>Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 19:58:15 -0000
>From: "jonmac" <jonmac@ndirect.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: Triumph Ancestor?
>
>Geoff Hahn wrote:
>Knowing almost nothing about old planes I was naturally drawn to
>anything British, specifically an SE5a:
>http://www.geocities.com/tucson_british_car_register/cfi-se5a.jpg
>Upon closed examination, the prop hub says...
>http://www.geocities.com/tucson_british_car_register/cfi-se5a-prop.jpg
>
The reference to the se5a reminds me of an interesting driving
experience. While driving with the top down from our cabin in
Elkwater(located on the Alberta Saskatchewan border) south to Haver
Montana on a beautiful October morning. What to my surprise do I see as
we crest a hill in the middle of the bald ass prairie but an se5a
landing on the highway about a 1/4 mile ahead of us. Now this is a
stretch of road that you could drive every day for a week and never see
anyone or anything but a cow on the road, there isn't even a farm house
to see. The pilot of the se5a thought he was losing oil pressure so he
landed in a panic on the road. I pulled up about 50' behind and went up
to talk to him. It turns out he had just purchased the plane from one of
my father's friends and was flying it to Haver to clear customs before
continuing home some where south of the border. He thought his oil
pressure was getting to low and landed to check if he had enough oil not
that he had any with him or any tools or spares. Turns out the oil was
fine it was just very slow getting up to operating temperature. Now this
fellow's good fortune was he landed in front of some one who actually
had a lot of experience propping an aircraft engine that has no electric
starter. I had helped my father build his Sonerai II and was the
designated ground crew for it. So just like in the movies I spun the
prop around a couple of times to prime the engine with the ignition off,
then yelled contact and flipped the prop backwards against the
compression let go and it sprung forward and sputtered back to life, a
minute or two later he was back in the air heading south. And being that
his air speed was just a little faster than our ground speed we could
see all the way to Haver.
By the way the plane in the pictures is a 3/4 or 7/8 scale replica of an
se5a not the original thing, so was the one I ran into on the road to
Montana. You can see the cylinder heads of a modern flat 4 aircraft
engine sticking out of the cowling not the Hispano Suza engine that they
used in WW1.
Doug Hamilton
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