What happened to September Fury?

[FlyKidChris]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

As I understand it, drag is produced by more than just the frontal area; the entire "wetted area" of the aircraft must be considered. A shorter fuselage will have less drag, due to less wetted area, than a longer fuselage of similiar diameter. With a shorter fuselage, designers must also consider the "tail volume" (square footage of the tail surfaces times the length from the center of gravity, thus the 3 dimensional label "volume"), but even a short fuselage can be made to fly well (think Questair Venture - not getting into the structural issues here, though - or the Venture's gear problems). In any design, it's all a trade-off, balancing "mission requirements" against cost, weight, etc. Speaking generally, a smaller airframe will have less drag than a larger one.
Weight is another key issue. Given equal horsepower, a lighter airframe will not only fly faster, but accelerate more quickly also, which would be important leaving a high G turn.
Having said all that, I still admire Mike Brown's efforts and wish him the best, but I've been a Rare Bear fan since the purple and white days...

[speeddemon]

Re: That thing got a Hemi?

Ahh.... I didn't sleep that long last night.. How could I have missed the news?????

HELL HAS FROZEN OVER

Uh....maybe that should have 'stayed in the truck'......

[Peashooter]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

Last year, no less than Bill Kerchenfaut timed Sept. Fury at the equivalent of 508 for half a lap before MB grenaded the engine, so I'm inclined to beleive the vets. OTOH, Sea Furies have a laminar flow airfoil, which Bearcats do not. Could this, along with the wing loading of a full-span Fury wing, be the great equalizers?

The slide rules out there can answer these questions -- given enough data.

And to revisit an old controversy, Fury's engine runs awfully clean.....i.e, "toight."

And what if Bear comes back with a leading edge mod next year? Will Lyle serve ice cream from the Bear's tug truck? And will "another" T-6 team feature chamber music, wine and cheese on Wed. night? (Pinkies out!)

It's better than a frickin' soap opera.

[Pylon1_Mark]

Re: That thing got a Hemi?

DAMNIT, KALLIO! I TOLD YOU NEVER TO QUESTION ME ON ANYTHING I SAY!

Naw, just kiddin there, partner. Who's yer bud? Missed you there this year, man. Between you & Wayne both being gone, and Da Bear being banished to the hinterlands, I only had Paintboy, Neal, and Scotty to give crap to. Good thing Hacker, A.R.A., & FedEX Bob were there to keep me in line.

Your point on the frontal area IS well taken. And while I agree that the fuselage area is probably close to equal, I think the 'short & stubby' is still less of an area than 'long & thin'. But I am open to hearing from anyone who has done the calculations. (I HAVE been known to actually be wrong....from time to time.) :-)

Sorry Brad - maybe that question should have stayed in the truck too.

Brad's my bud . Yeah, I missed coming out this year too - but with a job that won't give you the leave you need and a couple of cars needing some TLC (the 03 Cobra overheated & was in the shop, and the truck was throwing that "check engine" code which is always a pita) - I had to sit this one out. I'll be there next year .

On the drag issues - seems like FlyKidChris hit the nail on the head... wetted area. Pees made some good points as well. Still, I feel they are both very close, the biggest drawback to the fury being wieght and the induced drag that it creates.

[440_Magnum]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

Your point on the frontal area IS well taken. And while I agree that the fuselage area is probably close to equal, I think the 'short & stubby' is still less of an area than 'long & thin'. But I am open to hearing from anyone who has done the calculations. (I HAVE been known to actually be wrong....from time to time.) :-)

See, this is why unlimited racing is fun. There are so many trade-offs that even the aerospace engineers may have strong opinions about what makes a fast combination, but no one can really KNOW until the end of the race.

From what I've gleaned over the past 5 years of listening to the knowledgable folks on this board and the others (and I've got a pretty good idea of who actually knows airplanes and who is blowing smoke after all this time):

Points in favor of the Bearcat:
-lighter weight
-much longer history of making it go fast- bigger closet of secrets
-know the 3350 engine package inside, outside, forwards, and backwards
-many, many aero mods already in place (canopy, exhaust ejectors, wing clip, etc.)
-Good handle on the cooling drag issue (September Fury once went too far in closing up the cowl and had to re-open it a bit).
-John Penney in the cockpit (no implied criticism of Mike Brown, but Penney and Holm are clearly in a league of their own).

Points in favor of 232:
-Better, more modern wing design from the factory. More lift for less drag, ESPECIALLY at high speeds.
-Possible better controllability at high speeds because of the wing design and overall size (the Bear may.. repeat MAY.. have to stick its control surfaces out a lot further in proportion to its size just to stay on course, hence the light weight MAY be somewhat offset by higher drag on control surfaces)
-While Mr. Brown doesn't have a long racing or development history, the Sanders built the plane with lessons learned from a lot of years with Dreadnought (this isn't really an advantage, just a partial counter-balancing point to the long history that the Bearcat has.)
- An ambitious, if still immature, engine program that has great potential along a slightly different philosophy than the Rare Bear or Critical Mass type 3350.

All in all, my completely "second hand information" guess is that it will take a few more years before 232 is really up to the Bear (if ever), and a wing modification for the Bear might close the door on it ever happening. But in the meantime, everyone's forgetting that a Mouse-motored Mustang is the real threat to the Bearcat repeating its win... I mean really, how come NO ONE ever talks about Dago Red on here anymore? I don't think she's quite washed up and ready for the scrapyard yet.

And by the way- aint no Hemi in that car.... its a 440

[Ron101502]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

Warbird Aero Press website has a good letter from Kerch about Dago's problems. As I have said in other threads, I've had canopy (and helmet visor) fog ups three times and one was really scary. If it were I, I would have just pulled out untill the problem was corrected, which is why guys like Skip and John are out there flying and not me.

I don't think they'll have that problem again.

Ron Henning

[FlyKidChris]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

440 Magnum wrote:
"Points in favor of 232:
-Better, more modern wing design from the factory. More lift for less drag, ESPECIALLY at high speeds."
A tiny bit of Hawker trivia surfaced, and as I recalled, the Hawker Fury/Sea Fury was a (relatively) lightweight developement of the Tempest. I wondered if the Fury's used Tempest wings; so tonight, I did a Google search on "Hawker+Fury" and found that the Fury's did use the Tempest outer wing sections/panels. Lacking any additional information about the airfoils, I've got to conclude that it may not be true that the Fury's have a "more modern" wing than the Bearcats.

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: That thing got a Hemi?

Uh....maybe that should have 'stayed in the truck'......

Oh comon Speeed.. you know I'm just pullin yer chain.... I look back fondly (and wish I could still!) to the days that if I needed an answer to a tech question, all I had to do was send you an email and usually had it covered within the hour, with a LOT of great details.... I was funnin, next time, I'll leave it in the truck!



Wayner

[speeddemon]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

Oh, gimmie a break. I was yankin' back just as hard as you were!

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

Oh, gimmie a break. I was yankin' back just as hard as you were!

Yea... been meanin to talk to you about that... can we leave the spikes off the collar next time... man, talkabout a chafed neck!

Who Loves Ya Baby

Whups.... maybe that should have stayed in the truck.....

Which way's the wind blowing today? You guys gonna get St. Helens or are we??

Remember that stuff? I'm not looking forward to a dumping of it down this way!

It sort of seems like the USGS and USFS playing "chicken little" a little though...

Wupps.. took er off topic I did...

Wayne

[King]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PORTLAND OR
1242 PM PDT FRI OCT 1 2004

WAZ019-040-012241-
SOUTH WASHINGTON CASCADE FOOTHILLS-SOUTH WASHINGTON CASCADES-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...TOUTLE...MOUNT ST. HELENS...
COUGAR AND COLDWATER RIDGE VISITORS CENTER
1242 PM PDT FRI OCT 1 2004

...ASHFALL ADVISORY HAS BEEN ISSUED AND IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 330 PM PDT
THIS AFTERNOON FOR THE SOUTH WASHINGTON CASCADE FOOTHILLS AND THE
SOUTH WASHINGTON CASCADES...

AN ASHFALL ADVISORY HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR AREAS ADJACENT TO MOUNT ST.
HELENS UNTIL 330 PM. MOUNT ST. HELENS HAD A ASH AND STEAM EMISSION
EARLY THIS AFTERNOON THAT PILOTS REPORTED REACHED AROUND 16000
FEET HIGH. TRAJECTORY MODELS INDICATE ASH AT THE LOWER AND MIDDLE
LEVELS OF THE EMISSION WILL BE CARRIED OFF TO THE WEST...AND SOME
LIGHT AMOUNTS OF ASH MAY PRECIPITATE OUT OVER EASTERN COWLITZ COUNTY.
USE CAUTION IN VICINITY OF MOUNT ST. HELENS.

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: What happened to September Fury?

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PORTLAND OR
1242 PM PDT FRI OCT 1 2004

Phew.. good thing this did not happen yesterday! The airflow off the the Mt. was directly south to PDX and where I live.. it's kind of warm, I'm sleeping a lot and I have all my doors and windows open... I've dealt with this stuff before (in 1980) and it's the damndest crap you ever delt with.. It's so fine, it's actually hard to move by hosing it down, so heavy, you can barely sweep it.. spray water on it and it makes a cloud of dust....

I saw it go on May 18, 1980 and it was one of the most unbelievable sights I've ever seen. Of course, we're not looking at anything like then for this go round but I truly respect that mountain, as I do the nearly a dozen others that dot the horizion up this way.. Pretty country but kind of sinister... especially when you consider that these are what we all ski on here...

Hey, nobody said we were bright, we're Northwesterners!

Thanks for the update King.

Wayne