Weight & Balance

Weight and balance are important things for all of us to keep an eye on in the universal, all-encompassing, meaning of life sort of philosophical zeitgeist sort of thing.

In a more direct, calculated, numerical viewpoint, they’re also pretty critical when flying an aircraft. Too heavy, the wings can snap off. If the center of gravity is too far forward, the plane will never climb and will nose over and dive into the ground. Too far back, and the nose will go high until you stall, at which point you can have a similarly “bad day.’

Removing a very large, heavy item from the front of an aircraft (i.e., the engine off of a Spitfire fighter) will seriously screw with your weight and balance. Good thing that no one’s flying the plane without an engine, huh?

It ’tis a thing of beauty and it will pull that high-performance fighter through the air like a bat out of hell.  2,000+ horsepower on a V-12 engine will do that.

Oh, by the way, last night I mistakenly referred to this as a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. It’s not. (But the one in the P-51 is…) While obviously a Rolls-Royce, this is a Griffon 65 engine. (Good thing no one actually reads anything that I write, eh?)

At the moment however, this one needs to be sent off for a complete tear-down and possible repairs. That will set us back well into five figures (please, let it not be six!) but we’re all about safety.

Now I’ll see if I’ve got enough balance to take my overweight butt into bed! Monday awaits…