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Flying The Ford Trimotor By Nels Anderson (25 June 2006) One of the prominent features of FS2004 was a collection of historic aircraft (remember that "A Century Of Flight" part of the title?). All too many flightsimmers seem to have overlooked these in preference to their favorite airliners but still these planes did add a nice flavor to the version of the sim that arrived at aviation's 100th anniversary. One of the included planes was modeled after a real plane that still flys regularly, the Ford Trimotor that is owned and operated by the EAA. Their Fly The Ford program lets anyone get a ride in this historic aircraft and feel what air travel was like at the dawn of the air age. In a previous feature article Andrew Herd presented the history of this aircraft type in detail, so I'll refer you to that article instead of repeating it here. I don't recall the Trimotor making a tour to the U.S. east coast before, but when I heard it was coming my way I figured I had to get a ride on it. It was scheduled to visit a nearby airport, but the weather forecast for that period was pretty grim so my friend Bill and I decided to take advantage of a day with guaranteed good weather and fly to Poughkeepsie, New York and take a ride there. This way also had the advantage of giving us an excuse to do some flying on our own too! The trusty Piper Archer got us to KPOU in about an hour and even before landing we spotted the old Ford parked on the ramp. As soon as I got out of the Archer I started snapping photos. Our first look was across the ramp but we quickly walked over for a closer view. There were some other interesting planes around, as is often case, such as the biplane seen departing under the wing of the Trimotor in the right photo. Even though we had not pre-registered we only had to wait for one flight before getting our turn. Before boarding we got a briefing and had a chance to ask questions. Then it was into the plane. Other than being at a bit of an odd angle, getting in is quite easy as the interior is pretty roomy. The original wicker seats have been replaced by something more modern, including modern seat belts. The first two photos below show the view from my seat front and back. Note that the passengers have their own altimeter (kind of like how Concorde had a Mach meter); you can see it in the left photo directly behind the pilot. With everyone settled in, the engines were started (photo right) and it was time to go. Unlike the FS2004 version which is a struggle to taxi smoothly, the real plane apparently handles nicely on the ground (left). We had only a short taxi to the runway and soon were off. The Trimotor, though slow, takes very little runway to get airborne! After gaining some altitude we began banking right over the tee hangars and towards the city of Poughkeepsie. The airport is only a few miles east of the Hudson River, and the city is right on the river. In the right photo we see our first view of the river off in the distance. Note also the engine gauges on the pylon...the pilot certainly needs a wide scan to view everything! Initially we cruised (at a blazing 85 mph or so) north up the Hudson, where we could see some ship traffic. Over a golf course I spotted our shadow off to the right. After I got home I did the same flight with FS2004 and the first screen shot from that flight is show below right, as I flew over the city. We had been warned during the briefing that the plane was loud. During the taxi, one of the other passengers commented that it wasn't so bad. Well, that's before the engines were running at full power! During cruise, they generated a sound you could not only hear, but feel. The FS2004 Trimotor sounds actually match this pretty well, if the volume is turned up enough. A good subwoofer helps with the feel, though I imagine something like a Buttkicker Gamer would do an even better job. Poughkeepsie does have one noteable man-made landmark, which being a bit of a railfan as well as a pilot I was interested to see. The Poughkeepsie Highland Railroad Bridge opened in 1888 and at the time was the longest span in the world. Unfortunately, in 1974 a fire damaged the bridge and it's been closed to rail traffic since. A group called Walkway Over The Hudson has hopes of reopening it as a walking path, though even that level of restoration will be a very expensive project. The first two photos below show the bridge. Unfortunately, Microsoft's default scenery hardly does it justice. After a turn over the city we headed back to the airport. I noted from flying the FS2004 version that turns are quick sluggish so any heading changes require some planning ahead. Our pilot did not seem to have any problems though. Returning from our tour of the city we were setup for a right base to runway 24, which at 5001 feet long offers plenty of space for the Trimotor. I tried the same approach flying the FS2004 version and with its sluggish handling found getting lined up a challenge--guess I need more practice! Using only a fraction of the runway to land, we turned off short and quickly taxied back to the ramp. Out the window (left photo) our Archer was seen waiting to take us back home. Our pilot smoothly taxied in, swung the plane around 180° and shut down, with the door facing the terminal. After engine shutdown, we got a chance to see the cockpit up close. Comparing the real plane's "2D cockpit" with Microsoft's version clearly shows this particular cockpit was not really modeled, as the gauges are quite different. The panel in the real plane has been updated from what was found in 1929, since it does need to be flown in the modern world, but the sim panel seems to have been updated even more. Our pilot never closed his side window, doing the flight with one elbow sticking in the breeze. What a way to fly! Here, the real cockpit and Microsoft's virtual cockpit are compared. Clearly these are the same aircraft type, but with different gauge arrangements. But that "yoke"...looks out of place in an aircraft, but would be just right in a Ford automobile. After exiting the plane we got a brief chance to go on the ramp and photograph the plane from all sides. The exterior does match the Microsoft version (right) quite nicely. That corrugated metal surface is really something else! Note that there are no flaps and also that the lines for the control surfaces are all right out in the open. Finally, it was time to leave, so back into the Archer we went. In the meantime, the next set of passengers had headed off in the Trimotor. As we waited our turn to take off, the Trimotor came in for a landing, providing a chance to get a few final photos. Just for comparison, the final photo shows some examples of what else Ford was manufacturing in 1929. Nels Anderson

Great Airplanes 1: Ford Trimotor By Andrew Herd (25 June 2004) In 1925, the indefatigable Anthony Fokker, wired his Amsterdam works from his New York hotel with instructions to build a three engined version of the Fokker VIIa. The final product was designated the FVIIa-3m and flew on the Ford Reliability Tour, and then after a spell at Wright Field, it was moved to Detroit, where Edsel Ford spotted it. Edsel was so enthusiastic about the plane that he struck a deal to enable Lieutenant Commander Byrd to fly the FVIIa-3m to the North Pole, following which the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company bought several to run a passenger service between Philly and Washington. The FVIIa-3m and the F-10a Trimotor that succeeded it were displayed at the Chicago Exhibition in 1928 and among the other mixed construction civilian aircraft of the time they stood out as two of the most advanced planes of their time. But Fokker's dominance was not to last. In 1923, two years before Fokker sent his telegram, a far sighted entrepreneur called Bill Stout had commissioned the design of an all metal aircraft known as the 'Air Sedan'. This plane had too small a payload for practical purposes, though it acted as proof of concept, so Bill and the Stout Metal Plane Company engineers went back to the drawing board and stretched the Air Sedan into an 8 passenger Liberty powered plane identified as the 2-AT - the AT standing for 'Air Transport'. The 2-AT did sterling service and it wasn't long before it came to Edsel's attention that something more might be made of it, so Ford invested in the building of an airfield and production facilities. The timing was perfect, because a month after Ford Airport was dedicated, the Kelly Mail Act was passed and Henry Ford decided to start a freight air line between Dearborn and Chicago. By the end of 1925, Ford had seen enough that he did a deal to buy Stout out, which is how the Ford Motor Company came to be a manufacturer of airplanes. The 2-AT now fades from the story (it faded from history in 1928 when the wing turned out to be structurally weak), but the advent of the Wright Whirlwind radial prompted Stout, who remained at the helm of his former company, to design a three engined variant of the 2-AT, which was known, with Stout's instinct for snappy titles, as the 3-AT. This aircraft had challenging handling to say the least and it was probably fortunate that it was burned out in the fire that destroyed the Stout Metal Plane Factory in 1926. While the factory was being rebuilt, a new trimotor was being designed under the direction of Chief Engineer William B. Mayo - this 4-AT-1 looked so like the Fokker Trimotor that the only way most people could tell them apart was the corrugated skins of the Ford, but however similar the two hulls may have appeared there was a crucial difference. Henry Ford planned putting his design into mass production and the new factory would make it possible to build a new plane every day. As it turned out, that sort of capacity was never needed and only 199 Trimotors were built between 1926 and 1933, when production ceased, sales having been crippled by, among other things, the Wall Street Crash (Microsoft say 198 hulls were completed, but what the hey). Production was split between the Whirlwind engined 4-ATs and the more powerful Wasp powered 5-ATs and by the time it had finished, it was clear that aircraft production would never be the same again. It will interest many readers to hear that the Ford Trimotor was not the first all-metal aircraft to be built, that honor belonging to the Junkers G-23, which was a three engined monoplane built in 1924. But the G-23 was a custom built hull far ahead of its time and when Ford threw his weight behind production, it was still an article of faith that aircraft were built of wood, fabric and wires, with even cutting edge models like the Fokker employing partial metal skinning. The Ford was skinned with 'Alclad' - Duraluminum sandwiched between two layers of almost pure Aluminum - which combines the strength of Duraluminum with the rot resistant properties of the softer Aluminum. Every exposed joint and surface was laquered to ensure that the least possible corrosion occurred, which accounts for why such a high proportion of Ford Trimotors have survived. The early cabins were filled with wicker chairs, a luggage compartment and a toilet (advanced stuff in 1926). Large windows provided panoramic views, every passenger having a pull-down shade and later models even boasting electric lighting, but there was a great deal of customisation and interiors varied from spartan to beyond club class. The wing was a cantilever bridge design with a thick section and broad chord - which gave it good low speed handling characteristics at the expense of increased drag. Economical cruising speed was therefore around 113 mph and most hulls were flat out at 138, which is the kind of performance which makes headwind component a constant consideration. However, since speed counted for rather less in an age when a safe arrival was by no means assured, this was less of a sacrifice than it might seem nowadays, the irony being that sector times were one of the reasons why production ended; aeronautical engineering had advanced by leaps and bounds and the Trimotor had become a casualty of the very progress it had catalysed. Incidentally, one of the cleverest features of the airframe was that the outer wing sections were standardised bolt on units and the wingspan variations between the various different models were accounted for entirely by the width of the center section. Cockpits varied from one model to the next. A common feature was a bulkhead dividing the pilots from the passengers, some planes having a door fitted. All the photos I have seen show dual control wheels fitted on tall columns, which was highly necessary, because in rough weather it sometimes needed two people to fly the plane. The second person wasn't always a flyer and so early cabin crew gained flying experience out of necessity, not least because the gauges on the right hand engine weren't at all easy to read from the pilot's seat, even though they were illuminated at night. The EAA plane depicted in FS2004 is interesting because it has a VSI, which wasn't standard equipment in the original Trimotor; presumably someone had the good sense to shoehorn it in retrospectively. I have already mentioned that the Trimotor was heavy on the controls, but one of its more challenging features was that an outboard engine failure at low airspeeds could cause an uncontrollable swing - there simply wasn't enough rudder authority to handle it. Ford were coy about the performance, but it seems that fully loaded, takeoffs took around 300 yards; that figure reducing to a hundred with part filled tanks and an empty cabin. The typical landing roll was 330 yards, though a skilled pilot could stop the plane in less than a hundred if he was determined enough. Of course, all these figures depended on which powerplants were fitted and some Trimotors were highly modified after delivery. One thing is for certain, in the right hands, a Trimotor could be made to do the most surprising things and Harold Johnson became notorious for performing 17 consecutive loops in a standard 4-AT-B. Johnson also flew hammerheads, Cubans and aileron rolls in that plane and used to delight crowds by finishing his performances with a one wheel landing - which doesn't sound too scary until you see the photographs. The article is illustrated with some wonderful liveries by Ed Knapp. I guess that many people have passed these by on the basis that they aren't eye catching enough to be worth the bother of downloading, but the reality is that few Trimotors ever wore colorful schemes. Partly this was a sign of the times, but it was also the case that the real Trimotor wasn't exactly the easiest plane in the world to paint, thanks to all those corrugations. I guess it took someone like Ed to see the potential of the visual model, which is one of the best ones Microsoft have ever done - personally I like the restrained schemes, they speak to me of quieter times, when the world was in less of a rush to get ahead of itself. I have never really had an opportunity to say thank you to Ed for the service he has done to the hobby, so I guess this is as good an opportunity to pay homage as any. Just about the only improvement that could be made to any of Ed's schemes would be to tone down the corrugations in the skin a little, as these cause some moire effect at comfortable viewing distances. The FS2004 Trimotor has an exceptionally good visual model that captures the character of the plane perfectly. The tin lizzie being the simple design it was, you don't get much by way of animation apart from an opening passenger door, but then the real plane didn't even have flaps, so one can hardly complain. The 2D cockpit is, like all the ACOF planes, something else, with a crisp photoreal bitmap that puts the modern GA planes (and about 80% of the addons we get to see, excepting FlightOne, Captain Sim and DreamFleet stuff) in FS2004 to shame. I really did think, when ACOF was released, that we had seen the end of developers trying to sell sloppily edited low resolution 'art' panels in thirty dollar packages, but still they come. It is hard to say why users aren't more critical, but I suspect the reason is that when it boils down to it, many simmers are happier with a mediocre looking panel in a fast plane than they are with a great panel in a classic. I do reckon that when a developer is trying to sell an addon for profit, they owe it to the consumer to get out there with a camera and come up with a convincing looking replica of the cockpit of an existing aircraft, but what do I know? Harold Johnson would not have been pleased with the Microsoft Trimotor, but then I guess the reason he could loop it seventeen times in succession proves that he was a far better pilot than most of us will ever be. Like all the ACOF taildraggers, the plane is a handful early in the takeoff run and it is by no means easy to three point. Chopping an outer throttle before the tail lifts does indeed make the plane yaw uncontrollably and I wouldn't bet the farm on the two engined climb rate. All in all, it felt just like I imagine the real thing does, which is a tribute to Microsoft. Their team spent a great deal of time getting the vintage planes right and when you look critically at the Trimotor it is clear where much of that hard work went. Trimotors served all over the world, hauling just about every load you can imagine and some were fitted with floats, crop spraying bars and even skis. They also served as fire jumping planes and military transports in addition to the passenger carrying role for which they were originally designed. There is a surprising postscript to the Trimotor story. In 1953, Bill Stout declared that a new Ford Trimotor was going to be built, with the blessing of Henry Ford II. This aircraft was to be known as the Bushmaster, but anyone who took a sideways glance at it would have known what it was. Between the jigs and the reels it was a dozen years before the first example flew, a second being completed in 1985 - and it is thought that a third, part finished hull exists. Around seventeen Trimotors have been preserved, of which something like half a dozen are capable of flight, which says something for Bill Stout's talent, and Henry Ford's vision. Andrew Herd