Really strange. Why would you do this???

[UA-RESURRECTED]

A piston engine, wherein the crankshaft mounted in a fixed position, and the entire engine assembly rotates around it!!!

 

[JimNtexas]

A lot of the first airplanes were that way, many of the WWI fighters had rotary engines. No throttle either, just ignition on or off.

 

[Tailwheelman]

There are a couple of reasons. Early aircraft engines had a bad overheating problem. Water cooling was a solution but it added a lot of weight to the aircraft which was undesirable because of the low horsepower they already produced. However with the cylinders always in motion this was a effective way of air cooling the engine. Next was weight, since the crank is fixed with the engine rotating around it there are no internal moving parts except the pistons. This made balancing easy with no need for a heavy counterbalance on the crank or a flywheel. This gave the rotary the highest thrust to weight ratio of all the early aircraft engines.
The rotaty went the way of the Dodo because there was nowhere to go with the engine. To make it more powerful it would have to be larger or have two rows of cylinders. Since they still ran hot the back row of cylinders would cook plus they would make the engine heavier. With a large piece of metal spinning in the front of the aircraft at 1200-1500 rpm it is easy to see that some undesirable gyroscopic forces would be created so making the engine heavier and more powerful would only compound the problem. Furthermore they went through oil like it was going out of style. Mainly because the engine would sling oil all over the place. Sine the engines were lubricated with castor oil ( a natural laxative) after a couple of hours in the air the oil-soaked pilots would land with a bad case of the squirts. True story.

 

[avbug]

Rotary engines also had hellacious torque issues.

 

[MauleSkinner]

Watch "The Great Waldo Pepper". When they're getting ready for the last dogfight scene, there's some really good footage of rotary engines in ground operation.
Fly safe!

David

 

[Gatorman]

Though the rotary engine of aviation are a thing of old and yet another marvel of aviation....

....try wrapping your brain around the Mazda Rotary engine.
http://www.media.mazda.com/news_release/management_info/2003/0604_e.html

 

[:-)]

It's been a long time since I even looked at the theory of recips, but I seem to remember that the first generation rotary aviation engines were single valve (exhaust only) engines. They worked somewhat like a two stroke for induction. That is, the fuel/air mixture passed through the crankcase on its way to the cylinders. It got into the cylinder via a port at the base of the cylinder when the piston was down. This allowed for a light simple valve operation, but didn't allow for a throttle. These engines ran at either full speed or no speed, which is why you hear them cutting out on approach (at Rhinebeck or the movies), they couldn't throttle back so they just cut spark and coasted for a few seconds.

 

[:-)]

Here, I found something for you.

http://www.aviation-history.com/amh/1918amh.htm

http://www.keveney.com/gnome.html

velly intelesting

 

[EagleRJ]

Some of those early rotary engines also had a total-loss oil system, meaning the oil was pumped to the parts that needed lubrication and then sprayed overboard. Castor oil was used, and the pilot usually wound up swallowing some of it during the flight. For that reason, pilots never had to worry about regularity when they were on a tour!
That's also the reason for the long silk scarf. You needed to be able to wipe your goggles regularly to be able to see where you were going.

 

[Gorilla]

Those WW1 boys had titanium nads. Flimsy flammable airplanes, weird engines with no throttles, and most of all, NO PARACHUTE. There were many cases where some poor schlub leaped from his burning biplane to avoid the flames.

If you look at photos of the famous aces early in their careers, they looked like rosy-cheeked teenagers. Another photo taken 18 months later shows a gaunt, haunted, cadaverous old man.