Flying a Century Old Tri-Motor | Behind the Wings 

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

@@PistonAvatarGuy thanks!