Anybody Ever Seen One of These?

Wear have you checked?

Have you contacted the manufacturer?

Is this homework?

Have you checked wiki?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britten-Norman_Trislander

Does not appear that they are making this one anymore. Had a top speed of 167MPH and had a few crash.

Here's a slew of pics....

http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?aircraft_genericsearch=Britten-Norman%20BN-2A%20Mk3%20Trislander&aircraftsearch=

http://www.bnhistorians.co.uk/

From looking at this picture, I would worry about forward / aft balance. It looks precarious with that much fore and aft of the wings.

Drew K

Yes, I have actually seen one of these up close at a New Zealand airport.

I did a bit of a double take and spent a while observing it, it seemed to have quite a high cargo to passenger ratio which I guess makes sense as the one I saw was going to a small island and a lot of the cargo was consumer products and food.

Does the third, center propeller really help the plane fly that well / more efficiently? I have no knowledge of aviation, but I'm incredibly curious as to what the function is to it (besides looking uniquely goofy).

Well, the wing looks like it's set back pretty far along the fuselage making the plane nose-heavy, so some weight would be needed near the tail to help make it airworthy.

In pre-flighting these, it is important to check that most pieces of the engines are there.

This picture, from the flight manual, shows an engine with not quite enough pieces.

I'd think that these would be an incredible handful on only one wing engine, probably incapable of sustaining altitude, and darn hard to keep straight. On the center engine alone, it would be much easier to drive it to the crash site.

No oil pressure?

I have had that much oil and then some on an old DC-3 I use to fly. It did not let go of many of its parts but it sure did vibrate till the fire started. That's when I shut her down and pushed the nose over to blow out the fire. Oh that was the good old days.

Never flew one of these but everyone I spoke to said it was a nice aircraft to fly. Just a little thirsty.

Not only seen them but flew in one in the Cayman Islands. The Trislander was a development of the Islander, which had the more conventional 2-engine layout.

There have been plenty of other 3-engined airliners over the years - Junkers-52, Ford Trimotor, Boeing 727, de Havilland Trident, Lockheed Tristar, McDonnel Douglas DC-10, etc., but have to admit the Trislander is the most ungainly looking of them all.

Well put!!!

These planes are designed to start and land from tiny runways, the extra engine probably being there to improve this talent......its also a good extra safety point in the event of an engine cutting out at some point. They have been built since 1970, its a pretty well known design....

3 engine planes have been around since almost the dawn of aviation, so the technology is pretty well understood.

Anyone here who is silly enough to make incorrect amateur comments here about weight and balance problems is really showing their ignorance of anything technical......not only do the engineers know how to design correctly for such layouts, but the CAA/FAA and similar organisations will check every rivet and flight characteristics before giving a certificate.......

There are even large passenger aircraft with a third (often Jet) engine in the tail, many of us have even flown in them......myself included.

You can read about this particular aircraft here:-

Britten-Norman Trislander

I found some other interesting links for Trimotor aircraft, both jet and piston, there are many of them around. Some of the later ones are often the answer to the FAA's "60 minute rule" for two engined aircraft. See here:-

Trijet

and

Trimotor

Some of which had the third engine in the front, but most modern aircraft had it in the tail.....

Don't fly in the red one.....

"Let's all get Stoned and Design an Aircraft" ... Finalist Contender

Lyn, It will fly all the way to the crash site on #2...

Net Results of CR4 Forum's policy of not helping with "School Work" assignments.

"My senior engineering project is to make something funny looking that flies. Please help."

Next time this question shows up, we won't be so quick to dismiss it.