www.brantly.info

Hey Fellas,

I was plundering on my hard drive and found this drawing. I haven't been able to find it for a long time. It may help someone.

I do not see a need for any one to go buy this drawing.things like this steer people wrong way if they do not understand it... plus it also to me makes no sense... the assembly manual and parts manual has worked fine..

9121u wrote:I do not see a need for any one to go by this drawing. Things like this steer people wrong way if they do not understand it... plus it also to me makes no sense... the assembly manual and parts manual has worked fine..

Then don't look.

Bryan I like your drawings. They show a different perspective of the parts and can be quite helpful. You can never have too much good information when you're working on something. Lots of great info on here by a lot of owners and former owners. I wish we could get even more to post up their experiences on here!

The real value in, and the reason I did this specific drawing, was to understand how to properly set the friction onto the sphere. The bronze/oilite bushings were impregnated with their own lube. You were never suppose to grease the sphere, and it's free operation without slop depended on very accurate setup.

I remember putting new inner (cyclic tilt) and outer (collective sliders up and down outer mast sleeve) bronze bushings in, and it took dozens of attempts to get this friction correct. I forget how many of the AN-3 bolts surround the sphere but there were several and they needed torqued to spec and at that same instant, create the correct amount of sphere friction. The big threaded ring with the spanner notches had to be minutely adjusted and then all of the AN-3 bolts torqued.

I also wanted to see how grease into the Y96-PWI-1 ?? bearing sandwich and got where it needed to go. This drawing was valuable to me for those reasons. I replaced the Y96-PWI-1 bearings with new ones. The factory had none and mine had a little pitting in the races that caused them to be condemned when I sen them out for rebuilding. (They now reside in my little girl's merry-go-round I built for her) The new ones came from a Bell-47 supply house (47's have the same bearings in their swashplate). The only problem was the only set available didn't have the little 1/16" deep machined trough in the outer races. The bearings get installed with the upper and lower troughs facing each other, and right at the grease zerk, so grease has a path into the sandwich.

I had to duplicate those troughs in my new pair of $975 bearings.

Bryan,

Just a personal note to let you know I think you are the best thing that this site has going for it. Always informative and detailed which few others have the willingness or knowledge to share. Please continue contributing even though there is nothing in it for you other than helping others who still have Brantlys. We all owe you a debt of gratitude and Thanks! MarkMcDaniel, Indiana, former(wrecked)Brantly owner

Bryan,
Very good explanation of the sphere and bushings! Also valuable to know the bearings are common to the Bell 47! I bet your daughter has spun a lot of revolutions on her Brantly merry go round!

Mark,
I looked at your old posts but you don't give a hint as to what happened to your Brantly? How about telling us your experience with it? We're all ears! How long did you own it and how many hours did you put on it?

It is not my favorite subject but I will briefly describe. Own a 2001 brantly for 1.5 years, put 100 hrs on it in 1 year, loved it. Finally found a dpe in Illinois. Feeling completely comfortable and confident in operating my Brantly I was practicing 180 autos at full weight and density altitude the day before exam. Pulled out of auto to low, skids were in the 3.5 foot high beautiful field of soybeans, I didn't realize one skid was building up a beach ball size of bean vines while the other side was clean, you know what happened next. As I tried to climb out of the auto I immediately preformed a dynamic rollover. I learned my lesson Don't preform autos above anything other than mowed grass or asphalt. If I would have been above sod I would have just kept on flying. This happened in August 2009. I am sure I posted a description before on here to warn all others to not make the mistake I did but I cannot find it on here either, so here it is again.

seneca2e wrote:...I bet your daughter has spun a lot of revolutions on her Brantly merry go round!...

Thanks for the kind word fellas.

5 year old picture.




More recent

Mark,
I'm sure you did as well as I think I remember that story. Couldn't find it like you said. At any rate the big ball of soybeans is further explanation than I remember as I can see how that could do it. Before I just was having trouble envisioning a slight snag of a soybean sprout leading to such a bad outcome. Your misfortune might well save someone else from a similiar fate and I appreciate you sharing it. I know one of the old posts on here from Steve Chenoweth led me to go the extra mile and thoroughly check my vent line from the header tank outward even though a routine preflight showed it to be clean. It was stopped up several feet in from the clean opening to the outside! That probably saved me a serious issue. Hope you decide to buy another one at some point as you have a good number of hours and experience in the type.

Bryan,
Looks like she is really enjoying the Brantly merry go round!