Warbird Information Exchange

Here's a link to let you listen live to Oshkosh atc: http://audio.liveatc.net:8012/kosh.m3u

Yesterday I heard a flight of 2 warbirds - never got the type - where one had a bit of an emergency. Heard his chip light came on and was trailing smoke when he landed.
Wondering if anyone knew about it and what the outcome was?
The problem with the feed is they sort of scan the frequencies so just as they were asking this guy if he needed the equipment it changed to a different freq. A little frustrating. On the other freq it went to they sounded a little stressed and kept giving inbounds "a change in plan." Later in the day I heard the Lanc come in. Pretty cool.
I was going to fly my C195 in this year - after listening for awhile maybe I'm glad I didn't . . . (Most people seem to be doing a good job, but every so often someone is totally clueless.)
Bret

Hmmmmm... Chiplight and smoke. Must be a T-28!

Hang around with the T-28 drivers for a while, you will hear a lot of stories that start with "when I had my engine failure".

Twice! Seemed to be about every 100 hours on our C model.

The first time was interesting to say the least. 6:00am flying east into the rising sun, 15 miles outbound from home and hmmmmmmm what this little light flickering down there..............BANG......smoke everywhere, fire belching out over canopy...........ah, thats what that light was............180 turn keep a little power on (kinda rough tho) just make it back to runway when prop screeches to a halt. Bust your butt sliping on all the oil trying to get down the wing.

Third engine we ran to 99 hours and then skipped to 200. Did the trick

what makes the T-28 unreliable? R-1820's in general certainly aren't prone to failure. Is it the prop/engine combo? Is it the histiry of the machines?

-Bret

Generally the guy who overhauls it. We chose the wrong guy the first time, he 'warranted" it the second time. Third time we went to JRS for an all new overhaul. Our engine was one of the very last out of JRS before they closed down.

The aircraft in question was indeed a T-28 that had a chip light come on 11 miles out. The pilot made it back to the airport and made a good landing. The engine seized when the power was pulled back just prior to shutdown.

This is not an uncommon problem in the T-28 community, and the Wright R-1820 has a history of master rod bearing failures. The Navy did quite a bit of research on this and determined that flying published power settings for takeoff, climb, cruise and decent helped the problem. Unfortunately you can't fly formation with a constant power setting.

WOW! busy folks at this tower! I thought DFW at rush hour was bad...My brain would leak out of my ears after a 15 minute shift!

Yikes!