Fokker D.VIII in Flight

Footage Provided by Christopher Ford.
GoPro footage of Brian Coughlin's Gnome rotary-powered Fokker D.VIII in flight over New York's Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in 2015. Learn more by visiting: aerodynamicmedia.com/fokker-d8...

[@TheAlice1865]

This is one of My favorite WW1 planes. I had a chance to see it fly at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome a couple of years ago.

[@yfelwulf]

Reminds me I must mow the lawn!

[@pxc2k]

This shows us how little lawn mowers have evolved :(

[@cuhurun]

Got to admit I love the heraldry type patterns and colours on these old machines.

[@AK0tA]

awesome footage, great to see this stuff.

[@marthakrumboltz2710]

Almost seems to fly like a cub with a temperamental engine. Nice shots. Great work!

[@marthakrumboltz2710]

What’s the TBO on a rotary like this Gnome or say a Le Rhone?

[@robertscrocca3324]

can smell the castor oil all the way here lol

[@Forge_n_Brush]

Excellent video! Thanks for that.

[@mitchellminer9597]

Beautiful

[@sachakahn2052]

The 'Flying Razor', the last plane to score an aerial victory in WW I :-)

[@ziggy2shus624]

Great video!!!!!!!!!

[@leftcoaster67]

Stachel....lets see some real flying......

[@richardknott2021]

Wish I was flying it..beautiful.

[@375GTB]

AMAZING to this old buff!

[@dangerousdon7750]

nice camera angle!

[@brucefelger4015]

total loss oil system, basically 9 two cycle cylinders. the throttle only cuts out a certain number of cylinders as apposed to thee blip switch on the stick.

[@VintageTechFan]

It's four stroke, but with holes in the bottom .. weird system they did because they didn't really understand valve overlap yet. Also it skips cylinders, not switches them off. So if the normal ignition sequence is 1-3-5-7-9-2-4-6-8-1-3-5-7-9-2-4-6-8 it's 1-x-5-x-9-x-4-x-8-x-3-x-7-x-2-x-6-x at half throttle. All cylinders are still used, just not every revolution.

[@dentidens7834]

great plane

[@bitemykrank1970]

Was that James Bigglesworth holding onto the tail while filming ??

[@tylersimmons2588]

My favorite plane to fly in VR

[@davestambaugh7282]

No throttle to speak of just a kill button.

[@kirkglundal4289]

Will the Gnome rotary keep windmilling if the ignition is killed? I mean, can you get her started again if dead stick?

[@xpump876]

wow - one can smell that castor oil .. throttle is just blipped on/off - this was/is a beautiful airplane !!!

[@billcawthorne3114]

Something is amiss in the rigging. Constant negative elevator in cruise is either tail heavy or out of rig.

[@onemoremisfit]

They brought their old cars, ambulances and everything.

[@MrEnvirocat]

Is there a reason the pilot was constantly jazzing the throttle? Is this the blip button I read/hear about on ROF?

[@aerodynamicmedia]

The 160 Gnome rotary engine on this machine has no real carburetor and no conventional throttle. It has a fuel metering valve and dual ignition with one magneto fed through a selector switch that allows the engine to run on different power settings, such as full, half, low or off. It is this manual control of the engine's power that produces the sounds you refer to.

[@DavidRamirez-ww5kv]

Great video but I don’t know. Look at the stability of the wing. I would be hesitant to fly it.

[@johnbuffum700]

Hey! This has a radial engine! The D8 mostly had rotary engines. (Wikipedia)

[@aerodynamicmedia]

This particular aircraft has a 160 hp Gnome rotary engine.

[@mikecrane6096]

What kind of engine is that? It sounds like a 2 cycle R/C nitro engine

[@aerodynamicmedia]

Original 160 hp Gnome rotary

[@nightlightabcd]

Amazing! The link takes me to a "oops", none existent web site to a link to a airplane sales web site. Interesting! Is this a restoration or a recreation? Does it have a original engine? Nice work! Very impressive and I bet a real thrill to fly! I guess that is one heck of a conversation piece!!

[@aerodynamicmedia]

This aircraft is a reproduction powered with an original Gnome rotary engine. Sorry about the link issue. The associated post on our site was offline for a bit and redirected to our 404 page/main site. It should now be working again.

[@LeftyS7]

Just occurred to me after all these years. Why was it D why wasn't it E?

[@Deputybull]

That is a good question, that got me looking some. If you look at the registry on the side of the fuselage it is not D VIII but E V. I got to looking in Bing images and it has it listed as both as well. I don't know if they count the airfoil between the landing gear as a wing, but I am sure it supplies little bit of lift so that may make it a "D" I have looked at some pics of the older EIII and they don't have that airfoil on the gear.

[@Deputybull]

Also did some reading on the E. V Wikipedia page and around the time the E. V was introduced the Idflieg did away with the E and Dr prefix and all fighters were given the D prefix, so after it was issued to front line service it switched from E. V to D. VIII.

[@user-ot1gv1he8i]

2 stroke motor?

[@danielburgess7785]

Rotary powered.

[@Bayan1905]

It's a Le Rhone rotary, just saw this plane at the Aerodrome last weekend. It's either full on or full off, and it runs on castor oil, not regular motor oil, has a different smell when you're around it. But what a plane.

[@mikedunn7795]

Wonder if the pilot in this reproduction wore a chute? They weren't issued back in the day,especially early in the war.

[@Rudi-Mhz]

A great Plane ....but i am sorry....the poor engine! More Cutoff than full throttle is no good for the valves and the Cleaning of the Pistons. But the Castor Oil does it!

[@larisar3881]

What up with that motor is it from 1914 sound like junk.