Younkin T-6 Airshow

[whifferdill]

Ran across this old footage of the late Bobby Younkin flying a T-6. Snaps, vertical roll, avalanche, hammers, rolling turn. Nice flying.

Any T-6 drivers here? What's the standard fuel/oil setup, and what's different (if anything) on his airplane for negative G work? I've got an hour of acro training in an SNJ years back and was advised to keep everything positive. Pretty much all the other T-6/SNJ acro I've seen is the usual lazy positive G warbird acro style of flying. Also seen T-6 WWII training films involving negative G flight. Cool to see some nice precision flying here.

 

[acropilot]

I've seen this video before... awesome flying!

I fly an SNJ at work believe it or not, we keep everything positive. The standard fuel oil is all gravity fed... carb and all. If you unload to any negative for more than a moment or two in any of the ones I've flown, you get a backfire, windmilling engine and it's very easy to over rev the engine if you don't pull the throttle back when it gets back to running. One other thing that makes me leery of sustained inverted flight is that there are basically four bolts holding the wings on while inverted...

I don't know the specifics, but there are a few "Super 6s" around that were modified with more powerful engines ex: Wright 1820 or similar (I've heard 800, 1,000 even 1,200HP), sometimes clipped wings, and an inverted oil system. It's amazing to watch the airplane flown that way though.

 

[acropilot]

Also, a lot of the "Super 6s" have 3 bladed props instead of the normal 2 blade one.

 

[whifferdill]

I fly an SNJ at work believe it or not, we keep everything positive. The standard fuel oil is all gravity fed... carb and all.

That's what I remember. I got about an hour of acro training in your SNJ with Greg back in '07. It was a lot nicer to throw around than I expected it to be. Would love to get a full checkout if I could actually justify it.

 

[Henning]

Ran across this old footage of the late Bobby Younkin flying a T-6. Snaps, vertical roll, avalanche, hammers, rolling turn. Nice flying.

Any T-6 drivers here? What's the standard fuel/oil setup, and what's different (if anything) on his airplane for negative G work? I've got an hour of acro training in an SNJ years back and was advised to keep everything positive. Pretty much all the other T-6/SNJ acro I've seen is the usual lazy positive G warbird acro style of flying. Also seen T-6 WWII training films involving negative G flight. Cool to see some nice precision flying here.

Nice show. I think with that limited of exposure to sub 1 G levels, all you would need is the Bendix pressure carb and an aerobatic cell/stand pipe in the tank (I think they may come with it, but not positive). For oil It's already a dry sump system, you could set up an inverted feed system to the tank pretty simply to handle limited exposure negative G.