1935 Ford 15-P

Tinker

Tinker

Well-known member
Saw this on another forum. Thought it was interesting.


Know nothing about it, nor was any supplied. Know there are some plane buffs here. Very nice craftsmanship.


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If you look at the fan belt it appears to still be running front block mounted water pumps. The early head appears to have a custom hose fitting to fit in the place of the head mounted pumps.
 
I doubt very much that the 221 ci engine could produce any wgere near 120 HP as the 239 only produces 80 hp. I think the plane could be a nice one with the right amt of power, but not that easy to fly. I never had a pilot license, but learned to fly a Cessna 182 that belonged to a friend of mine. We built a runway alongside my shop and flew all over the place for years. The first plane he had was a 47 commonwealth with 85 hP and was very under powered. Nearly lost it flying out of the white field at Hershey. Over weight on a hot day. Learned allot obout DA that day.
 
I don't see how they ever got the Center of Gravity (CG) anywhere near correct with the heavy engine behind what looks to be the wing spar position. I'll bet it was a doozy to fly if it did ever fly at all.
 
The landing gear and pilot's weight likely put the CG where it was supposed to be. The drag flaps used instead of a rudder would have made low speed handling very tricky if not impossible. I'm sure Jack Northrop looked the design over along with the German and Russian designs before he started tinkering with the idea a few years after. His N-1M was a flyable design but it has pusher props that can be manipulated for some directional control as well. Ford experimented with aluminum flathead engines several times but they didn't make very many of them. They would have been a lot better off with a conventional design. The problem was that they were looking for a design that would be simple enough that they could produce it for little more cost than a model B car but it was a bit too minimal to be a safe design to fly. The crash in the initial testing pretty well tells the story. I'd love to have the engine though.

Pietenpol proved that even a model T engine would power an aircraft at 20 HP but I think I'd prefer a Model B engine myself.
 
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The other photos in the link show it to be a flying wing design. The engine isn't really behind the wing as much as you might presume by just looking at that one pic.

From all accounts, it didn't fly very well.

ford-15p-rear-aerofiles.jpg


I'm no aero engineer, so don't treat my comment as gospel.

Mart.
 
Density altitude make sense. It must have been hot and humid that day. It's always that way down here so a person can't forget about it. In airplanes you need a longer runway. In helicopters you have to get moving into the wind and avoid downwind slow flying or hovering. Sometimes a pilot has to drag the skids for a while to get it up depending on how much power is available and how much lift the rotor can generate. The old Bell 47G with the early Franklin engine was that way.
 
The guys that run Flatheads at Bonneville have a major power loss here. The las time I was at Bville the DA was almost 6,000 ft or a 20% loss of power. I'm supprised they go as fas as they do. Superchargers cure this problem tho.

I ment to say 8,000 ft. My fingers don't know their numbers yet!
 
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