Flying a Century Old Tri-Motor | Behind the Wings

[@Wings_Museum]

Thanks to Tri-Motor pilot Bill Thacker for getting us an up-close look inside and out of this influential, historic aircraft. Drop your questions and we'll get to as many as we can!

[@johnmccann4812]

I flew in this plane several years ago with EAA; payed extra to fly as co-pilot, which was a good move as the cockpit got noise cancelling headsets, while the passengers were left on their own. It was a warm day, so the cockpit windows to the side and a little behind the pilots’ heads were open. These are almost directly inline with the props for engines 1 and 3, and not very far away from the prop tips. As we were climbing, I thought I’d crack my headset and see how loud it was - holy crap! It’s right up there with shooting a .357 Magnum with no hearing protection. I am sure all Tri-Motor pilots in the day retired completely deaf. BTW, the thing seemed to fly like a Winnebago - everything happened in slow motion. Every control change Bill would make would take a second, then the plane would slowly respond. An experience I will never forget, but I would have hated to do a long trip in one.

[@CrippledEagle]

My Father flew in one of these as a young man. I had always been interested in them but had never seen one in person until April, 2024 in Albuquerque,NM. This exact aircraft is the one I was able to visit in Albuquerque and I gifted our Daughter as one of her 10th Birthday gifts, her first airplane flight and my first flight on a Ford Tri-Motor 🤗❤️😁! Our Daughter LOVED IT and I loved it too! I had hoped that she and I could have sat side by side in case she got scared, but no one would change seats with me. Anyway she ended up not being scared at all, and should we get another chance to fly it again, I’m going to make sure that we are the first ones other than the pilot and copilot to board!❤️

[@ConversationStartersVideo]

Flew aboard it several years ago in Georgia where we now live. Great memories!

[@nickthompson9697]

I flew in that plane with my grandfather at the Airventure fly in.

[@everettolenick]

Happy New Year Behind The Wings team! Here’s to a great year of exciting and informative content!

[@uhu69]

Beautiful aircraft! Thanks for this video (and all of your amazing videos).

[@BurtSampson]

Tri-motors looks so good. So good.

[@antoniocalheirosneves]

Thank you.

[@AllanBrogdon]

I rode on one at the opening ceremony to open DFW airport. Dad paid ten dollars each for us to get a ride. I remember him saying you may never get another chance to ride in one.

[@ttomkatt1]

How many cylinders did each engine have? I tried to count and I think I got 18 that the prop kind of blocked one area and I wasn't sure if it ended up being 17 or 18. Could you please clarify? Thank you. Next time I'm out in Denver I'm definitely going to plan a stop at your facility there.

[@Wings_Museum]

The Wasp Jr. R-985 are reciprocating, 9 cylinders, radial, air cooled, geared supercharger engines.

[@rajgill7576]

Its wild seeing a steering wheel in a plane

[@blurglide]

Corrugated sheet metal, a forward-swept windshield, exterior mounted control cranks and cables and unfared radial engines and wheels! The coefficient of drag on this thing must be almost as bad as my Jeep.

[@wilsonli5642]

Maybe parasitic drag isn't as big of a deal when you're just going 80 MPH?

[@blurglide]

@@wilsonli5642 Maybe they'd be going faster than that with less drag

[@blurglide]

@@wilsonli5642 Terminal velocity for a skydiver is only about 120. They're getting prettty close to that.

[@Chevdriver]

Control Cables on the outside kinda freak me out, the whole design seems strange very industrial def up there with french planes of the time

[@hadleymanmusic]

Sounds like alota work

[@lexington476]

Cool. I've always wondered about planes like this and the ju 52, why the engines? there are so many two and four engine planes but not a lot of 3 engine planes. what does three engines get you that two or four doesn't?

[@chuckthewise-one]

I read a bit deeper into the history of the Trimotor. It was originally designed for a single engine and later for two. The performance on two engines never was good enough. Henry wasn't enamored with the idea of building airplanes, so at some point the factory that built it mysteriously burned down. The rebuilt factory now built the three engine version, making it safer and more reliable and capable of doing what it was designed for.

[@jordannewsom4578]

From what I understand, the point of having three engines back in the day when these things came out was the idea that you could have an engine failure and still in pretty much most circumstances still make it to your destination and not have to divert and make an emergency landing. Remember that back in those days 4 engined aircraft where few and far between, like VERY rare. With two engines if you lose one then 9 times outta 10 the other engine isn’t going to get you all the way to your destination, you’ve got just enough power remaining in that good engine to make it safely to the nearest runway. But with three engines, losing one wouldn’t put the aircraft at enough of a power deficit to force it to have to divert, in most situations they could still plod along a bit slower to their original destination. Basically it was kind of like a selling point for the aircraft to try to get those early air carriers to buy the tri motor over the other options because it had three engines instead of two and had more reserve power to get you wear you’re going in case an engine quit.

[@RedSoo749]

if you close your eyes, bill sounds exactly like pedro pascal

[@wilsonli5642]

Whoa wait a second - Knute Rockne died in a plane crash?

Is this the plane of Indiana Jones - Temple of Doom?

[@PistonAvatarGuy]

Same model. Kermit Weeks owns the actual aircraft featured in the film.

@@PistonAvatarGuy thanks!