Hello all,
I thought the group might enjoy this. My father recently passed at 101 years old. He was the test pilot for the Airphibian (www.Airphibian.com <http://www.Airphibian.com> ), the first car/airplane that was certified by the CAA in 1949, it is currently in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. They originally wanted to make the drive components powered by electric motors, here is my dad's description (as he remembered it in 2013) Original Drive System for the AIRPHIBIAN by Frazer Dougherty (test pilot) When I first flew the AIRPHIBIAN in 1945 off the small grass strip off rt. 7 just West of Middleburg, Va. , there was no drive system installed. It was early 1946 when we, Continental, Inc. developed the first flying car drive system for the AIRPHIBIAN. We included, Bob Fulton, Franz Alverez, Ted Polhemus, Wayne Dasher and me, Frazer Dougherty. Fulton, Alverez, Polhemus and Dasher were the principals that during WWII had developed the GUNAIRSTRUCTOR for the Special Devices Section of the USNavy under the auspices of Admiral Louse deFlorez! The GUNAIRSTRUCTOR taught pilots arial gunnery and it was largely fabricated by early electronics and film. This skill and knowledge was the primary reason for the FIRST FLYING CAR DRIVE SYSTEM being an ELECTRIC DRIVE! Modifying and using already proven techniques, systems was one of Bob Fulton's greatest talents and he had gathered a small staff of skilled engineers and mechanics. Franz and Ted were the two electrically oriented and they said "Let's have an ELECTRIC DRIVE SYSTEM, a motor at each rear wheel and a big generator built into the 165hp Franklin Engine, and the only connection between the engine and the wheels, two wires!" So that's exactly what happened. The idea was perfect and after solving all the installation issues and trying to find solutions to problems that arose that had not been addressed for many years, the first FAA approved auto/plane had a large generator attached directly to the rear end of the Franklin crankshaft and there was an electric motor at each rear wheel. It did have its problems! Everything became special. The generator was also to be the starter! The generator was 17" in diameter, for that ungeared generator to turn and start that 6 cylinder Franklin Engine 7 batteries were needed. One battery normally turned over the geared aircraft engine starter! 7 Batteries were too heavy, batteries had to be lightened. The motors at each rear wheel, were not exactly at the wheel, they were on top of a square tapered fabricated strut that fastened to the auto's frame through a lord mounted cylinder whose inner core attached to the frame and the outer flange attached to the strut. At the bottom of the 45 degree angled strut was the wheel shaft and through the wheel shaft ran the drive shaft from the electric motor atop the strut. That 45 degree angle became another issue which as solved by connecting two universal joints together. This issue of the universal joints was a built in problem with having to get any kind of power to the rear wheels not just related to the electric drive! Missing in this description of the electric drive are the spec numbers of the generator and the torque power of the electric motors. All I knew then was that the motors were also big, at least 10" in diameter and about 14" in length! Speed was not an issue. An electrical engineer undoubtedly calculate the HP, etc. Bob and Ted were able to persuade the battery company to convert the very heavy lead battery case to lighter plastic case. That as it! In a much later weight saving exercize the entire drive system as changed to a modification of a Jeep drive system with 3 v belts transferring the engine power from a pulley on the crankshaft to a pulley on the front end of a shaft which ran to a transmission and down to the wheels. Blackbird Rush Dougherty TucsonEV www.TucsonEV.com <http://www.tucsonev.com/> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20230902/3620a153/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
