Things looked good for Australian aviation in 1950

[old man emu]

Here' a bit of optimism from 1950.

 

 

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

Yeah, I've been up in a Dragonfly. Real thrill that was, like going for a ride in a flying Bondi tram.

 

And what about the pilot of the DC4 leaning right out of his window to slam the side door shut - bit how-ya-going that was.

 

 

[facthunter]

Missed that part. Are you sure it was a DC4?   Nev

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

49 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Missed that part. Are you sure it was a DC4?   Nev

 

It looked like it to me. Go to 15mins 40secs. It may have been a DC3.

[facthunter]

Yeah they showed a DC3 then a DC4 straight after. The front door of a DC4 is on the RHS and it can't be reached from the Copilot's window. Nev

[old man emu]

To paraphrase Animal Farm's Snowball, 'four engines good, two engines bad'

 

How many engine did the plane have?

 

 

ED: Nev posted while I was typing.

[red750]

From the slope of the cheat line on the fuselage, and the fact the props are so close to the open window, I'd say it was definitely a DC3. and I dont think any door on a DC4 was that close to the cockpit window.

 

 

 

Edit: Nev posted while I was typing.

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

Trick question for you all: Are the main ball bearings in a modern jet engine round or oval?

[old man emu]

Interesting response: A circle, and hence a sphere, is a special type of ellipse (oval). Also, a square is a particular type of rectangle, and an equilateral triangle is a special type of isosceles triangle.

 

My Dad had a near-feral tom cat which was a champion rodent catcher. Dad called it a ball-bearing rat trap.

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

No, they're oval, but only very slightly oval, and oval oddly, meaning the bearing tracks are ground to have two or three irregularly spaced hollows to counter harmonics which were cracking the bearings at 20,000 RPM or what ever the high revs are. Too much for the bearings anyway, and something had to be done about it, and that's what they did. Perhaps they are not really a true ovality, but they are certainly not round either.

[old man emu]

9 hours ago, Grumpy Old Nasho said:

Perhaps they are not really a true ovality, but they are certainly not round either.

"Ovality" is a word derived from the Medieval Latin ovalis "of or pertaining to an egg", leading to the French ovalle "oval figure," describing a 2-dimensional figure in the general shape of the lengthwise outline of an egg.

 

In describing a shape, oval and ellipse actually have different meanings. An ellipse is a specific type of oval with a precise mathematical definition, while an oval is a more general term for any shape resembling a squashed circle. The shape of a cam is oval, while the shape of a ball bearing is elliptical (the special type of ellipse called a sphere).

[Marty_d]

That's interesting.

So all football/cricket fields should have their name changed from "oval" to "ellipse"?

[old man emu]

20 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

That's interesting.

So all football/cricket fields should have their name changed from "oval" to "ellipse"?

That's where the vocabulary of the layman and the specialist collide. I see no problem with using a tern derived from the observation of common things, in this case the shape of an egg, in non-technical situations, and the use of the specifically defined term in technical situations. Context is important. Do you kick a ball or a sphere across a sports oval, or depending on your preferred game, an ellipsoid?

[facthunter]

Soccer is round ball. Egg has a fat end and a thinner end. Oval ball is symmetrical on both axis ie Elliptical in Plan and Elevation.  Nev

[onetrack]

The greatest bearings I've ever encountered were in the rear axle of a German Magirus-Deutz truck I owned from 1967 to 1975. Magirus-Deutz was a fire-engine manufacturer from 1899, and they went on to produce a long line of road trucks. The company was absorbed into Iveco Trucks when Iveco was formed by Fiat.

They built the cab and chassis, and used air-cooled Deutz engines with ZF gearboxes and rear axles. The ZF rear axle in my truck was only single drive, but it was rated at 12 tonnes load capacity, unlike the normal 8-9 tonnes of most truck axles.

 

This axle contained barrel roller bearings, and these bearings are a heavy duty bearing that can cope with major deflection in load angles and high shock loadings.

Thus, the axle was designed to cope with bending of the axle housing under severe overload conditions. The rollers in barrel roller bearings are essentially an oval shape.

 

Edited Friday at 01:10 AM by onetrack

[facthunter]

The early Holden diffs had them and they were not that successful Tapered rollers are more used these days, Take preload better.     Nev