Diesel-engined airplane

QUITE A FLURRY appears to have been caused at Langley Field, Virginia, at a meeting of the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics when a Diesel-engined airplane owned by the Packard Motor Company of Detroit descended after a 650 mile flight. The Diesel engine is not a new development—hundreds of merchant ships, even ocean liners, are driven by Diesel engines. Nor is the Diesel engine wholly new in the air, a number of workers having attempted more or less successfully for several years to use engines of this type in airplanes. What is news is the length of the Diesel-engined plane’s flight and the perfect performance of the engine.

A Diesel engine is inherently about twice as economical of fuel, gallon for gallon, as an ordinary gasoline engine; moreover it burns a low grade of fuel which is cheap. Compounded, these two factors cut the fuel cost of the Packard plane’s 650 mile trip from about $24, the estimated cost had gasoline been used, to $4.68. The Diesel engine quite closely resembles a gasoline engine— there are the same cylinders, pistons, and cranks, but the fuel is ignited by compression without any “spark.” When any gas is compressed it is thereby heated, for the heat originally in it stays there and is also “compressed,” the temperature multiplied. Thus a bicycle pump becomes heated. Compressed sufficiently the vaporized fuel reaches the high temperature of combustion and is exploded. The spark of the ordinary gasoline engine is thus dispensed with in the Diesel engine. Incidentally this means that the airplane can listen in with its wireless during flight, whereas the sparks of the ordinary engine, so near by, prohibited this.

Heretofore Diesel engines have been too heavy for airplanes; it is only a few years since the Germans reduced their weight enough to use them even in motor trucks. The whole evolution has been a matter of designing a light enough yet strong enough Diesel engine for airplanes, and it looks as if it were almost here for general use. When it comes, cruising range will be greatly increased. The effect of this on commercial flying, exploration flights, and war is likely to exceed one’s first expectations.

Source: Outlook Magazine 1929

Related posts:

1. Fish Oil as Fuel for Car Engines 1927
2. The First All-Metal Airplanes 1927
3. Advances in Aviation 1929
4. Plane Repaired in the Air 1929
5. Aircraft Traffic Rules 1927

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2008 at 8:11 am and is filed under Aviation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.