Post by Slide on Dec 12, 2006 10:52:35 GMT -5
It was a beautiful october morning when I climbed out of my Coupe for a first rendezvous with this french lady:
Back in the 1930´s, she was the dream of Ettore Bugatti, the famous and genious car constructor. He envisioned making a race plane that would not only take back the race victories from the Germans, but brake new aviation air speed records as well.
Her name: P-100.
Her design was far ahead of its time, racy, fascinating - and french-bugatti-blue!
The air frame used a Balsa wood core material. Hard wood runners ran through the structure, giving it strength. The final exterior was coated with Tulip wood veneer and then coated with ‘doped’ fabric and wet sanded to a glass like finish that was incredibly aerodynamic.
The P-100 was fitted with 2 Grand Prix engines on board, inline-eight, complete with super-chargers. He had the blocks casted in liteweight Magnesium. Their driveshafts run under the pilots arms, left and right, to a center transmission in the plane´s nose. The aircraft was secretly constructed in the attic of a famous Piano factory in down town Paris, France.
Craftsmen began shaping the wooden air frame, parts and engines were made at the Bugatti Automobile factory in Molsheim.
Note the little difference: A 20-gallon-droptank can be mounted by simply mixing parts of the gamepack. A model here, a textureset there, choose your panel and soon you have the configuration you like. It took me ten minutes to have the P-100 ready for a little journey. My friendly assistant likes it, too.
Once you have both engines running, you have to be very very careful using rudder and throttle to taxi into position.
Takeoff happens within seconds - the supercharged double-eight shoots you right off the ground!
Once airborne, this plane is more rocket than anything piston-driven, climbing like a ME-163 and accelerating up to 500 mph. ;D
This is not made for comfort - the engine screaming and roaring on the wave of a million horsepower, high pitch noises from flaps and undercarriage retracting and a disturbing "screetch" from the propellor-gear in front of me.
You have flown Spits and Mustangs before? They appear like trucks after this treatment!
This is a Pylon Runner - so the name on the box - and therefore you have spoilers that will - AAARGH - reduce your speed from 500 to 150 mph within *very* few seconds.
Bringing her down is easy. Speed can be reduced to 70 mph and you have a good sight.
Touchdown. Not exactly centerline, but who cares ... attention with the brakes now...
This beauty is my "8th Anniversary"-Contest-Award and I like it a lot!
Thanks-A-Million to Lionheart -who created the P-100 and offered his work for the contest- and TOH-Staff honouring me with their vote!
Back in the 1930´s, she was the dream of Ettore Bugatti, the famous and genious car constructor. He envisioned making a race plane that would not only take back the race victories from the Germans, but brake new aviation air speed records as well.
Her name: P-100.
Her design was far ahead of its time, racy, fascinating - and french-bugatti-blue!
The air frame used a Balsa wood core material. Hard wood runners ran through the structure, giving it strength. The final exterior was coated with Tulip wood veneer and then coated with ‘doped’ fabric and wet sanded to a glass like finish that was incredibly aerodynamic.
The P-100 was fitted with 2 Grand Prix engines on board, inline-eight, complete with super-chargers. He had the blocks casted in liteweight Magnesium. Their driveshafts run under the pilots arms, left and right, to a center transmission in the plane´s nose. The aircraft was secretly constructed in the attic of a famous Piano factory in down town Paris, France.
Craftsmen began shaping the wooden air frame, parts and engines were made at the Bugatti Automobile factory in Molsheim.
Note the little difference: A 20-gallon-droptank can be mounted by simply mixing parts of the gamepack. A model here, a textureset there, choose your panel and soon you have the configuration you like. It took me ten minutes to have the P-100 ready for a little journey. My friendly assistant likes it, too.
Once you have both engines running, you have to be very very careful using rudder and throttle to taxi into position.
Takeoff happens within seconds - the supercharged double-eight shoots you right off the ground!
Once airborne, this plane is more rocket than anything piston-driven, climbing like a ME-163 and accelerating up to 500 mph. ;D
This is not made for comfort - the engine screaming and roaring on the wave of a million horsepower, high pitch noises from flaps and undercarriage retracting and a disturbing "screetch" from the propellor-gear in front of me.
You have flown Spits and Mustangs before? They appear like trucks after this treatment!
This is a Pylon Runner - so the name on the box - and therefore you have spoilers that will - AAARGH - reduce your speed from 500 to 150 mph within *very* few seconds.
Bringing her down is easy. Speed can be reduced to 70 mph and you have a good sight.
Touchdown. Not exactly centerline, but who cares ... attention with the brakes now...
This beauty is my "8th Anniversary"-Contest-Award and I like it a lot!
Thanks-A-Million to Lionheart -who created the P-100 and offered his work for the contest- and TOH-Staff honouring me with their vote!
Boy do I feel dumb. ;D
- been french territory. There is a famous story about the Schlumpf-brothers, very rich industrials located in Mulhouse, not far from the Molsheim automobile plant, who once collected Bugatti cars. Dozens of them - and nobody knew for a long time. They ruined their business with that addiction, and when the story came up everything was confiscated. Today this place is the french national museum for transportation.
placement tool!) with changed textures. I also put some FSE objects in it.
