I always loved the look of this plane

If the image won't show, go to this link:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/lab/4515/geebeer2.jpg

When I was a boy, I built an exact scale, scratch built, model, in 1/8 scale [1.5 inches = 1 foot or 12.5 cm = 1m] of that plane. I worked for a long time. I put EVERYTHING in it, from Spark plug wires to dirt on the cockpit floor The basic engine assembly was gotten from some guy in the USA who vacuum formed it. Same guy made the landing gear fairings and windscreen. The rest was spruce and balsa wood and all that old fashioned stuff.
I got a little trophy after displaying it at our town's recreation centre in a contest for local modellers.
One day, I came home from school and found my clubhouse/room, in the basement of my parent's home, had been burgled and that model was stolen.
It is the only thing that was stolen.

I wondered about that for years.

I heard a confession a few years back while drunk with some of the boys. Men actually. We, some of us, are ffrom the same nieghbourhood and went to school together, shared girlfriends and mischief etc. Turned out it was one of the boys who stole it, which explained why he was so careful to ONLY steal it and not anything else I had in my room/clubhouse.

For many years that guy had that model airplane and he was scared half to death someone who knew me would see it and I would come and kill him.

I wouldn't have. I built so many models, hundreds, I was just relieved the rest were left alone, on their display shelves. Besides, the guy was sick with anxiety for years while hanginf that thing in HIS clubhouse, where his wife and kids could see it and tell him how wonderful a modeller he is. All that time he knew he was a thief. He must have paid for that thing many times...

Anyway, there is no point to the little rant I attached to this, except to put a few words in to make the picture not just a picture.

Bye

 

that's just an engine with some addons attached, gotta admire the guts of people who got into it

 

LOL hard to imagine that could actually fly.

 

It was very unstable in the yaw axis. And it was a PYLON RACER. I don't think I would like to race a plane like that. One would think rudder should HELP a pilot, not kill him.

 

seriously
looks like a dick
without a hardon

 

I read Jimmy Doolittle's I Could Never Be So Lucky Again a couple years ago. Iirc he raced & won in that plane, buy didn't have too much nice to say about it...

 

These guys at the glider club used to say: "If it looks good, it flies good"
So much for GeeBee. Ummm No I dont think I would strap into that thing...
It's got weird handling I bet. This GeeBee plane reminds me of a WW2 fighter plane called the Brewster Buffalo. Pilots hated the buffalo, it handled terribly, jerkin all over the place. That thing was no match at all for a zero.

I figure the guy who designed this plane was only trying to build a hot rod, something with a lot of horsepower and not much weight, so you see a super short fuselage....super small wings...huge mofo engine. It's got balls but you're gonna get killed in that POS.

 

Looks like half a P47 with fixed gears and a lower situated wing.

<Z>

 

Really? Weird pilots...

 

Probably Finnish pilots just weren't told about this poor handling Same as Russian about P-39.
Impossible things are achieved by people who just didn't know they were impossible.

 

so the Finns cheated!!1

 

Nah, Finns just exploited the known bugs

 

roflmao

 

As if the poor performance wasn't enough to justify its bad reputation now you add "terrible handling".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_Buffalo

 

IMO it looks like a motorized suppository.

 

[Texan accent]
That turn you on?

Motorized suppositories?

Hmm?

You one of them freaks?

Hmm?
[/Texan accent]

It's an absolutely ugly plane though. Looks like it was designed by a ricer. If you don't know what a ricer is, look it up on google, look for images of ricing. It looks like a tuned plane. Looks like a nightmare example of how not to build planes straight out of an engineering handbook. Looking at it makes my skin crawl.

<Z>

 

Yeah the Brewster buffalo sucked. I have read about 1 Australian pilot who hated this POS. The short fuselage made it handle strangely in some ways he says.

From "Buffalos over Singapore"

"The Brewster B-339 Buffalo received much criticism during its service with the RAF. Some pilots were happy, while others hated it as an operational fighter. Considered below par by the RAF, it was diverted for use in the Far East where it was believed it would be superior to Japanese aircraft. This was proved tragically incorrect."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Flight testing the Brewster Buffalo....

As test pilot for the Royal Navy, Eric Brown flew scores of aircraft from many nations. He wrote short essays on 36 of them for Wings of the Weird and Wonderful, published by Airlife in Britain and Tab Books in the U.S.

"My feeling after flying the Buffalo was one of elation tinged with disappointment. It was a true anomaly of an aeroplane with delightful manoeuvrability but poor fighter performance. Indeed above 10,000 ft. it was labouring badly."

Brown acknowledge the Brewster 239's success in Finland, and suggested that "the climate and the opposition" must have favored the plane in Finnish service.

On the Finnish Brewsters he comments: "This aircraft had a gross weight of only 5,820 lbs, which gave it a reasonably lively performance below 10,000 ft." p.44. On p.99, he gives his assessment of the Buffalo versus "Zeke 22" [Mitsubishi Zero A6M model 22]. "The little Buffalo could almost match the Zeke for maneauverability, but was badly outclassed in performance and inferior in firepower. Thus it had little hope of besting the Japanes fighter. In a dogfight, the initiative would rest entirely with the Zeke, which could mix it or break off at will."



Like I said before, Buffalo was no match for a zero.....

 

WOW...I just found a quote for my signature!!!

 

Well, even TANKS can fly!! Hahah!

 

And what says Pappy about it:

Also finnish pilots liked it's handling very much. Good rollrate, turn and dive handling. Balanced controls and easy to trim at all speeds. It was called "Pearl of the Sky" by them because it was so pleasant to handle.

As an interesting note many finnish pilots disliked the Hurricane. It was sluggish and heavy in controls "like rubber band between controls and stick", slow (slightly slower than brewster), had a poor rollrate and dive performance.

According to FAF pilots the brewster was more in the same cathegory with Curtiss Hawk (P-36). If you don't know how it handles check P-40, which has almost the same airframe. P-40 is naturally much faster though.

In FAF this "POS" reached highest kill/death ratio of any plane in WW2. 32:1