Twin-Whirlwind & Catalina…

[Aircav]

And I thought I was odd !        

[John Howling Mouse]

Tophe, my gracious wife (the lovely Ms. Hitler) was looking over my shoulder just now at your imagined twin aeroplanes and asked me if there really were any such planes.  I told her about the F-82 and she asked: "How do they make sure which one is actually 'driving' the plane?"

This is a good question.  Were there dual but independent controls set up like a "Student Driver" car where one operator had a master over-ride to control or was it just the same dual synchronized control system as in any common multi-engine aircraft where the pilot and co-pilot sit side-by-side within the same cockpit?

[Tophe]

"How do they make sure which one is actually 'driving' the plane?" This is a good question.  Were there dual but independent controls set up like a "Student Driver" car where one operator had a master over-ride to control or was it just the same dual synchronized control system as in any common multi-engine aircraft where the pilot and co-pilot sit side-by-side within the same cockpit?

Well, I just do not know how dual-commands work, even on a Hawk or T-6... In a school-car, the teacher commands are leading and disabling the pupils' - it could be the same for planes with a teacher-pilot, or a main pilot.
Have you seen my second Twin-Cyclone page 2 of this topic ( http://www.whatifmodelers.com/forum//index...opic=4626&st=15 )? Dual discrepant orders both obeyed... The machine would break apart.
Well, as twin-planes are sometimes called Siamese-twin-planes, the problem may be similar: how do those 2 brains succeed in controlling the linked body? ( http://www.learnersonline.com/weekly/archive2K/week35/ )

[Tophe]

I post here one great creation of a friend, illustrating 'as-real' my XP-55T with Combat Flight Simulator 3 . This is a tool I do not know, that may be very good, allowing to choose a direction without source photograph.
Well, I must explain why I am playing with the computer instead of starting modeling again, as I had promised I will ... Yes I will, but after moving to a new appartment, which is delayed for months. I have many kits in boxes in my cave, not opened since 2000, and I will not unpack them to pack them again just after ... As well, I have to prepare a work-bench and all depends if we go to a tiny appartment to save money or to a large appartment to sell back in some future. We thought we would rent as cheap as possible, to save money for my poor family in law in the Philippines, and now we plan to buy – if the insurance company accept to give the credit, and we are not sure as I am classified as physically disabled and mentally ill (what-ifism is revealing craziness   , French doctors say...   ).
For the XP-55T art, below is a reduction, the big best source   is at:
http://cmeunier.chez.tiscali.fr/Twin%20Asc...er%20XP-55T.jpg
LaFayette told me I can use it freely, but I have added his Copyright name anyway, on the normal/twin picture I have created today. I do not succed in reaching him again, nor find the CFS forum topic with all that – he had created 2 other Twin-XP-55 (that I do not find saved on my computer ) and not answers my mails nor messages... Anti-Spam software may be useful, but they may break contacts sometimes...

[Tophe]

LaFayette told me I can use it freely, but

The nick-name LaFayette (of the Twin-Ascender artist) is rather sympathetic according to the education I have received: his name is the symbol of friendship between USA and France, the symbol of fighting for Liberty.
 However, looking back, I am not very sure. The current presidents of USA and France (Bush & Chirac) seem to hate each others (while Bush & Blair walk hand-in-hand), because of the war in Iraq [against massive destruction weapons that could have been in the hands of the - petrol-owning - dictator that paid the French president campaigns in the past...] Uneasy (my opinion: let those 2 men box each others and on both sides please let local people free from education to hate foreign people...). Though, I thought in 1995 that it would be opposite: Chirac was the first French president to speak fluently English, after working one year in the USA while a young man, and was on the US-capitalist side plainly – and that was tremendously different from the former president Mitterand, elected when I was 17, this man was very proud not to speak a single word of foreign language, and gave the power to communists, thus USA hesitated to attack and invade and occupy, some Historians say...
 Well, that brings back to aircraft: French young modellers like I was may have seen the B-52 very close, dropping bombs on our cities... what a thrill for modelers (I had built a 1/144th B-52/X-15 couple). Modelism is also involved in this mad speech of mine because LaFayette character exists as a figurine (below, so cheap!), and maybe as a little model, to allow enthusiasts to fix the head and arms in the direction they prefer...
 But I was wondering: how the aristocrat LaFayette could have fighted for democracy? Was he just fighting the British like former French kings and later Napoleon? The biography (below) says he was a good man, choosing to reject his aristocratic privileges, all right, fighting for Human Rights and Democracy, against British then French kingdoms.
 Anyway, if Independance (got thanks to Washington, with American & LaFayette soldiers) is the very best value in USA, I wonder:
- Is it wrong that General De Gaulle in 1945 had to fight severely to avoid France becoming a US state like Hawaii?
- What would be the US government reaction if Hawaii democratically choose independance and freedom instead of tourism money? Welcome next year? (Chirac had refused it for the French Pacific islands, it seems, with secret actions to avoid independantists being fairly elected...)
- I have heard that in 1914-16 and 1939-40, the US people refused to be involved in the war wanted by US politicians, prefering isolated peace than World War. That would have been my choice too, I guess, but European journalists pretend that US politicians are trying now to dominate the World, with Iraq war taken as proof and BenLaden crimes explained as resistance (this terrorist saying "ask yourself: why am I not attacking neutral Sweden"?). It would be better that UNO says clearly that Human Rights respect means : domination was bad (UK over America, France over Algeria & Viet-Nam, IIIrd Reich over Poland, Army over Chile, Communists over Russia, etc.) and is still bad, will be condemned, no matter if that would endanger the Western comfort...
 And all that came from a nick-name of CFS enthusiast... Yes, I am crazy. Let us go back to sleeping sanity, hearing quietly Texan and French journalists, very busy and efficient washing out brains to eat advertisement...

[nev]

Tophe, Ollie plays a lot of Combat Flight Sim 3, so he may know more about the modding tools the games come with.  I know there is a huge add-on community for the Microsoft Flight Sim series.  I remember a while back someone posted a screenshot of a Red Arrows F-18 which looked very cool    Who knows what else is out there?

[Tophe]

Tophe, Ollie plays a lot of Combat Flight Sim 3, so he may know. Who knows what else is out there?

Thanks a lot, Nev!

[Tophe]

Thanks to Ollie great source, I add here the 1939-designed (very true!) Re 4000 Bifusoliera Olli-Olli (Olé-Olé in France and maybe in Québec).
Well, after cleaning the picture, with removed landing gears and sky-blue background, I wondered : for such an in-flight picture, why are there nobody in the cockpits ?
Well, this could be a remote controlled prototype, but why opened canopies if there is nobody inside needing fresh air...?
In black and white, that could be a plane on a very clean ground, and if you don't see the landing gear, well, you may imagine that twinning goes with new location of landing gears, inside fuselages for instance. OK?

[Tophe]

Here is a different possibility : Re 4000 in the sky, with 2 engines in a jam and the pilots have baled out before the fall...  

[Tophe]

the 1939-designed Re 4000 Bifusoliera

As I don't like much radial engines (big noses), I have looked for the next step, Re 4001 of 1940, and it was not much seducing...
(the source is http://www.aerei-italiani.net/Sfondi/Sfondo_2.JPG - I am not inventing, just having an eye problem seeing double pictures...)

[Tophe]

the next step, Re 4001 of 1940

Then, the Re 2005 Bifusoliera of 1942-43, with 2 drawings in my book "Fantômes Fourchus", then... a Re 4005, different, with 2 cockpits and 2 tails, rather distant fuselages, 4 main landing gears.
Trying to present her, I have found the unexpected Re 4006, thanks to http://www.chrisbuz.dial.pipex.com/italy-r...-ra/re2006.html ... A Re 2005 twinned with a longer Re 2006, weird couple of 1945.

[Tophe]

While the Re2005 bifusoliera was beautiful, the G-55 bifusoliera (G-58) was pretty too... In the what-if World, her cousin is the G-555 below (thanks to http://www.luftwaffe-experten.co.uk/mirog55.html )

[Gary]

Hey, that's cool.
Its totally unrelated but for some reason when I look at this it kinda reminds me of the Princess Mayo thingy. (I likely have the name messed up) It would be interesting to take a large twin boomer and use it as a lifter for a smaller courier/mail plane. Sorta like Spaceship One.

[Tophe]

it kinda reminds me of the Princess Mayo thingy

I have tried to understand, willing to smile... and failed . It seems 'thingy' means 'something-unusual' or 'thingummy', no?

[Tophe]

A detail of the Re 4001 for Mrs. Howling Mouse : converging wheels do not mean 'accident soon, breaking the couple' , it means 'love, wanting to be closer and closer, the twins wanting to hold each others in their arms/wings, tenderly'.