RCU Forums - View Single Post - P-38 Lightning Brotherhood
View Single Post
Old 03-17-2017, 11:58 AM
  #1282  
kram
My Feedback: (7)
 
kram's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: ames, IA
Posts: 1,603
Likes: 0
Received 4 Likes on 3 Posts
Default

Yeah, Dave I wished we lived closer: we could egg each on at the flight field

P-38 pilots are rare and getting rarer

I've got two big 38's to fly this summer and several other fast twins so there's bound to be some carnage

It drives me NUTS to watch the flight batteries go dead on these beauties because I don't get around to flying them often enough.

There IS a problem with P-38's and glow engines: 1) two strokes aren't reliable enough, and 2) configuration of the cowl almost demands inverted engine placement

And anybody who tells you they can make TWO inverted glow engines work reliably enough to power a P-38 is either lying or deluded.

Unless you've actually had the experience, it's hard to understand how FAST a Lightning will go from level flight to engine-out to death spiral.

ALL my other twins are a lot easier to fly on one engine

I got >100 flights out of both my most recent VQ-38's but I made the scale sacrifice of side-mounting the engines, so they died for reasons other than engine-out

Post a link to flight video when you go up. I'll do the same