| On the night before Lindy left for Paris he was at Roosevelt field tweaking the three carburetors on the Ryan so he could make it to Paris without swimming. The simplistic action of using the entire mixture curve was appreciated in the mid twenties and getting all of the F:A ratios balanced was a prime concern of his. This "common knowledge" became lost to the general aviation community in the 1950s and 60s. We simply dug it back up--to the great consterntaion of the "new" experts who were unfamiliar with the lean side of the mixture curve.
There is lore of his teaching LOP ops to the P-38 pilots in the Pacific which is, however, incorrect. According to M.F. Kirby, a good friend of mine and P-38 ACE who was present for Lindy's talks said they only talked about using low RPM and high MP as a method to extend range. LOP ops were not discussed. That makes sense since the P-38 could not be manually leaned. It had Emergency Rich, Full Rich, Auto Lean and Idle cutoff settings only. Auto Lean was set to Best power. (the only WWII aircraft which was routinely flown LOP was the B-24 Liberator)
For those interested, Lindy's methods to expend range were not popular with the P-38 pilots since it reduced TAS. They wanted to maintain optimal TAS so when the enemy was engaged, there was no "spool up" in speed required. As Kirby told me, "We had lots of engines, enough planes, plenty of mechanics but only one me."
Walter
On Aug 30, 2011, at 8:41 AM, Lancair wrote: Funny: I thought it was Lindbergh who championed LoP operation. Walter must be older than he looks! ;-) Robert From: Colyn Case [mailto:colyncase@earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 2:07 PM
Subject: Re: [LML] LOP Academics APS has pretty much single-handedly got the industry going in the LOP direction. That's worth $995 to me right there. -- For archives and unsub http://mail.lancaironline.net:81/lists/lml/List.html |