T-28 Floh

J

jhefner

Charter Member
All;

Another one from the wild Hefner aircraft factory is the DFW T-28 Floh. When I originally built it for FS2002/FS2004, I made it institutional green, like the image I found for a model kit. It was also one of my early models, so it came out of the factory with brakes, radios, and free floating wing lights. I was convinced by others this was all wrong, so I had it transported back to my factory in Cleburne aboard an Air National Guard C-130 (training exercise, you know.) I then crawled into the cockpit and proceeded to rip all those un-needed items out:



It then made a trip to the paint booth, and came out in a more correct white color:





I then took it up for a flight over Fort Worth. I experienced my first and last instance of Dutch Roll while trying to set up for this screen shot, but otherwise, it looked and handled fine:



When Blutwerk came out with his very nice and affordable model of the Floh for FS9, I shoved mine back into a dark corner of the hanger. I know the FS market is very small, and did not want to offer a free and not-as-nice alternative to his. I think it survived the multiple computer failures I suffered a few years ago, will check and make sure in the next few days.

That would be the end of the story; but Peperez pointed out that it might be good for those fighting WWI in CFS2. It sounds like a good idea to me; it is not the masterpiece that Blutwerk's is; but I think it would be just right for CFS2.

That leads me to the next logical step; writing DP and DM files for it. I have two questions:

1. Do any of you WWI gurus out there know if it was ever actually fitted with a machine gun? Since only one prototype was built, and I think flown only once, I don't think it was.

2. Since the Ushakov LPL proves I am not a DP and DM expert, I was wondering if anyone wanted to help; at least with arming this flea.

Also, I basically copied the panel from the Sopwith Camal in FS2002; if someone wants to recommend a better candidate for shamelessly copying it's instrument panel, I am all ears. :wiggle: (There are no known cockpit photographs of the Floh.)

Thanks in advance.

-James
 
Floh

James,

Peperez is right. It would be a fun plane in CFS 2. I think that its true value would lie in its use as an AI perhaps. Either way, CFS 2 can get overwhelmed framerate wise by multiple airplanes on the screen. That is why most CFS 2 kites are multi-resolution. Is that something that could be built into the kleine Floh (little flea)? We have several modelers in the forum here that could help with that I'm sure.

For a flight model and DP file, it would be easy to start with files from a similar performing WWI aeroplane. Perhaps files from the Sopwith Pup would make for a good start.

I'm sure that our painters could make a regular "Flying Circus" of textures for the Floh.
 
That is why most CFS 2 kites are multi-resolution. Is that something that could be built into the kleine Floh (little flea)? We have several modelers in the forum here that could help with that I'm sure.
Click to expand...

Yes, I can add multi-LOD to it; the Ushakov LPL was built with multi-LODs as well.

I haven't used gmax in over a year, but I have installed now on one of my computers. So, I will see if I have the files for the Floh; put together a CFS2 package for someone to test fly, and add multi-LODs to it while they are testing.

-James
 
Hello jhefner

I can find a mention of 1 x synchronised fixed LMG 08/15 machine gun. Don't know where in the fuselage it would have been placed.

Windsock also released a Min-datafile on this little fellow.

Lovely model, look forward to seeing her in CFS2.

Regards SGV

A couple of posts while I am at it:-
http://www.elfmodel.com click on the 'Plastic Kits' button then on the 'more info' then on the 'Assembly Instruction'
http://www.modellversium.de/galerie/23-flugzeuge-ww1/2905-dfw-t28-floh-.html
 
A setback; hopefully not permenant -- I cannot find my files anywhere; not on CDs of material I backed up prior to the computer issues, nor in the FS2004 installation I salvaged off of one of the computers.

Fortunately, I shared the Floh with someone else. I am contacting him now about sending me what he has back to me; the only downside is that my gmax files are probably gone forever.

Based on what I have read, the single machine gun would have been mounted over the engine. In some pictures, there are dots over the "eyes" that look like they could be gun ports; but that would be dual machine guns if they are. Those are the only possible gun ports I have seen.

A shame; this appears to be the only aircraft that I lost completely; I have at least my source files for everything else.

-James
 
peperez said:
Those crazy Americans are using oldliners to bring thousands of Marines against us...

View attachment 39453View attachment 39452View attachment 39451View attachment 39450
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Yep; in 1929 industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes proposed Airliner No. 4, a flying boat with a 500 foot wingspan, and complete with a resteraunt, ballroom, nursery, squashboard court, nursery, and cabins for 606 passengers and 150 crew. It was intended to fly from Chicago to Plymouth, England; with aerial refueling over Newfoundland.

It was never built, but thanks to the magic of FS and CFS, it not only flies, but was conscripted along with ocean liners to transport troops overseas.

Here is a slideshow of it flying past at 200 feet; taken in FS2002. I am amazed Peperez got it to work in CFS2, good show! :salute:

http://good-times.webshots.com/slideshow/569237136tCBWkx

Here, it dwarfs the Dornier DO-X and other flying boats:



-James
 
jhefner said:
...in 1929 industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes proposed Airliner No. 4, a flying boat with a 500 foot wingspan, and complete with a resteraunt, ballroom, nursery, squashboard court, nursery, and cabins for 606 passengers and 150 crew.
It was never built, but thanks to the magic of FS and CFS, it not only flies, but was conscripted along with ocean liners to transport troops overseas.
Click to expand...

James, is this aircraft available? As a fan of Bel geddes, I would like to see if it flies in FS9.
Norman Bel Geddes 1932 book Horizons, was republished by his daughter in 1977. Airliner No. 4 was among many outstanding concepts by Mr. Bel Geddes that was featured.

In my opinion, Bel Geddes was the most prolific and imaginative designers of the 20th century.

View attachment 39548 View attachment 39547
 
Hurricane91 said:
James, is this aircraft available? As a fan of Bel geddes, I would like to see if it flies in FS9.

Norman Bel Geddes 1932 book Horizons, was republished by his daughter in 1977. Airliner No. 4 was among many outstanding concepts by Mr. Bel Geddes that was featured.

In my opinion, Bel Geddes was the most prolific and imaginative designers of the 20th century.
Click to expand...

Yes, it does fly in FS9; I did the following pictures in FS2002 because that was all I had available when I was developing it.

The following pictures are of "Version 0.5." In this version, the windows themselves illuminated at night. That did not look right to me; now the interior decks and walls (except the cockpit) self-illuminate for a more subtile effect.

They are hard to see, but there are now people scattered around the decks. What made this aircraft extremely difficult to build is that there are no exterior three views of it; only the exterior perspective drawing and the two cutaway diagrams in the above link; plus this deck plan:

BelGeddes_AirlinerPlan2.jpg


Building Airliner No. 4 consisted of building the interior decks to match the three drawings; then tweaking the exterior contours to match the single perspective drawing; a process that took countless hours of trial and error.

The main decks and bulkheads are in both the interior and exteior model. The numeric keypad keys are supposed to be pre-programmed to show you the views below in the interior views. Besides seeing the decks through the windows; if you zoom in closer than the wingspan or length of the plane, you can take "cross-sectional views" and see the various decks and a few scattered people.

It has not been released yet because I have not fleshed out the cockpit interior yet. I was planning on using my experence and some parts from the Ushakov LPL model to do so when the computers crashed. Fortunately, I believe the latest source files have survived and are now safely on both of my FS computers. I am somewhat afraid that I will run out of interior polygons in the VC; which is why I am amazed it works in CFS2.



Norman Bel Geddes's Airliner No 4 departs from Chicago at noon on December 23. Bel Geddes designed it with the help of Doctor O.A. Koller; and the design was funded by certain Chicago business men who were interested in the possibility of constructing this plane with the idea of operating it between Chicago and London via the St. Lawrence River and Great Circle Route. It was to sleep 606 passengers, along with a crew of 155.



It was to have 20 1,900 HP engines, PLUS 6 1,900 HP engines as spares! (I thought the idea of carrying spare engines was silly...until I found out the Boeing 314 four engined flying boats carried a spare!) Two of the spare engines are in the center of this picture; another at the far right. Notice the tracks of the railroad so the engines can be changed in flight, and moved around at ease within the auxiliary wing. The nonfunctioning motor can be replaced with a reserve motor within five minutes and the broken motor run over to the machine shop to be repaired on the spot. His design drawings appear to call for water cooled inline engines; but by 1939; nearly all large aircraft engines in North America were radial engines. The ones shown here are German-built DB 603 engines of 1,510 HP. Bel Geddes figured that while it required 20 engines to lift the ship off the water, only 12 were needed to fly at cruising speed, so it would be possible to remain in the air on just half the engines with which it was equipped. He considered this a safety factor of 2. For this flight, we throttled all engines down to 2/3 power.



It took roughly an hour to climb to the design ceiling of 10,000 feet. Even before we took off, we turned to a heading of 72 degrees NE, and are maintaining that heading as we fly across the Michigan peninsula near Flint.



Here, we looking down the length of the leading edge of the wing from the middle, on the Pomenade Deck (Deck 7.) It is 183 feet from where we are standing to the individual at the end! With cabins all the way out to the tips of the wing, only shallow banks could have been made. A thirty degree coordinated bank would have resulted in a rise of 134 feet at the wing tips, and a total rise along the Pomenade Deck of 268 feet!



Evening of December 23rd finds us flying near Barne, Ontario, with scattered clouds below. We are still flying on a heading of 72 degrees ENE. We are cruising at 77 knots (87 1/2 MPH); Airliner No. 4 was to have a speed at ceiling of 87 1/2 MPH, a cruising speed of 100 MPH, a maximum speed of 150 MPH, and a landing speed of 72 MPH. (For the sake of comparison; the Boeing 314 had a cruising speed of nearly 120 MPH.)



When we reach the St. Lawrence Seaway, we carefully turn north to a heading of 60 degrees, and fly along the Seaway. While PAA and BOA's seaplanes stopped over at Botwood, in the Bay of Exploits, Newfoundland, Canada for the night; Norman Bel Geddes's Airliner No 4 was to be refueled in flight while passing over Newfoundland.



Once we reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, we turn to a heading of 90 degrees due east to head out over the North Atlantic. Daybreak finds us roughly 200 miles south of Greenland at N58, W40. Now at the halfway point, we then turn to a heading of 150 degrees to the SE.



We are standing on the balcony on Deck 6, overlooking the empty Lounge area on Deck 5. The main lounge on our FS model is 20 feet high, based on the drawings I used. Other sources say it was supposed to be 36 feet high. The main dining room up on Deck 7 coverts into a dance floor for 100 couples, complete with orchestra platform.



Now, we are looking out the back from the Game Room on Deck 5. Looking at the ocean below, I am glad for the 6 completely enclosed 40 ft lifeboats capable of carrying 110 people apiece in the pontoons below. They were to have engines, windows along the side, radio gear, and food and water for 2 weeks. But, 110 people in a single 40 foot lifeboat sounds awful cramped. Maybe I'll take my chances instead with one of the two small seaplanes stored one each in the tips of the floats. Lower left corner of picture; I used a Tiger Moth model with the wings folded for my "floatplane." They could be launched in flight or standing still. 4 deck tennis courts, 6 shuffle board courts, and 6 quoits pitches were to located here in the Game Room. Like the Lounge, the game room in our model has a 20 foot high ceiling. There was also supposed to be a gym, complete with Men and Women's dressing rooms, a barber and a hair dresser.
 


Approaching midnight on Christmas Eve finds us still out over the North Atlantic at N51 W24. We have gone far enough south, so we now turned slowly to 90 degrees due East. (Don't want to throw folks off their feet, or out of bed. ;D) There is occasional lightning, and Airliner No. 4 is lit up by one of these flashes.



We reached the Irish coast at around 7:00 Christmas morning. Sunrise finds us leaving Ireland behind and heading out over the Irish Sea.



We finally arrive over Plymouth, England at 11:00. We see the famous bridges off to our right as we fly over Plymouth to make a landing inside the breakwater.



Our flight took 46 hours; Norman Bel Geddes calculated it would take 42 hours. His may have been based on the above 100 mph cruise speed instead of our roughly 87-1/2 mph speed at ceiling. We also made a landing in the wrong cove, and had to consult our maps to find out where Plymouth was. ::)



As you can see, the virtual cockpit is still empty. A discussion on the Martin M-130 in another forum was very enlightening in figuring out what the cockpit would have looked like. For example, in marine style, I envisioned just four thottle controls (more like engine telegraphs) for a group of five engines each; the engineers up in the engine room would determine what the throttle settings would be for each individual engine.

Pilots of Norman Bel Geddes's Airliner No 4 would even envy the pilots of 747s, since their cockpit is 53 feet off the ground!

Here is the latest version in FS2004. In this image and the slide show above; people are just barely visible as black dots through the windows.



-James Hefner
 
Finally, here is a daytime view of the latest version flying in FS2004; showing off it's glint as well as it's N-number decal. A person is just barely visible standing in the wingtip cabin.



Repainters may be disappointed to learn that due to the sheer size, the closeup views possible, and the number of windows on Airliner No. 4; there is no single texture for the outside surfaces. Rather, I basically have four textures, which are laid upon each interior and exterior plygon like aluminum plates - a plain texture, a texture with windows vertical, a texture with windows horizontal, and a texture with portholes. A similar set, but with the self-illuminating channel, cover the interior surfaces.

So, the only thing that can be done is to paint the interior and exterior a solid color. Hence, the N-number decal.

For the sound files, I borrowed some from a B-36 (need to look up whose.) It had that funny whin that pusher propellers have, plus the overall cacophony of 20 piston engines at work.

-James
 
I hijacked a commonly available graphic from the Internet to give an idea of how big Airliner No. 4 would have been compared to world's largest aircraft. Bel Geddes was certainly not a small thinker, the auxlliary wing along was roughly as large as the wings of the world's largest aircraft.....



The original webpage with the details and graphics I used for this project is no longer on the web, but thanks to the Internet Archive, it is still available at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20090326091842/http://home.att.net/~dannysoar/BelGeddes.htm

Before the crash of my "airplane factory", I started a seperate gmax file for the cockpit details. The idea is that I will integrate it in with the rest of the model when it is done; the gmax model for the rest of the plane was getting too large and complicated for such detail work. I am also afraid I will run out of polygons for the VC....

Anyway, I found the file I was working on, and the "airplane factory" is back up. Both Peperez and Hurricane91 have offered to help with the project, so we'll see if we can push it over the finish line and release it. I appreciate their help and encouragement; after working on it for over year, I was getting bogged down in some of the areas they are offering to help with. I can now focus on finishing the model; and with their input, will also be able to release with versions for CFS2, FS2002, and FS2004.

Getting back to the Floh; I have not heard from my hopeful savior yet; but it looks like he only checks in once or twice a month. As soon as I hear from him, I will forward what I have to someone who has offered to help with prepping it for CFS2.

Along with wrapping up the Ushakov LPL for general release, looks like I have my marching orders for the summer. :salute:

-James Hefner
 
Good news; the Floh has surfaced! I have already passed the files on to someone who offered to help.

Thanks to "Slide" at the Old Hanger for keeping the Floh safe through my disk crashes.

-James
 
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