• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Another Hughes Racer Question

E

Eoraptor1

SOH-CM-2022
Does anyone know the critical altitude for the (long-winged) H-1 Racer Howard Hughes flew to set his record transcontinental flight? I'm having trouble finding a definitive answer online. I've seen numbers from 5000 ft to nearly 30,000. It's confusing. 5000 seems very low for a flight where Hughes would have to fly over mountains and above weather, but 30,000 seems more an end-of-WWII number. I would appreciate any and all help on this subject. Many thanks in advance.

JAMES
 
I would assume it would be 12k or less since he did not have oxygen. If memory serves his route was south of the Rocky Mountains
I would lean more towards the 5000 number
 
Bjoern said:
The NY Times has a pretty detailed article on his feat: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0119.html?mcubz=0

It says cruising altitude was mostly 14000 ft.

"Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness" (excerpts on Google Books) says that initial altitude was 15000, then 20000. After his oxygen mask malfunction, he probably dove to 14000 ft, as stated in the Times, and raced eastward at that altitude.
Click to expand...

You see, this is why I have trouble believing a 5000ft critical altitude. Hughes was doing an average of 322 mph at altitudes between 14000 and 19000 feet. Thank you for the post.

JAMES
 
Eoraptor1 said:
You see, this is why I have trouble believing a 5000ft critical altitude. Hughes was doing an average of 322 mph at altitudes between 14000 and 19000 feet. Thank you for the post.
Click to expand...

You're welcome. The effort paid off for me as well. Some interesting pieces of information out there.
 
Bjoern said:
You're welcome. The effort paid off for me as well. Some interesting pieces of information out there.
Click to expand...

Just for the edification of the Sim-Outhouse family, the .pdf Users Manual for the Aerosoft H-1B (which you can download from aerosoft.com) places the maximum altitude for the long-winged racer at 29,700 ft. I don't own this product so I haven't had a look at the airfile's critical altitude. As a practical matter, I can't see anyone getting to half this altitude without a more reliable oxygen system than Hughes was using on his transcontinental flight, but this is the number Aerosoft gives. Thank you again for the link. It answers many of my questions.

JAMES
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top