and made it to Mo Bay and around to Kingston for cheap gas). That's my only AN 2 story.

And Brice, sounds like you had quite an adventure. Wish I'd been there.

Trapper, thanks for the audio. Think I'll sit here and listen to it for a half hour and weep for my lost youth. Much of my aviation career was spent in a long love affair with radials, and there's nothing in aviation now that equals that music. Now, all we hear is hiss and roar, hiss and roar. I flew jets, but my one true love is the P&W R-985.

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:
In December after the Grenada invasion that happened in October, I got forced down in Cuba after blowing the #9 cylinder off the right engine on a DC-3 full of PVC pipe headed for Montego Bay. We landed at Varadero a bit nervous, since the 82nd Airborne guys had been shooting Cuban troops in Grenada two months prior.

The Cubans treated us well, as we were on an IFR flight plan and had declared an emergency with Havana Center.

The Cubans had a spotless AN-2 on the ramp and they invited us to look it over. Got to sit in the office and look at the dials and gauges. I, also, would love to fly the beast. It is truly a fine airplane and is built like an Abrams. That was a treat.

(We got a call at the hotel Kawama from the Swiss Embassy, who were a bit worried about us. The Cubans treated us like guests, but we were followed all over the hotel grounds by a guy from G2 who tried hard to look like an employee but had cop written all over his face. The Jamaicans actually treated us less courteously than the Cubans, after we had a jug flown down from Miami and made it to Mo Bay and around to Kingston for cheap gas). That's my only AN 2 story.

And Brice, sounds like you had quite an adventure. Wish I'd been there.

Trapper, thanks for the audio. Think I'll sit here and listen to it for a half hour and weep for my lost youth. Much of my aviation career was spent in a long love affair with radials, and there's nothing in aviation now that equals that music. Now, all we hear is hiss and roar, hiss and roar. I flew jets, but my one true love is the P&W R-985.

"I flew jets, but my one true love is the P&W R-985."

Jetdrvr, my 'memories' of the R985 are a little different than yours - seems all of mine are like this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkcX0KGIBwk
Sorry, didn't mean to steal the thread!

Trapper that video is a hoot! Thanks for posting it.

+1 TrapperP. That video is neat

John

Wow, TrapperP,
Talk about delayed gratification. Yeah, the old AN2 sounded something like that, but rougher and louder. Can someone explain to this cheechako why a radial behaves like this?

How did I get I get into this????
Pull out the ‘way-back’ machine and I’ll try to explain. In short, a radial engine will not, it cannot, work! Just won’t happen. Now, I’ll try and be a little bit real here.
Go to this little video and it will reveal how it allegedly operates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hWZ40120BQ
And just to really throw a badger in the batch, the original radials, like the LeRhone of WWI fame, had the crankshaft bolted to the firewall and the entire engine turn around the crank, cylinders and all. Supposedly you had to learn to turn with the engine rotation if you intended to turn quickly. And just to really give you a head ache, say you have a nine cylinder radial: You will have a ‘master’ rod connected to the crankshaft and then each of the other eight cylinders will be connected not to the crank but rather to the master rod. This is sort of shown in the video clip.
As to why they will crank and run as they do, I cannot answer. I do recall the P&W engines cranked and ran much smoother than did the Curtis-Wrights. We flew the P&W R2800’s on the CV440 and the DC-6 and the C-W R3350 on the DC-7. I’ve seen the old DC-7’s come out of the hangar after maintenance and it would seem they turned the engines over forever before they would light off, and it was never a smooth start, rather it would run on a few cylinders with others catching up and starting to fire. This thing had two rows with 9 cylinders in each row for a total of 18 cylinders. I vividly recall the poor mechanic standing by with the fire bottle; he would watch the stream of oil and gasoline running out of the PRT shields and start backing up as he knew a giant fireball was going to be blown back toward him. ((BTW, the PRT I mentioned stands for Power Recovery Turbine – the DC-7 as we flew it had the engines compounded with three PRT’s, each of which added 250HP for a total increase of 750HP per engine.)) And the DC-7 needed the additional horses.
You are probably thoroughly confused by now. I did not intend for this to become a book but I hope you are somewhat more knowledgeable than before. The old radials are growing fewer and fewer due to both the cost of upkeep and repairs plus the price of gasoline. These engines generally require high octane gasoline and it is very expensive plus they use a lot of it!
I'll add another clip - this one is a 28 cyl engine, made up of 4 rows (banks) with 7 cylinders each.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdyS5XjEd_g&feature=related
A radial has to have an odd number of clinders per row or it really will not operate, or so I am told.

TrapperP,
Thanks for taking the time. I cannot imagine the workings of the mind that first conceived this beast. Why didn't they do something really challenging, like having the pistons trade holes?

I looked at the radial motor cycle on U tube, also. Sheeeesh!

My impressions are a little different. Only started 300 Jakobs, 450 P&W 600 P&W.

For a start, they're old technology, but in good order they should start easy enough. The thing is you can under prime or over prime them, but if they refuse to start there is probably a good reason.

The "Shakey Jackobs" had a two button start, one for a "coil" or something, and didn't like getting wet.

The 450 P&W was a dream. On a warm day just a couple pumps on the throttle was enough. No fires or drama.

The 600 HP P&W was a little more fussy but not too bad. The rough running may be that the primer lines only did the top cylinders, so after they fired the bottom ones had to suck up their own fuel.

And the bottom plugs may be oiled up from "sitting". It was also not uncommon for some valves to be sticky or maybe some carbon in the valve seat, which lead to some interesting popping noises for a while.

Don't know about High octane. As far as I know they were designed to run on war time car fuel, then 80/87 aviation fuel, and when that went out only then to 100/130. When that then got scarce here we were allowed to go back to car fuel.

Confusion everywhere here. My first Chief pilot had me winding the Jakobs backwards, so the oil would run out the exhaust of the bottom cyl.

Next someone talked me into doing the 450 forwards, and after a few years the engineer said not to wind it at all as I might force the piston thru an oil lock and bend the con rod whereas the engine had a "clutch" to stop it forcing anything.

Heck, in warm weather I've even hand started a 450 . . . When it wanted to.

quote:

A radial has to have an odd number of clinders per row or it really will not operate, or so I am told.

It would operate, just not smoothly. A crankshaft has to rotate through 720 degrees for a complete cycle, and there is no way to work this out with an even number of cylinders working off the same crank journal. So what is done is have an odd number of cylinders and have every other cylinder fire in order, so the order on a 7 cylinder radial would be 1 3 5 7 2 4 6 and then repeat as the #1 would be the second cylinder after #6.

Interesting video of a Le Rhone rotary:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=R_JMGO5NzuI&feature=related

Damn this you tube is sure a time waster!

The 985's ran on 80/87 and the 3350's and 4360's on 115/145, purple gas. This crummy low lead "100" octane they have now days played hell with the valve train in the radials. The 985 did not like that stuff. As you likely know, each grade of fuel was colored so you wouldn't get a low octane fuel tanked for one requiring a higher octane number.

I used to fly to the Bahamas from Miami a lot and we would leave Miami filled with blue gas, the 100LL crap and then could get real 80/87 in Nassau. The cylinder head temps ran a full 40 degrees cooler on the return trip.

I flew the 985, the P&W 1830 in a couple of series, the R2000, and a few trips with CW 1820's. The 1830 ran like a dream, most of the time. But the 985 was my favorite piston engine of the several types I flew over the years. It was likely one of the most durable engines ever made.

There is no sound in aviation as delightful to me as the roar of a 985, an 1830, or a 2800 at full takeoff power. Those engines made music. All the other types of engines, the flat fours, the flat sixes, the V-12's and particularly the jets, just make noise.

BTW, trapper, didn't they call the DC-7 the tri-motor Douglas because you'd always takeoff on four and land on three?

And that starting video is great. The text scrolling across the bottom of the video says it all. Jets always bored the hell out of me.

Additionally, I didn't see it mentioned, but the numerical designations denote the engine displacement in cubic inches. The R-985 was a 985 CI engine producing 450 horsepower at takeoff power settings and later, after a few modifications, you could run it at red line manifold pressure and rpm continuously, if you didn't mind the high fuel burn. This came in very handy in a ten-two gross weight Twin Beech if you lost one while heavily loaded.

quote:

BTW, trapper, didn't they call the DC-7 the tri-motor Douglas because you'd always takeoff on four and land on three?

the DC-7 was the end of An era - end of pistons and begining of the jet. And yes, they were notorius for being hard to start (The 3350), burning or blowing the shields on the PRT's if you didn't have a sharp engineer on the panel, blowing jugs, etc. Run away props - when was the last time you heard of that? Quite a contrast to the DC-6 with the P&W 2800 - that, in my opinion, was the very best of all radials. The 2800 had it all together.
I too loved the sound of the radials but I vividly recall being told that the first jets were delivered and were being phased into service and the maintenance types (as usual!) were griping and bitching about this and that when one asked, "What the hell reason do you think they bought these blow torches for anyway?" to which one of the supervisors replied, "They bought them to make money with!"
And truer words were never spoken as I recall we worked very hard to get 1000-1100 hrs BTO with the 3350. Now some jet motors fly for years before being taken off the wing. What a difference!
Oh, your reference to the 'twin Beech with a heavy load' - I knew a CPO in the navy [only POP (Petty Officer Pilot) I ever personally knew] that flew COBD flights with a twin Beech. He allowed as how some said the twin Beech would not fly on one engine and that was a lie - no one had ever seen a twin Beech fail to make it to the crash site on one motor!

An interesting tidbit about the AN2 - I was working with Continental Air Service out of Vientiane, Laos in early 1968 when we heard that our brother-airline, Air America, had shot down an AN2 over Xieng Khouang province (Plaines des Jarres) using Kalashnikovs (AK47) fired out of a Bell Huey. It might be the only helicopter vs biplane dogfight in history.

Namibiahunter

Send us a bigger photo of that Namib hotsy you're squiring around. Can she cook. > I assume your hunting down there. If you get that trophy are you gonna mount her.

quote:

Originally posted by billinthewild

Send us a bigger photo of that Namib hotsy you're squiring around. Can she cook. > I assume your hunting down there. If you get that trophy are you gonna mount her.

Bill, you got me laughing so hard I could barely type this.



I like the idea of mounting her, but where? All my wall space is taken up but we're remodelling the kitchen. Maybe up against the wall in the kitchen...

Namibiahunter

Yeah, Trapper, a Twin Beech will fly on one, and pretty well at around 3000 feet MSL, as long as you don't extend the gear. Got my multi in one at Riddle in '63 and flew them until 1987. It was a lifelong love affair.

I actually found a model of one at the gift shop in Campinas, Brasil. I'd looked all over the world for one. Revell never made one and that airplane was in production longer than any other, with one exception, my other favorite, the Herc.

Japan Air Lines bought the last seven that rolled off the production line at Wichita for trainers, and they all had training wheels (nosewheels) on them. That nosewheel took most of the fun out of flying the Beech 18.

And I agree with you on the R2800. That was likely the most dependable and efficient of the bigger radials. The Sixes lasted in the cargo and tramp market a heck of a lot longer than the 7. Another interesting thing is if you have a type rating in one, you are rated for both.

Yeah, jets make money, (for some airlines, anyway), but they've taken a lot of the romance out of aviation and made a lot of people into pilots who would not be pilots if the big radials were still out there.

When I was in Bishkek a few years ago there were over a hundred AN2's lined up on the ramp, all in various states of dis-repair.

Your flight story puts my 14 hour jeep ride to Murgab in a lot better perspective.

Gents
Heres the link you wanna see..how the Radial engine works. Yep there has to be odd number of jugs.
Enjoy!


http://science.howstuffworks.com/radial-engine2.htm

Phil
Reminds me of a story by a fellow Nuck who went to Russia on an Agri mission.
As he was driving into this huge collective he saw that both sides of the drive were lined by tractors. Sounded like over a 100 of em at least. Later on he asked the head guy how come they had so many tractors. He said "tractors no work we put there.. order new tractor from factory". They don't have anyone that can fix em so they just keep churning them out of the factory.
Keeps people workin I guess.
If you could of seen the living conditions there you would not of believed it. I was stunned that they were so incredibly poor! It was 3rd world at best. Man Russia is a wierd country.

quote:

Yeah, Trapper, a Twin Beech will fly on one, and pretty well at around 3000 feet MSL, as long as you don't extend the gear. Got my multi in one at Riddle in '63 and flew them until 1987. It was a lifelong love affair.

Jetdriver

Ever fly one of these on floats. On top of that, after looking at the video on starting a radial, got me to thinking of the times we flew that c-18 on floats all over canada. It had a poor batery and at times we had to hand prob it to get it started. I was usually the guy on the wing with the rope. We put a loop in the rope and put it over the prop and pulled it through. It usually caught after one or two pulls but more than once I almost got blown off the wing and into the drink when the pilot revved up the engine to get the only generator going. It got kinda tricky if you were in a river with a swift current.

Eye-Zapper Marv Grendal has a AN-2 that his son flew from the factory in Chec, to Anchorage. He told me that it could haul so much fuel it could still be airborn.