Not really sure where to put this so decided to put it here. Start with one of these. Remove the wing tip tank and make a mould from it. Make fiberglass replicas of it and sell them from your airplane museum. I ran across this at a rest stop today and had to have a conversation with the lovely couple who owned it.
Interesting, tip tanks kind of went out of favour with the t33, is that a convair? Regardless many streamlines were built from droptanks, not sure how many from tip tanks, but I can see some advantages to it. Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk
P2V Neptune. with J34s on pods. the J34s were mostly for takeoff. the radials were 3350s... Wright turbo-compound engines.
the Neptune was built by Lockheed at the end of WW2 but did not see action. they were designed for maritime patrol and sub hunting. they were used extensively in Korea and Vietnam & went out of military service in the 70's I think. the 3350 (thats the cubic inches displacement! something like 55 liters?) was a bad ass engine making up to 3700 hp depending on the version. 2 rows of 9 cylinders per engine for 18 total. they were supercharged for altitude and also used a PRT - power recovery turbine that took the exhaust through a turbine wheel and geared it back into the crankshaft. though there were bigger engines and some made more power, I believe it is the most powerful piston engine to see relatively wide spread use. it was used in other military aircraft as well as the Lockheed Constellation. the Westinghouse J34, designed and produced in the late 40's was one of the first jet engines to see service. they were on a dozen early aircraft. on the P2V they were set up to burn Avgas instead of jet fuel (though they could), the idea was you needed only one fuel that way. the J34 made 3000 -- 3400 pounds of thrust, but they were a fuel hog though. heavy for the power too reason I know some of this is because I was a tech at an aircraft mechanic school in the early 80's. we got four J34s surplus & I set 2 of them up in a test cells. when we went to get the engines they had literally cut the pods off the wings and let them fall. the pods protected them though. they salvaged out the good parts and the rest went to scrap. I think every A&P school in the country had J34s.
I think they were still used into the 80's by Australia, there is one (possibly two) parked outside the Air force base in my home town of Townsville, Queensland. https://www.google.com/maps/@-19.26...4!1sEd3q-latDPBw_oc2cWEEog!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 Edit, I found the other one just down the road, but if you click to the right it turns into a chopper.. https://www.google.com/maps/@-19.26...4!1sc4NOiOufFOgzYi2wvLI1RQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
craigslist in the mid atlantic area has some guy with some drop tanks for sale in the aviation section.
Our a&p school in Helena had a Connie unfortunately the school couldn’t afford the oil to run one. Also we got to see Neptune aviation’s p2vs on the ramp during fire season, they have a bunch converted to fire bombers.
There's a Connie and a couple of Neptunes at HARS in Albion Park airport , just near Wollongong , still flying too. Graham