DC-3 first flight - December 17, 1935, exactly 32 years after the Wright Brothers.blueldr wrote:If you haven't seen a DC-3 with a venturi, it's just because you didn't start looking at DC-3s soon enough. They started around 1935, you know.
Most people have never seen one with other than a Hydromatic full feathering prop either, but they didn't start out that way.
The venturi was mounted behind the cockpit, only half of it exposed outside the skin.
Electric fuel pumps - the original DC-3 didn't have them up to the C-47A of 1942. You had a wobble pump, selectable to either engine to build up fuel pressure for start, then the engine-driven pump took over. If an engine-driven pump failed in flight, you could open the cross-feed to supply fuel pressure to both engines. With the conversion to electric pumps, nearly all the cross-feed systems were removed, but the Piedmont Airlines DC-3 I used to fly to airshows still had it installed.
It was a total mystery to me until I read a reprint of the C-47A pilot's handbook in Len Morgan's DC-3 book. Russ Farris