From the Sunshine Coast Daily -
A MAN killed in a plane crash near Gympie last week was Tiger Moth acrobatic pilot Barry Uscinski.
The 75-year-old man’s name was released by police yesterday.
Doctor Uscinski was a former Brisbane man who moved to Cambridge, England, in 1966.
He was a research staff member at Christ’s College and had a keen interest in submarines.
Dr Uscinski was one of the few licensed in the UK to perform acrobatics in a Tiger Moth.
The replica Spitfire had been undergoing repairs on its landing equipment at Kybong before the crash.
Dr Uscinski was a regular at Watts Bridge Memorial Airfield at Toogoolawah, 41 kilometres south-west of Kilcoy.
The Gympie Times article...
Spitfire crash victim identified | Gympie News | Local News in Gympie | Gympie Times
With a pilot age of 75, one has to place some kind of rapidly-incurred, age-related health condition, as high on the list for the reason for the crash. This is not to infer that Prof Uscinski was unfit... it's just that the chances of a stroke, heart attack, or any one of a dozen disabling health events, are more likely to occur at an advanced age.
The pilot was highly experienced, and had aerobatic skills, so it certainly doesn't appear to be a case of piloting inexperience being the cause of the crash.
The maintenance was on the landing gear, not the engine. The aircraft was first registered in December 2003, and it appears that no previous problems have been recorded or identified, as regards the engine or airframe.
There doesn't seem to be any real concern about the Isuzu V6's reliability when reworked as an aircraft engine. It appears there have been no reported engine failures, or engine concerns, in the replica Spitfire engines.
Mike Sullivans workmanship and thoroughness appears to be beyond suspicion. After all, he has had the replica certified in numerous countries... and not 3rd world countries, either.
I have been told the engines are produced by Honda for Isuzu. I cannot verify this. I am surprised at the high number of automotive engine rejections as indicated by VH-XXX.
90% of Japanese automotive engines are now produced in factories that are populated largely by assembly robots. In numerous cases, engines are assembled 100% by robots. This reduces assembly problems to a very low level.
However, the problem remains with high-volume production tooling, whereby wear on tooling has to be very carefully scrutinised, or tolerances commence to go out of spec. When this happens on large-scale production, all engines suffer from tolerance problems.
I was under the impression the high cost of the aircraft engine is related to total dis-assembly, and hand re-assembly... with blueprinting and modification of the engine, the main aim, to meet the more rigorous requirements of aircraft useage. Component balancing to much tighter levels than automotive requirements is high on the list... as is checking of all components for meeting precise specifications. Few people realise how many automotive engines are often assembled with components that barely meet specifications.
I was told a story about Holden engine assembly, many years ago... and have never been able to determine the story as true, or urban legend. I wouldn't be surprised if it was true.
The story goes that the Holden engine assembly line had a bloke checking component specs, and colour-marking them accordingly.
This gent doing the specification measuring was reputed to have had three colored chalks. Green, yellow, and red.
Green-chalked components fell into the ideal levels of meeting specifications. These components went into Export engines. Yellow-chalked components just met specifications. These components went into local production, private-sale vehicles. Red-chalked components were outside specifications, but could be passed with a shove. These components were installed in company fleet, and Govt-order vehicles...
True or not? I don't know... but one things for sure... if we actually saw what happened when our beloved automotive motors were assembled in the factories, we would quite likely be appalled...