How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

[Exhaustgases]

Or the other control systems needed on a plane that can go super sonic?

Like this sorta.

http://fighterwriter101.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-xf-88b-voodoo.html

[Lockheed Bob]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Well Gary Levitz tried a Lear Jet wing & tail on a Griffon powered P51 & he lost his life at Reno.

[Lon Moer]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Well Gary Levitz tried a Lear Jet wing & tail on a Griffon powered P51 & he lost his life at Reno.

That set of Learjet wings and tail was originally used on the John Dilley and Tom Kelley Learstang racer "Vendetta" years before.

[Exhaustgases]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Maybe not a good choice of wings, how many hours of wind tunnel testing was done before hand? Even the wright brothers did wind tunnel testing, didn't they?

And does that mean a swept jet type wing won't work at Reno?

[Race5]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Swept wings are good for going fast in a straight line, at higher altitudes. They do not work well under high G in tight turns.

[supercub]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Here's another one. Use to see this years ago on display at Bakersfield Meadows airport.

https://www.historynet.com/thunderscreech.htm

[Leo]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

I don't think the wing choice had anything to do with the Levitz crash. As I remember the thinking at the time was simply that the Lear wing was simply less draggy at race speeds.

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Maybe not a good choice of wings, how many hours of wind tunnel testing was done before hand? Even the wright brothers did wind tunnel testing, didn't they?

And does that mean a swept jet type wing won't work at Reno?

Bill Rogers (Builder of Miss Ashley II) once told me that Skip Holm, who did the flight tests on the airplane, said that the airplane was the fastest prop plane he'd ever flown, downhill... One can only dream what might have been!

There's a series of articles about the airplane buried in the archives CLICK HERE


There were a LOT of brains and computers that went into the design... I don't know if they did any scale WT testing or not actually... they certainly had access to most, if not all of Boeing's assets in that arena... Most of the crew were Boeing employees and the hangar was within throwing distance of Boeing's facilities at Everett... She was painted in their building.

[knot4u]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

A Lear wing isn't considered a "swept wing". MA2 was certainly one of the best looking airplanes to race at Reno. The most striking thing to me about that whole thing was walking back into the pits at 5am the next morning and they were gone, they must have spent all night packing up all of their stuff and leaving because there was nothing in their pit other than the beginnings of a growing memorial.

[Jukka]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

So Do-335 wasn't swept either then ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK8ydLY5QHQ

[Lon Moer]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Swept wings are good for going fast in a straight line, at higher altitudes. They do not work well under high G in tight turns.

The Jet Class is regulated to straight wings but I had figured that was to keep the speeds down.?

[CubersWrist]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Looking at the delta wing interceptors and the stuff with area ruling, and then forward swept wings, it's all to improve performance at Mach 1+. 500mph at Reno isn't close enough for any of that to matter much.

A swept wing does not automatically make an airplane faster. This should make intuitive sense, because if swept wings made everything faster then every airplane in every class would have a swept wing (IF1 would be the best example given they all have the same engine).

This image is a good simplification to the drawbacks of sweep. And again Reno isn't fast enough for all the shockwave related advantages.

[V1670]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

Interesting topic. Just WHAT constitutes a swept wing? If you look at a DC-3 or a B-36 (to mention a few) they have swept LEADING edge, but I'd hardly call that a swept wing. Bell experimented with a swept wing on a P-63.
Always thought Vendetta and Miss Ashley II looked really good and thought they had a lot of potential, but if it was so good......why didn't anyone else follow that pattern? Way back, Miller's Pushy Cat had a swept wing in F1.

Enjoying this discussion.

[RAD2LTR]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

I think
the Cornell racer has swept wings (I can't remember for sure.) Daryl Greenamyer's Shockwave however has modified Sea Fury wings. Years ago I think there was some discussion on here about Sea Fury wings being a very fast design for racing.

Will

[wadeh]

Re: How come no swept wings on a prop plane?

The most striking thing to me about that whole thing was walking back into the pits at 5am the next morning and they were gone, they must have spent all night packing up all of their stuff and leaving because there was nothing in their pit other than the beginnings of a growing memorial.

I remember that many years ago, before my first trip to Reno, I was at the Arlington Fly-In. My young son got to see Bob Hoover's energy management routine in the Shrike and it came to a stop right in front of us.

I also remember seeing an unpainted airplane doing some fly-bys. It looked like an unusual Mustang. I can remember the announcer saying that it had Lear Jet wings and was being built for racing at Reno.

It was my second year that the Air Races when I was there in the grandstands right in line with the home pylon for it's final flight. It still makes me sad.