It was not Harrison Ford's "time" when he slid his Ryan in on the golf course, power off.
Kudos to his stick and rudder "seat of the pants" abilities. A lot of people try to 'stretch' a glide in emergencies, usually stalling the aircraft...with disastrous consequences. He apparently flew it all the way down. I'm glad he's ok, but probably not near as glad as HE is.
Interesting tidbit I just read while researching the Ryan PT-22, or whatever variant he was flying:
From a news report:
"..Soon after Ford took off from Santa Monica Municipal Airport near Los Angeles, he radioed that the single engine of his 1942 Ryan Aeronautical ST3KR stopped working and he was going to make an immediate return."
From a google search of the Ryan he was flying:
ST-3 Variant with new fuselage shape and a Kinner B-5 radial engine of 125 hp; one built.
ST-3KR Variant of ST-3 with a Kinner R-5 radial engine of 160 hp, one built.
From this reference Ol' Indy was flying vintage one-of-a-kind tin. If this account is indeed correct, I'm sure someone will eventually get all the pieces back from the NTSB and once more make it airworthy. I hope so.
I also hope they look at the Kinner powerplant a little closer before take-off..:pinch:
I saw an oblique arial photo.
It looks like he did turn around but couldn't get back to the runway.
It takes a very steep bank to get around fast enough at low altitude.
more reading..
...indicates there were over 1000 ST3KRs manufactured by Ryan. That sounds a little more realistic.
excellent
excellent.
Rumor has it that recovery of the seat cushion from the plane will be delayed since it's still "up close and Personal" with Mr. Ford.....
The aircraft has a very poor glide ratio. Has a lot of drag.
One joke about the machine was that you had to do the back side of the loop to get enough speed to do the front side of the loop. They are a beaut though.
Out of the primary trainers from WWII, I think the PT-19 by Fairchild was probably the best liked by the students. The PT-17 Stearman was a workhorse for training but was very blind on take off and landing.
> The aircraft has a very poor glide ratio. Has a lot of drag.
That's pretty evident in the grainy cell-phone video I saw on the news...it looked like it was gliding like a rock. But he could have been saving his altitude until he saw the fairway also.
I wonder if he still had the stick in his hand when they pulled him out...
One of the fellas at the local strip has a Fairchild 19. It's a beautiful machine. He said they made good trainers because of their propensity to drop a wing when stalled....if you could recover, you made a good pilot. 😉
