Electric Nieuport?

[rwanttaja]

That full scale Nieuport won't do well on 85HP unless the motor is turning the same low rpm and spinning the same huge prop as the original Le Rhone. Many replicas with fast turning modern engines, even with several times the HP, have had marginal performance.

Good point. I wonder, though, if that 85 HP electric motor *could* turn an original LeRhone prop at the appropriate RPM. Electric motors have scads of low-end torque, and that is what it'd take.

Reminds me of Boeing's 50th anniversary back in the '60s. They hired a company to build a full-scale replica of the B&W, Boeing's first airplane (Pete Bowers helped with the research). The original had a Hall-Scott engine of 125 HP, and the replica builders installed a Lycoming GO-435 of 170 HP. But the Lycoming had a teensy, skinny prop, and I understand that the replica could barely get out of its own way.


Seattle's Museum of Flight sells a nice little model of the B&W. But it's got the teensy prop of the Lycoming-powered version.....

Ron Wanttaja