What are cowl flaps?

For a minute I thought you were talking about the one that was ditched in
Elliot Bay in 2002, which was because they ran out of gas... They
relied/trusted the fuel gauges and didn't check the tanks, whi.ch were wrong
and they didn't have very much fuel. They later on fished that one out of
Elliot Bay and restored it, again.

But, I read the posting and sawa "In the 50's..." :-)

Sadly, there are lots of planes at the bottom of Elliot Bay and Lake
Washington.

"karl gruber" wrote in message
...
Some airplanes WILL NOT FLY with cowl flaps fully open. In the 50's there
was a Boeing Stratocruiser that took off from Boeing Field, Seattle. They
forgot to close the cowl flaps from ground to climb and ended up ditching
straight ahead in Elliot Bay, where the plane rests today.

http://www.ovi.ch/b377/articles/lady/

Karl



"John Gaquin" wrote in message
. ..

"Jon Kraus" wrote in message newsBm%g.17816

5 or 10 knots? What are they freakn' barn doors or something? :-) Sure
your not fibbing?

Sometimes cowl flaps can really disrupt airflow. On the DC3, the cowl
flaps have 3 positions: open, closed, and trail (controlled, btw, by a
pair of round valve handles that look for all the world like they were
borrowed from a steam locomotive). Open,they really stick out all around
the cowling, and in trail, they are pretty much closed, but will stay
open a bit as needed. Cowl flaps are an item on the pretake-off check.
If you try to take off with them in "open", it will set up a hell of a
buffet.