Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

[Bigger Al]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

That was a great interview! Kudos to Brent Hisey and the entire Miss America crew for bringing a fast airplane to the show and for being a collective class act. Maybe next year!

[Airrace7]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

Great interview a first class act.
Thanks Bret!

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

Thanks, did my best to keep my trap shut and let Doc speak! I had a bit of a wonky setup where in order to record his words well and achieve some sort of balance, I had to wear earphones... there was a slight lag in what came over the phones and what he was saying over the speaker phone, I could handle that fine but when I spoke, it took me a couple times but realized that when I spoke, I had to take the phones off and mute them against my head to stop feedback..

Thanks to Walmart for having a nice USB mic for reasonable (a bit over twenty bux) price..

I was truly worrried most about the technical end of things. Seemed to work out pretty well (volume balance)

[wingman]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

I've screwed up enough interviews and lost/erased/forgot to check levels etc. to know how hard this is to do. One also has to try to focus on content while worrying about the tech. You came through fine and Dr. Hisey came through great. It was a really good interview.

Neal

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

I've screwed up enough interviews and lost/erased/forgot to check levels etc. to know how hard this is to do. One also has to try to focus on content while worrying about the tech. You came through fine and Dr. Hisey came through great. It was a really good interview.

Neal

Thank you Neal, I really appreciate that.

[ZacYates]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

Former print journalist with radio experience here, except for a couple of minor "drop outs" on Doc's end it sounded great and was an excellent interview. Never had to rewind to try and figure out what was said. Great job Wayne!

AAFO Air Racin' Podcast in the future, maybe?

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

Former print journalist with radio experience here, except for a couple of minor "drop outs" on Doc's end it sounded great and was an excellent interview. Never had to rewind to try and figure out what was said. Great job Wayne!

AAFO Air Racin' Podcast in the future, maybe?

LOL.. How'd you know that it was WallyWorld's Podcast mic at $28.niner niner or somewhere therebouts!



I really have to go back and give credit to Bob Avery, whom I'd probably not have ever known Brent..

We had some really good "phone fun"

How cool would it be if Brent just flat out said "I'm Gonna Do It"

I'm going to say once again we sponsored Rare Bear to whatever extent we could..

My brain is just churning....Doc mentioned he's the sponsor behind the project.

What if we could do another AAFO Fan Sponsor thing?

Generate a chitload of interest and get somebody major on-board...

Don't know if Brent would want that or not.

Sure would be fun to see Doc and that airplane pull down a Sunday Gold

[John H]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

Thanks very much Wayne , I enjoyed it. Put it on my iPod and listened on a car trip last night .

[Smee Again]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

But, RRIII was running one of the greatest full race Allison rod motors ever. I strongly suspect that Mike's engine was the most powerful Merlin ever built. An extra 600 or 700 horsepower in a more usable RPM range makes a huge difference. The tube is important but far from the whole story. Two major Air Racing geniuses were on that project, along with some amazing talent in the rest of that remarkable crew. That will be a very hard combination for anyone to match in the near future.

Some big shoes to fill there! Go Doc and Rick!

Neal

Wow! Thank you, Neal! That is very kind of you to say. I think the biggest thing (aside from having some incredible talent on the crew, present company excluded), is that - 1) we all had a common goal - to win and/or finish as high as our equipment and circumstances allowed, and 2) we all got along incredibly well, and everyone left his or her ego back in Hollister. We all had our daily routines based on what day it was, were we racing that day, etc. Anyway, it was a complete and concerted effort from everyone involved. And as I?ve stated before, memories that will last a lifetime.

As for the motor from the 2009 campaign, it was a one-of-a-kind purpose built Merlin, the likes of which will probably never be seen again. Yes, it ran G-6 Allison connecting rods. Yes, it of course ran a ?tube? (as have many, many others for decades). And yes, it had lots of the go fast pieces and parts used by many over the years. BUT, it addressed two things in particular that no other Merlin builder ever had, which were widely considered to be the Achilles heel of racing Merlins - custom gearing for both the reduction gears and the blower gears. Stock Merlin reduction gearing typically falls into two gear sets: either .479 or .420. The .420 gears are much more desirable for racing, as they slow the prop to keep it turning in a more efficient range, same as the ?slow? nose case used by the hot 3350 guys over the years. While there were attempts to use .383 reduction gears in the past, they proved unreliable due to poor gear mesh between the bull and pinion gears in the nose case, which often led to failure. The answer for us in 2009 was a custom set of reduction gears at a .400 ratio. This slowed the prop down even further than the .420s (obviously), and the gear mesh was a good fit with no reliability issues. This was a major piece of the puzzle to our 2009 performance. But in addition to that, we also had a special set of blower drive gears manufactured. Stock Merlin gearing will either be -7 or -9, the former being more of a higher RPM, lower MAP, and the latter being the opposite. The problem lies in that while the majority of the fastest racing Merlins run the -9 gearing, the amount of HP consumed driving the blower is excessive - likely somewhere in the 1200+ HP range. So, a custom set of -8 gearing was made for the 2009 motor, which obviously falls right in between the -7s and -9s. The belief was the combination of the .400 reduction gears, coupled with the -8 blower gears, would allow the use of a bit more RPM, which would generate a bit more MAP, while still keeping the propeller efficient and not consuming as much HP driving the blower - that HP would instead go directly to the prop shaft and equate to more power and speed. Ultimately, this proved to be the case, and coupled with the airframe modifications and some incredible pilotage, RRIII went faster than anyone ever expected it could. Also keep in mind that this highly modified Merlin was actually intended to go into Dago Red for 2009, but we all know how that turned out. To this day I still ponder the possibilities.

SA

[wingman]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

Thanks for this Mike -- a great post.

Neal

[wingman]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

And as a further note to this thread -- if you look closely you can see wrinkles in the area of the fuselage star in my photograph in the previous post.

Neal

[GRNDP51]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

Wow! Thank you, Neal! That is very kind of you to say. I think the biggest thing (aside from having some incredible talent on the crew, present company excluded), is that - 1) we all had a common goal - to win and/or finish as high as our equipment and circumstances allowed, and 2) we all got along incredibly well, and everyone left his or her ego back in Hollister. We all had our daily routines based on what day it was, were we racing that day, etc. Anyway, it was a complete and concerted effort from everyone involved. And as I?ve stated before, memories that will last a lifetime.

As for the motor from the 2009 campaign, it was a one-of-a-kind purpose built Merlin, the likes of which will probably never be seen again. Yes, it ran G-6 Allison connecting rods. Yes, it of course ran a ?tube? (as have many, many others for decades). And yes, it had lots of the go fast pieces and parts used by many over the years. BUT, it addressed two things in particular that no other Merlin builder ever had, which were widely considered to be the Achilles heel of racing Merlins - custom gearing for both the reduction gears and the blower gears. Stock Merlin reduction gearing typically falls into two gear sets: either .479 or .420. The .420 gears are much more desirable for racing, as they slow the prop to keep it turning in a more efficient range, same as the ?slow? nose case used by the hot 3350 guys over the years. While there were attempts to use .383 reduction gears in the past, they proved unreliable due to poor gear mesh between the bull and pinion gears in the nose case, which often led to failure. The answer for us in 2009 was a custom set of reduction gears at a .400 ratio. This slowed the prop down even further than the .420s (obviously), and the gear mesh was a good fit with no reliability issues. This was a major piece of the puzzle to our 2009 performance. But in addition to that, we also had a special set of blower drive gears manufactured. Stock Merlin gearing will either be -7 or -9, the former being more of a higher RPM, lower MAP, and the latter being the opposite. The problem lies in that while the majority of the fastest racing Merlins run the -9 gearing, the amount of HP consumed driving the blower is excessive - likely somewhere in the 1200+ HP range. So, a custom set of -8 gearing was made for the 2009 motor, which obviously falls right in between the -7s and -9s. The belief was the combination of the .400 reduction gears, coupled with the -8 blower gears, would allow the use of a bit more RPM, which would generate a bit more MAP, while still keeping the propeller efficient and not consuming as much HP driving the blower - that HP would instead go directly to the prop shaft and equate to more power and speed. Ultimately, this proved to be the case, and coupled with the airframe modifications and some incredible pilotage, RRIII went faster than anyone ever expected it could. Also keep in mind that this highly modified Merlin was actually intended to go into Dago Red for 2009, but we all know how that turned out. To this day I still ponder the possibilities.

SA

Always enjoy reading your posts about RR Mike! Thanks for this one!

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

And as a further note to this thread -- if you look closely you can see wrinkles in the area of the fuselage star in my photograph in the previous post.

Neal

Amazing lighting and detail. As a closet engineer/inventor/fabricator.. that sort of detail would be priceless I would think.

From that barnyard engineer POV, reinforcement to take flex out of that area would be easy.. but it would move that stress somewhere else. That complicates things for the real engineers!

Anyway.. just saying that shots like that are probably helpful to the guys doing go fast stuff

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Miss America: Brent "Doc" Hisey Interview 10-3-2021

I stopped just glancing and really absorbed that shot.

Can you in your wildest imagination............ IMAGINE what that must feel like???????

It's like Matt Jackson said during an interview in the World of Wings video thing we did 21 years ago (linked somewhere here and there)

I don't have exact quote in my brain bank but pretty close.. check me on this LOL

"People talk about drugs in this country ...heh... they don't need drugs, they just need an airplane ride" coulda been "they don't need drugs, just go for a ride in an airplane"

Whatever the line, Matt's a treasure trove of information, spiced with a very high degree of well earned, shall we say words of wisdom?

Totally managed to drag this completely didn't I