Merged: Replica Spitfire Gympie crash
 

The news services are running hot with reports of a replica Supermarine Spitfire going down about 10kms South of Gympie, QLD, at around 15:50 hrs this afternoon.

The pilot is deceased. He apparently wasn't a local, and neither was the plane, according to reports. Does anyone have confirmation of the registration?

Pilot Of Spitfire Dies In Gympie Plane Crash

Supermarine Aircraft - About The Mk 26

Merged: Replica Spitfire Gympie crash
 

Pilot killed in war bird crash
From: AAP October 22, 2010 6:40PM

A RESTORED war bird has crashed in central Queensland, killing the pilot.

The plane, which is believed to be a replica Spitfire, came down in a paddock off Lagoon Pocket Road, about 10km south of Gympie, just before 4pm (AEST), police said.

The only occupant, a male, was killed.

No other details are known at this stage.


RIP

Yes - 3/4 scale replica - not really a warbird.

ATTN, Australian
From AAP (Arse About Printers!!!!)

War bird........No
A RESTORED War bird......No

A scale replica........Yes

Try this link
Man, 60, killed in Spitfire crash | National News | Breaking National News in Australia | The Sunshine Coast Daily

CC

Spitfire replica fatal crash
 

Man, 60, killed in Spitfire crash
22nd October 2010
A 60-YEAR-OLD man is dead after a plane crash near the Kybong airfield in Queensland, Australia.
The aircraft, believed to be a light plane came down on Lagoon Pocket Road just before 4pm.
Emergency services were enroute to the crash site.
There were reports the plane was a three-quarter replica Spitfire aircraft.

Pilot dies in plane crash near Gympie Tony Moore

October 22, 2010 - 6:31PM
The pilot of a replica Spitfire plane has died when the aircraft crashed near Gympie just before 4pm this afternoon.
The pilot of a replica Spitfire plane has died when the aircraft crashed near Gympie just before 4pm this afternoon.
The Spitfire crashed in a field on Lagoon Pocket Road, about 10 kilometres south of Gympie, at about 3.50pm.
Police confirmed there was one male pilot, believed to be in his sixties, in the three-quarter sized replica Spitfire when it crashed.
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Ambulance crews arrived at the crash site to find he had died.
Crews said there was no evidence of fire but the replica plane had received extensive nose damage during the crash.
The light plane crashed about one kilometre from houses, an emergency services spokeswoman said.
Ray Gresham, who lives 800 metres from Gympie Airport at Kybong, was watching the pilot doing circuits of the airport immediately before he crashed.
“It’s a three-quarter Spitfire , but it is not a local plane and he is not a local pilot,” Mr Gresham said.
“He is apparently in his sixties, the pilot.”
Mr Gresham said the pilot was doing practice circuits immediately before he crashed.
“Yeah, he wasn’t doing anything unusual. He wasn’t doing any aerobatics or anything that I was aware of,” he said.
“He certainly wasn’t doing any aerobatics or anything silly as far as I was concerned. It just seems he stalled it.”
He said he had been told the pilot had “fuelled up” before he had taken off.

It seems Planky is back :p

RIP

Saddened to hear of this one, the guy was a true gentleman.

Any idea what engine was in this particular machine?

Is that the one thatwas for sale in Gympie?

rego/name
 

Do you have the rego or name...thanks

Aircraft was on the RAA register 19-4024.

Brisbane Sunday Mail this morning reports that police are still trying to identify the pilot.

This particular Supermarine was powered by the GM Isuzu quad cam V6.

JetPhotos.Net Photo » 19-4024 (CN: 019) Private Spitfire Mk.XXVI by Robert Frola

JetPhotos.Net Photo » 19-4024 (CN: 019) Private Spitfire Mk.XXVI by Robert Frola

Judging by the level, pancaked position, it seems fair to assume that a low level stall was the reason behind the crash. Whether that was because of pilot error, or powerplant failure, remains to be seen.

http://www.wattsbridge.com.au/pdfs/qua_june2010.pdf

sad to hear the news, rip B

Isuzu
 

It was an Isuzu 6-cyl, I think.

pilot has been identified officially
 

Gympie Times has reported that the pilot has been identified.

I found out from his family and colleagues on Sunday. A very sad loss, he was a wonderful friend and a brilliant colleague and mentor. RIP.

Gympie Times also reports that this was the first flight after maintenance at Gympie.

The engine is an Isuzu built 3.5 litre alloy V6 as fitted a few years back in the Holden Rodeo in Australia. It was quite a powerful engine when it was released and used a lot of fuel. The engine was not a success in Australia and was dropped not long after as there were a significant number of them with piston slapping and out of round cylinders.

To put it into perspective, a mate who was teaching automotive at TAFE had a contact at Holden who asked if he wanted some engines for his students to work on. He agreed and the day after a day of annual leave he returned to find 284 warranty returned engines from GM Aust of which 282 were petrol and 2 were diesel. It was not uncommon for owners to have 3 replacement engines by 120,000kms on their vehicles.

GM put it down to differences in environmental factors between Japan and Australia :ugh:

That being said, a different story in the Spitfire. Fitted with a custom manufactured dual ignition system which was originally developed for the UK market where dual ignition is mandatory for aircraft. Also fitted with a belt drive unit.

Correctly configured, the engine was so smooth you could almost literally balance a $2 coin on it's end on the engine whilst it was running.


These are general comments and have nothing to do with the cause of the crash.

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... :suspect:

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... :suspect:

This and most of what followed is a load of rot!

Aero engines are expensive because:

1 - of lawyers and the illogic of joint and several liability
2 - the extremely low production volumes
3 - because they can be.

The aero engne industry could learn a lot from the automotive sector if it weren't for the scoundrel lawyers getting in the way of progress!

Onetrack:


1. Production tooling doesn't "wear" like that any more. Furthermore statistical quality control has been in place for at least Forty years in Japan and any out of tolerance condition will be picked up by trend monitoring long before it causes problems.

The problems with the engines may well be due to environmental factors or design issues, such as coping with Australias hot summers. Be aware that most Japanese cars have an infinite number of variations to suit local markets, right down to the level of dust sealing applied. It could easily be that the engine concerned did not have a cooling system that could cope, or the torque curve of the engine was not matched to the gearbox and vehicle weight. You put a free revving engine in a situation where it can't rev and guess what happens?

2. Regarding the colour marking of parts on the Holden assembly line, what was seen was most probably correct, however the interpretation was most probably wrong. Where extra tight tolerances are required, for example con rod bearings and mains, we often use selective assembly.

While each component is within tolerance (say + or - 1 ), we measure each one individually and grade it within say three bands eg; Nominal -1, Nominal, Nominal +1. - mark them with your red white and blue chalks.

Measure the mating components the same way and mark them accordingly. By matching our components that both have tolerance bands of + or - 1, we can reduce the spread of tolerance on assembled units from 4 units to 2 units.


Of course if your process doesn't put out equal spreads between bands, you can end up with some head scratching engineering guesstimates to make.

My summer job one year was to sort out all this stuff for Medical gas fittings at the old CIG.