20 October 2015
The beautiful Bugatti 100P is back in the air! It made its second flight on 17 October, completing a complete circuit at Clinton-Sherman Airport, Oklahoma, USA where the project is based. This follows an accident after the aircraft’s first flight in Ausgust when the 100P replica had a brake failure on roll-out after landing and up-ended.
The repairs included new wooden propellers from British company Hercules Propellers, this time to a revised design to make better use of the torque characteristics of the 100P’s Suzuki Hayabusa engine.
“This time the flight was flawless and the airplane performed perfectly,” said Scott Wilson, leader and founder of the 100P Project which is seeking to create a replica of the aircraft designed by motoring genius Ettore Bugatti in the late 1930s/ early40s.
Scott paid tribute to his team on the project’s Facebook page which is their preferred way of distributing news.
“We recently received and installed our two new propellers from Rupert Wasey at Hercules Propellers. If you’ve been following our progress you already know about Rupert’s reputation for professionalism, craftsmanship, and responsiveness. The propellers are beautiful.
“Behind the scenes is Jan Carlsson at JC Propeller Design, who was quick with a redesign of the propellers to take advantage of the Hayabusa’s torque and horsepower characteristics. The 100P’s contra-rotating propellers require an understanding of propeller theory not normally available to regular folks like us, and we’re indebted to Jan for his help.
“Mike Cavanagh – our stability and control expert – has gone the extra mile and also provides performance predictions based upon Jan’s design. The blue tape on the front propeller indicates the location from which we’ve measured airfoil profiles and prop pitch. Mike uses that data to estimate single and twin-engine performance, climb rates, speed, etc.”
