4 Engine Cessna

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Mtns2Skies

Final Approach
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Mtns2Skies
Whaaat? We should get Cessna to build this, just for awesomeness! I thought this deserves it's own thread after @Tantalum mentioned it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_620
450px-Cessna_620_(4590370750).jpg

Sold for scrap? :( It should be in a museum.
File:Cessna_620_(4590370750).jpg
 
Pretty epic, right?

I went down a Cessna 620 rabbit hole a few months ago.. really cool plane but there is not much I could find on it other than anecdotal stuff on line and the sparse wikipedia page. The design brief for the engineers was cool though, with safety and all weather capabilities in mind. Too bad that Cessna realized after building the first one that it would not be viable long term.. but kind of odd because outside of the DC3 I don't want "surplus piston airliners" flooding the GA market they had in line. The Cessna 620 is no DC6, Constellation, etc.. this plane probably could have had a small production run and sold 100 or so

Would be pretty cool to have your own miniature DC6.. I mean, look at that cockpit, that's a real man's cockpit right there!
upload_2019-7-15_14-37-19.png

I wonder what it would take to build an experimental Rotax (sorry, I had to) version of this, possibly scaled down
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I nominate that airplane to be the next (@Ted DuPuis) Cloud Nine transporter. Four engines are better than just two, right?
 
Find the guy who built the 1/3 scale B-17 Flying Fortress! He could do it with leftover parts.
 
Ryanb said:
I nominate that airplane to be the next (@Ted DuPuis) Cloud Nine transporter. Four engines are better than just two, right?
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The fact that the one that was created was then sold for scrap would make that hard to accomplish. Even still, having 4 geared piston engines... no thank you. That is exactly what I do not want in any sort of practical aircraft that has a job to do.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
The fact that the one that was created was then sold for scrap would make that hard to accomplish. Even still, having 4 geared piston engines... no thank you. That is exactly what I do not want in any sort of practical aircraft that has a job to do.
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I thought Rotax had a better history than the IO-200s. Which kinda goes against your belief on geared engines :D

Tim
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I don't want an engine that sounds like my weed whacker.
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When there's more than one they sound pretty good... sort of like those electric fan jet things you see on RC aircraft, see below

Ted DuPuis said:
And I REALLY don't want 4 of them.
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Despite my apparent skepticism of twin engined planes in the other thread, I do have a fetish for more propellers.. the B36 peacemaker is one of the coolest planes built

Fast forward to 6:59... sounds pretty bad ass
 
Tantalum said:
When there's more than one they sound pretty good... sort of like those electric fan jet things you see on RC aircraft, see below
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Different strokes. I don't like the way they sound in any number on any aircraft. :)
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Different strokes. I don't like the way they sound in any number on any aircraft.
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Fair enough, you've been spoiled by the beautiful sounds of a turbine anyway... there's no going back from that.. especially the Garretts
 
Those tip tanks, like my checkbook, seem wildly inadequate to feed that quantity of geared, supercharged, oddball conti motors.
 
schmookeeg said:
Those tip tanks, like my checkbook, seem wildly inadequate to feed that quantity of geared, supercharged, oddball conti motors.
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The plane aesthetically just has sort of odd proportions... which is strange, since the 310 is such a beauty, the 620 should be at least twice as beautiful, but instead it has half the grace

**I always kind of assumed multi engine fuel management should be easy.. just feed each wing directly into it's engine, maybe the tip tanks on the 620 just fee the outboard donks? Cross flow options should you need to for some reason.. but otherwise just feed the engines directly, no real need for switching tanks, etc.
 
Tantalum said:
Fair enough, you've been spoiled by the beautiful sounds of a turbine anyway... there's no going back from that.. especially the Garretts
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I enjoy turbines and the sound is cool and all, but give me the sound of a radial or a big bore piston any day.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I enjoy turbines and the sound is cool and all, but give me the sound of a radial or a big bore piston any day.
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there should be plenty of DC3 out there still available...
 
I saw another post war "light" four engine, one of a kind a/c when I was working in Louisiana. I've been all over the net and came up dry on details. I saw it at the Patterson airport (KPTN) near Morgan city, LA. It was tied down outside the the Wedell- Williams museum on the field. You remember Jimmy Wedell and his brother who built racers in the thirty's for Roscoe Turner and others. Financed by Harry Williams, a lumber tycoon.

The folks at the museum had sketchy info, but what they had was: built and flown around 46 or 47 by either Consolidated or Vultee. Or maybe after the merger. Convair didn't happen until 1953.

It was a shoulder wing, tricycle gear, four engine, unpainted aluminum plane. It was flown & tested with four pusher Cont C-75 engines that had been removed when I saw it. Looked like a baby B-36. I think that the gear retracted back into the fuselage like a Cessna. Span was about 35 to 40 ft. Cockpit and cabin looked to be about a six place with a green house type enclosure. Seats were removed. The windshield looked crude. The front surface was vertical and the the plexy was simply wrapped around from r to l to streamline it a little. Ugly and crude. The museum had plans to restore it.

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew came ashore in Miami, crossed into the Gulf and hit the Morgan City area. There was no sign of this plane after. Probably spread all over the sugar cane fields. Any body know anything about this airplane?
 
Maxnr said:
I saw another post war "light" four engine, one of a kind a/c when I was working in Louisiana. I've been all over the net and came up dry on details. I saw it at the Patterson airport (KPTN) near Morgan city, LA. It was tied down outside the the Wedell- Williams museum on the field. You remember Jimmy Wedell and his brother who built racers in the thirty's for Roscoe Turner and others. Financed by Harry Williams, a lumber tycoon.
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Was it this? The The Monsted-Vincent MV-1? I have a thing for unusual planes, I recall seeing this in one of the older books I had picked up once:
http://eaavintage.org/april-2016-mystery-mv-1/
upload_2019-7-16_12-6-26.png
 
Maxnr said:
Looks very much like a de Haviland HERON.
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Had a friend with one of those. Here's a cockpit shot...look how low to the ground it is (see the guys on the left side).
cockpit.jpg

He actually imported about three airframes, so he had lots of spares.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Tantalum said:
Was it this? The The Monsted-Vincent MV-1? I have a thing for unusual planes
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Nice find!

I know a guy who has a thing for unusual planes. His dad was a Tuskegee Airman. He owns not one, but two very unusual airplanes:

1) A Messerschmidt-Bolkow-Blohm BO209. 102 built. 2 seats, aerobatic. Was supposed to be the airplane for everyone - The nosewheel retracts, the wings fold easily, and a hitch attaches to the tail so you can (theoretically) trailer it home and put it in your garage.

2) A Wing Derringer. 12 built. 2 seat twin. It has a canopy that opens up and back, and when you pull the canopy closed, some cables pull the steps up into the fuselage. It also has what looks like a composite wing, but it's all metal: The smooth wing comes from them cutting the entire wing skin out of a single piece of sheet metal, wrapping it around the ribs and using an adhesive to bond them together.
 
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Flyingcheesehead, here's a photo for your friend... (taken at Oshkosh Monsun gathering, I believe in 1980, he was there but is unlikely to have it)
 

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Tusayan said:
Flyingcheesehead, here's a photo for your friend... (taken at Oshkosh Monsun gathering, I believe in 1980, he was there)
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Kinda hard to tell if that's him, what with the lighting and the sunglasses... If it is, he's had the plane painted, and who's that in the left seat of his plane anyway?

I suppose he could be getting done with a demo flight. Not sure how long he's had it.
 
I believe it's probably AW - he could confirm or deny. There were several Monsuns going regularly to Oshkosh in that era, some years most of them in the US. He is sitting in JV's plane, the guy in the left seat. Both of them still have their planes, I have one of the others and the photo collection came with my plane. Another photo attached to this post. Cheers.
 

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Tusayan said:
I believe it's probably AW - he could confirm or deny. There were several Monsuns going regularly to Oshkosh in that era, some years most of them in the US. He is sitting in JV's plane, the guy in the left seat. Both of them still have their planes, I have one of the others and the photo collection came with my plane. Another photo attached to this post. Cheers.
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Very cool! I don't know JV but AW is a really interesting guy. Love chatting with him.

Do you know how many 209s are still flying? They're such cool airplanes, why weren't they more successful?

This year, of course, it could be called the "Oshkosh Monsoon gathering". :rofl:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Do you know how many 209s are still flying? They're such cool airplanes, why weren't they more successful?
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Likely not the fault of the airplane. From Wikipedia:

There were 102 Monsun manufactured between 1969 and 1971. A United States businessman invested in the model, secured funding, and started shipping factory equipment to Georgia. Before completion of the transition, the investor committed suicide after losses in stock market speculation. MBB decided in February 1972 to stop production despite there still being 275 orders outstanding.​
 
The story with US Monsun importation was as I understand it slightly different than the Wiki description but who who knows for sure. The plane was anyway designed by Bolkow before the MBB merger, and after the merger the process of rationalization killed light plane production. Bolkow was a pretty good airplane company, even without helicopters: they made metal and wood power planes, and the first production composite glider. I went to the annual Bolkow fly in in Germany a couple of years ago and saw something like 23 Monsuns in one place! Do a search on boelkowtreffen-melle-2019 and you'll find the program for this years event.

I understand there are about 60 Monsuns still flying, focused in Germany as you might expect. About nine came to the US, maybe half of them still fly regularly, One was crashed years ago. Its a very nice flying plane, extremely well built in (what used to be) the German way, but not terribly fast... Maybe 125 kts cruise for the basic O-320 version with fixed nose wheel. Some have retractable nose wheels like the latest Lancairs, some have 160 HP engines, some have constant speed props all of which affect speed.
 
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Tantalum said:
Would be pretty cool to have your own miniature DC6.. I mean, look at that cockpit, that's a real man's cockpit right there!
View attachment 75925
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wanttaja said:
Had a friend with one of those. Here's a cockpit shot...look how low to the ground it is (see the guys on the left side).
cockpit.jpg

He actually imported about three airframes, so he had lots of spares.

Ron Wanttaja
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One of these isn't a Cessna 620 or a de Havilland Heron. :D
 
How about........

Put a turbine powering a generator that goes to two electric motors? Got to check the list on "odd".
 
Timbeck2 said:
Somewhat like a train?
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Sure - diesel / turbine electric. Why not? Electric motors would be very compact / thin, helping aerodynamics. Electric motors would be simple / hopefully reliable and long lasting. You could put the turbine (or diesel) engine behind the cockpit? Maybe have a 5 minutes worth of power battery back up in case you loose an engine on take off or landing.

I wonder if that Raptor guy would want a new project????
 
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