G-TATR/29 Travel Air R Mystery Ship Replica Privately owned TURWESTON EGBT Air Britain Fly in 19.06.2021

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G-TATR/29 Travel Air R Mystery Ship Replica Privately owned TURWESTON EGBT Air Britain Fly in 19.06.2021
G-TATR/29 Travel Air R Mystery Ship Replica Privately owned TURWESTON EGBT Air Britain Fly in 19.06.2021

DETAIL OF ENGINE COWLING Developed to reduce drag and improve engine cooling. From the beginning, Herbert Rawdon and Walter Burnham kept their racer project a secret from the public. They named it the R (for Rawdon) and, working nights and weekends, incorporated every new breakthrough in the science of aeronautics. One, developed by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, was a cowl—a shroud around a radial engine that greatly improved cooling airflow and reduced drag. The airplane’s later “Mystery S” moniker, which seems to have come from newspaper stories, reflects how secretive Travel Air was about it, covering it with canvas and hiding it in hangars. It was compact and light, and built around a 400-horsepower Wright Whirlwind engine that may have been tweaked to produce more power. The plywood monoplane wings were thin and braced with wires. The fuselage followed the shape of the cowl; in front of the brief opening for the cockpit was a windshield so small it looked flush with the skin. A turtle deck extended from there to the vertical tail, constituting a kind of fairing for the helmeted head of the pilot. Enormous wheel pants extended the painstaking effort to reduce drag.

On race day in September 1929, pilot Doug Davis flew the airplane, no longer a mystery but forever after known as the Mystery Ship, in a 50-mile, closed-circuit, pylon race, took the lead, and never looked back. After that, the Travel Air R set a list of records that few have matched since. In a 1971 book on the history of Beech Aircraft commissioned by the company, writer William H. McDaniel quoted a report from an undisclosed source on the airplane’s triumphal 20,000-mile tour of the continent: “The old world had justly prided itself on the achievements of its Schneider [Trophy] fliers…but it had not a single machine that could stand long flights day after day with the same engine at speeds above 200 miles per hour.” And that was the Mystery Ship’s true contribution to aviation.

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Taken on: June 19, 2021
Tags: Everybody's photos tagged with TURWESTON EGBT AIR BRITAIN FLY IN TURWESTON EGBT AIR BRITAIN FLY IN
Sets appears in:   • 21.06.19 Turweston EGBT Air Britain Fly In   
Groups appears in:   • Radial Engine   
Camera: Nikon D750, f/5.6, 1/400 sec, 116mm, ISO 1000 (more info) (hide info)
Camera: Nikon D750
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Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure Time: 0.003 sec (1/400)
Focal Length: 116mm
ISO: 1000
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Metering Mode: Spot
White Balance: Auto
Gain Control: High gain up
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Software: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.7 (Windows)
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