After taking a break from PPRuNe, just stumbled on this super thread. There are just too many distinctive and charismatic engine sounds in my head, but I'll start with the P&W R-1830 Twin Wasp (well, I guess one should say a pair of them) in the C-47, the proper name of the vast majority of DC-3s flying post-war. Nearly 70 years after becoming acquainted with them in Africa, and half a century after doing a spell on them as a co-pilot, I still find myself dropping everything to tumble out of the house at their most distant sound. Except that, sadly, for a few years now, that hardly ever happens; except when a rare Dak is going into or out of Biggin. The only other engines that have that effect are Gipsy Queens (Dove or Heron); Merlin or, better still, several of them; and the faraway slapping of Chinook rotors.
Originally Posted by
tdracer
That drone of those four P&W radials on a B-17 going overhead is music to my ears (although I'd probably feel differently if I'd been at the receiving end of a mission).
The two P&W radials on the DC-3 also sound wonderful to me - there is a vintage DC-3 based at the Historic Flight museum at Paine field just a few miles from my house. It flies overhead occasionally during the nice weather months. Whenever I hear 'that sound' I rush outside to take a look at listen
.
Yes! But don't forget the B-17 has Wright R-1820 Cyclones, not P&W R-1830s. Which reminds me: the Wright Cyclone has one row of 9 pots; the Twin Wasp two rows of 7. So there are only 28 cylinders on a C-47; not 36, as
KCode suggests. The R-3350 and R-2800 are the ones with two rows of 9: Maybe more on those later..