Flyin' Tiger put out to pasture

Bruce Bohannon has retired the Flyin' Tiger (RV-4) from world record pursuits:

http://www.aero-news.net/news/sport...2de3467-90be-4d19-8225-ac2e11641872&Dynamic=1



Hopefully she will enjoy a relaxing retirement.

Incredible airplane.....

.....for sure. I had thought that he might try and beat Dave Anders CAFE record.....seems like it might be able to.

Thanks, Sam,

Bruce Bohannon said:

After 30 years of high risk flying, Bohannon says he's had enough close calls and enjoys the slower pace. But he's not giving up flying. "I've been teaching tail dragger and aerobatics for over 25 years and recently earned my CFI. I have a new Legend Cub and teach a course in engine failure, dead-stick procedures and do tail wheel checkouts."

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I'm thinking giving tail wheel checkouts might just be a "higher risk" type of flying.

Good for him, it was great watching him set so many records.

It Was a Striking Bird Taken to its Limits

I don't think there was anything left to get out of the plane even though Robert Gibson supposedly suggested some high aspect ratio carbon fiber wings. When I was settling up my bill at the FBO at Dayton before the 2006 AirVenture Cup Race, Bruce Bohannon was the only other customer at the counter when the customer service representative returned. I pointed to Bruce and said "He's first." Bruce responded wistfully "That's the last time I will hear that today." He finised last in the unlimited class at 232.52 mph where a Lancair Legacy went 297.36 mph. It was built for "Time to Climb." Perhaps he will build something new and go for speed again. I hope so, in this case the man is more outstanding than the plane.

Bob Axsom

Bruce and the 'Tiger did some impressive stuff in altitude and TTC records. You don't see enough of this type of leading edge innovation and flying in experimental aviation these days. It takes some serious skill, nerve and rocks to do 47,000 feet without a pressure suit. Dangerous stuff.

Hats off to Bruce and the 'Tiger.

rv6ejguy said:

Bruce and the 'Tiger did some impressive stuff in altitude and TTC records. You don't see enough of this type of leading edge innovation and flying in experimental aviation these days. It takes some serious skill, nerve and rocks to do 47,000 feet without a pressure suit. Dangerous stuff.

Hats off to Bruce and the 'Tiger.

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Amen. One year at Sun-N-Fun Bruce attempted an altitude record. A while after he took off we saw the Tiger returning to land, and we noticed the prop wasn't turning. I assumed he must have run out a very light fuel load as part of the record attempt. Turns out the crankshaft was in multiple pieces.......

Sam Buchanan said:

Amen. One year at Sun-N-Fun Bruce attempted an altitude record. A while after he took off we saw the Tiger returning to land, and we noticed the prop wasn't turning. I assumed he must have run out a very light fuel load as part of the record attempt. Turns out the crankshaft was in multiple pieces.......

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I believe he had several dead stick landings.

He couldn't have done what he did without tech and support from his many sponsors for sure but from the extensive accounts I read, Bruce is a heck of a pilot.

Yep, the nitrous was hard on the cranks and you wouldn't believe the beating various Lycomings took as far as sustained CHT, IAT, EGT and oil temps went. They didn't all take it of course but they were way over design limits for quite some time during the altitude attempts. The air is pretty thin above 40,000 feet for cooling a turbo engine belting out the power. Impressive accomplishments.

I had originally toyed with the idea of trying to set some altitude records with my RV10 using a two stage turbo setup as it is relatively light, has decent wing area and a higher aspect ratio wing. I contacted the Russians to see what I could rent a pressure suit for- $100K including training in Russia. That kinda finished that dream right there.

Sam Buchanan said:

Hopefully she will enjoy a relaxing retirement.

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Well, the Tiger looked pretty relaxed (but ready to fly) in Bruce's hangar a few weeks ago...and Bruce looked VERY relaxed at lunch today, flying in with his Legend Cub....

rv6ejguy said:

...I contacted the Russians to see what I could rent a pressure suit for- $100K including training in Russia. That kinda finished that dream right there.

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I think it was last year that I attended a talk by Einar Enevoldson about some high altitude glider flying he had done with Steve Fossett as crew. They ended up flying to well over 50,000 feet but had quite a few problems and many of them were with the pressure suits. One of the problems, that occurred more than once, was that the outflow valve on Steve's suit would malfunction causing an overinflation situation. Sometimes this would clear itself when they would descend then climb again. Even when the suits were working correctly it was difficult to move enough to properly operate the controls. At times Einar would operate some of the controls and Steve would operate some others. There was very little stick movement available. This was in a fairly roomy two seat, tandem, training glider.

The plan was to build a pressurized glider for attempts to go higher. I got the impression that Einar thought this would be relatively straightforward compared to the pressure suits. He was vague about where they got the suits. I got the impression that they were retired suits that they got through special channels.

The idea of building the pressurized glider is still there, but losing Mr. Fossett's funding support has slowed that project way down.

I think Steve's suits were on loan from NASA. I don't have those kind of connections.

Bruce's flights gave me the inspiration for the hair brained idea so first step was to find the pressure suit. Pressure breathing O2 for an hour did not seem like a lot of fun. The Russians were looking for hard cash at the time: http://www.zvezda-npp.ru/english/04.htm They were very helpful.

I have always wondered if plugging a set of RV-9 wings into the Flyin' Tiger would have allowed him to set some more records.

Bruce had 3 foot wing extensions on the plane for the altitude attempts already.

I might add that the Italians have held the manned piston altitude record at 56,000 feet since 1938- and the piston seaplane speed record at 440 mph. Some clever lads for sure and it is almost surprising that after all these years, nobody has come close to touching either record. It would certainly take a few $$$$.

rv6ejguy said:

I think Steve's suits were on loan from NASA. I don't have those kind of connections.

Bruce's flights gave me the inspiration for th hair brained idea so first step was to find the pressure suit. Pressure breathing O2 for an hour did not seem like a lot of fun. The Russians were looking for hard cash at the time: http://www.zvezda-npp.ru/english/04.htm They were very helpful.

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I've spent a lot of time in pressure suits, and a fair amount of time presure breathing, and as painful as it seems, I'd take the pressure breathing over an inflated suit if I had to choose - at least my arms and legs can still move, and I can fly! But neither is fun.....

And the Russians are always very helful when you bring cash! (No offense meant to my Russian friends - they are VERY fast learners when it comes to economics....)

Paul

TSwezey said:

I believe he had several dead stick landings.

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Bruce had many, many dead stick landings. Some were crop dusting and many were during the development of Pushy Galore, especially when installing and debugging the nitrous.

He experimented with nitrous on the Tiger but could never get the distribution to the cylinders down. Some cylinders would be way rich and other would be lean. He also had to lean manually during his time-to-climb attempts. Almost impossible while trying to hand-fly at a precise airspeed/angle.

After transitioning to the turbos and working out the intercooler, he installed a water spray system on the engine for cooling. Unfortunately the fuel tank vents were right behind the cowl outlet and the water froze on the vents. During one attempt, he looked out at the leading edge of the wing and his fuel tank looked like a crushed beer can... frozen fuel tank vent. End of day, return to field.

Many, many more stories...

Karl
Former Clover field bum

I'm Going to say the obvious

If a story ever went looking for a book, this is it. That last post got me fo sure. A wide range of aviators and young folks would like to read it just for a start.

Bob Axsom

Ironflight said:

I've spent a lot of time in pressure suits, and a fair amount of time presure breathing, and as painful as it seems, I'd take the pressure breathing over an inflated suit if I had to choose - at least my arms and legs can still move, and I can fly! But neither is fun.....

And the Russians are always very helful when you bring cash! (No offense meant to my Russian friends - they are VERY fast learners when it comes to economics....)

Paul

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My goal was to try and take the absolute record which would have required about 58,000 feet. Given the various physiological effects on the body at those altitudes, the suit seemed like the safest option by far.

It was clear from the start that only a 2 stage turbo system with pressure ratios over 6 to 1 would give the required power above 55,000 feet.

I did quite a bit of research into the possibilities and problems. It looked like adding an extra 8 feet of span to the wing would make it a lot easier on the engine. In the end, cooling the engine and charge air were big concerns and it became clear that only an extensively modified RV10 and powerplant system would make success possible. I would end up with an unusable aircraft for standard flying in the end.

I saw from further research in WW2 that similar problems cropped up for designers of high altitude aircraft notably the BV 155

http://hsfeatures.com/bv155bt_1.htm

http://www.xs4all.nl/~tozu/me109/family/bv155.htm

rv6ejguy said:

My goal was to try and take the absolute record which would have required about 58,000 feet. Given the various physiological effects on the body at those altitudes, the suit seemed like the safest option by far.

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58K??!! Yup, I'd want a pressure suit as well! Pressure Breathing isn't going to keep you from getting bent at that altitude!

I guess the think that some might not realize is that these pressure suits in a cockpit like that are designed to protect you if the cabin pressurization fails - they will save your life, but are extremely difficult to move around in. Flying is a significant chore, and the best you can do might be to pull f some power and get in to a descent to an altitude where the suit will deflate.

They are not designed to be a primary life support system - they are the backup - so when folks use them to get around the lack of pressurization, they are really accepting a huge impediment to the pilot's performance.

Paul

Paul, how would you compare the Russian Sokol and Orlan -M suits to the ACES US suit? Would it be possible to use a lower pressure setting (3.7 psi) with pure O2 to gain more flexibility at 58,000 feet?

Sorry for the thread drift but it's nice to be able to pick Paul's brain on such matters. I never got to play with space suits except at Halloween.

Ironflight said:

58K??!! Yup, I'd want a pressure suit as well! Pressure Breathing isn't going to keep you from getting bent at that altitude!

I guess the think that some might not realize is that these pressure suits in a cockpit like that are designed to protect you if the cabin pressurization fails - they will save your life, but are extremely difficult to move around in. Flying is a significant chore, and the best you can do might be to pull f some power and get in to a descent to an altitude where the suit will deflate.

They are not designed to be a primary life support system - they are the backup - so when folks use them to get around the lack of pressurization, they are really accepting a huge impediment to the pilot's performance.

Paul

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Bruce looked into a pressure suit when he was developing the Tiger. He talked to me about "borrowing" one of NASA's ACES suits (launch/entry). Unfortunately I wasn't in a position to help and NASA has had many people want to borrow equipment... some are crackpots and others are legit, NASA doesn't loan out equipment. Period.

Bruce did some research and decided to go with a pressure mask. The unknown factor is that Bruce is a smoker. I'm pretty sure everyone knows that smoking damages your lungs so they don't function as well as they used to. Therefore not as much oxygen gets into the blood. He did very well, much better than the "experts" predicted.

On the subject of dead stick landings, Bruce used to own an old 75 hp Cub. He would take his wife to 3000 ft for skydives. After she would jump, he would shut down the engine and dead stick back into his 2200 ft grass strip. He would put it right at the end of the runway every time without slipping and then taxi up onto his ramp... all with the prop dead still. Very impressive.

Karl

58K!!?? without a pressure suit? No way! Your blood will boil at 60K. No way would I bet my life on a 2K margin of altitude.

Years ago I worked on NASA's RB 57F planes. The pilots routinely flew at 50k ft where possible to avoid wearing pressure suits. Then one Beautiful, Clear day, a camera window in the nose of one of their Air Force friends planes let go. Engines to ground idle, gear down, and trim for max descent. Whoa, somethings not right with this picture. The pilot reported that it took ALL of his concentration to maintain consciousness and control of the acft. until they reached 45K. Later diagnosis revealed that the standard O2 regulators would not deliver sufficient O2 above 45k to maintain significant useful consciousness. Solution? No more flights above 45k without pressure suits in RB 57F's.

Now, fwiw, pressure suits are not without hazards. Another time the GIB in another Air Force RB 57F vomited in his face mask, and started drowning. The pilot pushed the max descent a little too much and both succumbed due to the ensuing mach tuck. (Although I didn't personally know either of them, it is still hard for me to recall that incident.)

Another hazard of pressure suits is what happens if you have a sudden uncontrollable bout of diarrhea. This happened to a GIB that I did know. Not pleasant.

For those of you who are determined to try for the record anyway, I hope you succeed. However, please tread gingerly.. There are demons there that can quickly ruin the best laid plans and intentions.

Joe

Since I started this thread, I can close it. I just wanted to salute the great achievements of Bruce and his Flyin' Tiger. The extreme thread drift involving exploration of gastronomic catastrophes in pressure suits was never sought....