Looking for Murphy Moose

[md11freighter]

Just started looking for a moose. If someone knows of one flying, neglected, or forgotten project let me know!

Thanks,
Brett
5038601188

[Colorado-Cub]

PM me for the contact information Ted Waltman, the premier Moose guy in the Colorado area. He may have some leads for you from his travels to the Great White North or doing pre-buys around the country.

[hotrod180]

...... if a floatplane that will haul everything and the kitchen sink it's the right airplane. But if wheels and short-field performance marginal at best - main gear and the tail stinger needs beefing up and the short field performance never lived up to claims.......

I guess I'm curious why it's a great float plane but just marginal on wheels?
I would think quick off the water would equate to short takeoff on land...
but I have absolutely zero float time so what do I know?

[flynlow]

I know of two never completed in western Ks
I can give you contact number if you like.


Sent from my iPhone using SuperCub.Org

[OldCuby]

There is this Murphy Moose nearby that I understand is not completed but sits stored in this hangar on a private strip. The owner has moved on and last I talked to the hanger owner, the Moose owner has been gone for some years! This is a picture I took 5 years ago. ⁸
If I can get ahold of my hangar friend, and it's OK by him, I can give anyone who is interested his contact.
Jim

[hotrod180]

..... On wheels the main original unmodified gear legs and attach structure was inadequate......

Never got to look close at the gear on a Moose,
but I did check out the gear on a 320-powered Rebel once.
Appeared to be aluminum tubing & angles, pop riveted together.
Looked like it was scrounged from a lawn chair factory.
Very cheesy & inadequate looking.
Of course, being a homebuilt,
I have no idea if that gear was built per Murphy instructions,
or was just cobbled together by the builder.

[OldCuby]

I flew into this private strip today and got to talk with the hangar owner about the stored Murphy Moose. I was very wrong in the above post. That Moose was built in Alaska and flown to Tennessee and later flew into this uncharted strip named Cedar Meadows about 10 years ago and stored there since. It has about 300 hours flight time. Again, just PM me and I can put you in touch with the hangar owner for further details of the plane and it's owner, now in Hawaii.
Jim

[Farmboy]

Never got to look close at the gear on a Moose,
but I did check out the gear on a 320-powered Rebel once.
Appeared to be aluminum tubing & angles, pop riveted together.
Looked like it was scrounged from a lawn chair factory.
Very cheesy & inadequate looking.
Of course, being a homebuilt,
I have no idea if that gear was built per Murphy instructions,
or was just cobbled together by the builder.

Based on the Moose I know about, the build quality isn't the issue, but that will vary between builders anyhow. The rebel and the moose appear to be sufficiently different...

And pilots. Best way to ruin an airplane is let a pilot fly it, based on this Rebel video.

Skip everything up until the 3:30 mark.

[skywagon8a]

Now that has two issues. First the flattish bottomed floats are not good with water impact loads. Second, The structure holding the engine on appears a bit marginal, perhaps the extra impact loads from the flat bottomed floats was just a bit too much? It didn't seem to take much impact to tear off the engine. A lot of seaplanes have taken a lot more abuse than shown here without coming apart.

[larrym]

Ref the video.... here is the designer's response to the crash.


Re: Floatplane engine falling off


Post by DirectFromTheFactory » Sun Jan 06, 2019 12:08 am I watched the video and read some of the comments. One comment stated the aircraft had a larger engine installed and the factory told him not put it in. Another says it has a lyc 320 and the company accepts that. If the aircraft does have a 320 we have no problem with that.


The aircraft is clearly in a stall. I say this for three reasons. 1. When the aircraft clears the trees the elevator is up and yet the aircraft is still falling like a rock. 2. Just before the aircraft hits the water the nose dips down quickly. And 3. The angle of attack of the wings to the direction of flight obviously is exceeding the stalling angle of the airfoil.


The Rebel with out flaps will stall in the mid 40's. If conservatively we say the aircraft is descending at 40 mph at a descent angle of 30 degrees then the vertical descent rate is 20 mph or 29.3 ft/sec. Damage is inevitable.


The design vertical descent rates for landing of a light aircraft to meet Certification standards must be greater than 7 fps but need not be greater than 10 fps. The actual value for an aircraft is determined by its wing loading. For intermediate values the formula in feet per second is: -------------0.25 V=4.4(W/S)


Where V=feet per second W=gross weight of the aircraft (Rebel on Floats =1730 lbs) S=wing area (Rebel 150 sq ft)


To certify the Rebel we would have to meet the maximum requirement of 8.1 ft per sec during a landing.

This aircraft exceeded a certified design rate by almost four times. As I said above damage was inevitable. Some of the commentators have said they have landed aircraft a number of times harder than the aircraft in the Video. I find this highly unlikely. A 10 fps descend rate upon landing is an extremely hard landing and very few normal aircraft would survive without some damage. At 29.3 fps I am amazed the damage was not greater.


Darryl

[Farmboy]

Ref the video.... here is the designer's response to the crash.


Re: Floatplane engine falling off


Post by DirectFromTheFactory » Sun Jan 06, 2019 12:08 am I watched the video and read some of the comments. One comment stated the aircraft had a larger engine installed and the factory told him not put it in. Another says it has a lyc 320 and the company accepts that. If the aircraft does have a 320 we have no problem with that.


The aircraft is clearly in a stall. I say this for three reasons. 1. When the aircraft clears the trees the elevator is up and yet the aircraft is still falling like a rock. 2. Just before the aircraft hits the water the nose dips down quickly. And 3. The angle of attack of the wings to the direction of flight obviously is exceeding the stalling angle of the airfoil.


The Rebel with out flaps will stall in the mid 40's. If conservatively we say the aircraft is descending at 40 mph at a descent angle of 30 degrees then the vertical descent rate is 20 mph or 29.3 ft/sec. Damage is inevitable.


The design vertical descent rates for landing of a light aircraft to meet Certification standards must be greater than 7 fps but need not be greater than 10 fps. The actual value for an aircraft is determined by its wing loading. For intermediate values the formula in feet per second is: -------------0.25 V=4.4(W/S)


Where V=feet per second W=gross weight of the aircraft (Rebel on Floats =1730 lbs) S=wing area (Rebel 150 sq ft)


To certify the Rebel we would have to meet the maximum requirement of 8.1 ft per sec during a landing.

This aircraft exceeded a certified design rate by almost four times. As I said above damage was inevitable. Some of the commentators have said they have landed aircraft a number of times harder than the aircraft in the Video. I find this highly unlikely. A 10 fps descend rate upon landing is an extremely hard landing and very few normal aircraft would survive without some damage. At 29.3 fps I am amazed the damage was not greater.


Darryl

All good points, if the assumption is correct, based on 5 seconds of video.

You can drop an anvil if you drop it high enough, a plane, much easier.

Perhaps a titled engineer can provide better info but a plane that stalls at 40 mph forward speed isn’t descending vertically at 40 mph, right?
Nope I’m mixing things but Without wings 32ft/sec/sec is a normal acceleration to use until terminal velocity. With wings may suggest much lower than 29ft/sec?
I’m probably wrong on this math.
But I would hope the struts or gear bends before the engine mount rips off.

Pb


Transmitted from my FlightPhone on fingers…

[Scott A]

Added my fwiw response inside in blue.

All good points, if the assumption is correct, based on 5 seconds of video.

You can drop an anvil if you drop it high enough, a plane, much easier.

Perhaps a titled engineer can provide better info but a plane that stalls at 40 mph forward speed isn’t descending vertically at 40 mph, right? Correct it is descending vertically at 20 MPH or 29.335 FPS

Nope I’m mixing things but Without wings 32ft/sec/sec is a normal acceleration to use until terminal velocity.

With wings may suggest much lower than 29ft/sec? I think the math is correct, an object moving 40 MPH at a 30 angle would be moving 20 MPH vertical regardless of what it is. Right triangle math, Sin of angle times the hypotonus equals the opposite right?. Sin of 30 is .5 , .5 times 40 MPH = the 20 MPH. So it had to have moved vertically the 29 feet in 1 second, assuming of course it was in a steady state angle at the stated speeds.

I’m probably wrong on this math.

But I would hope the struts or gear bends before the engine mount rips off. I'm with you, seems that should be one of the stronger points.

Pb


Transmitted from my FlightPhone on fingers…

[DENNY]

Plane does not look stalled to me but once again the definition of stall seems to be a moving target in most discussions. The AOA of the wing does not look that bad either. The hard landing was a result of poor energy management. It looked like he was too high on final and tried to loose altitude by pulling power to hit his spot in front of the onlookers, or he may be a power off landing guy kind of sounds that way on the touch and go. the key is once he got slowed down with the fast decent he had no energy reserve left for the flare to arrest he's decent. Anyone that has flown a pacer knows the feeling. Tried to correct with power but way too late. So was the motor falling off, the plane, pilot, or builder issue. We would need Paul Harvey with the rest of the story to really know. What is with the no flap landing anyway?
DENNY

[BC12D-4-85]

Pilot should watch this again and again then work on technique. Get tuned up by a good instructor with a bad stink eye for poor performance.

Gary

[kestrel]

Slow? Yes
Stalled? No
30 degree descent? No

That was more than just a bounce after the first "touch down". It was flying again. That engine should not have come off. There is no chance it would have come off a Cessna or Cub.

[tedwaltman1]

Curiously interesting how a thread seeking a Murphy Moose morphs into a discussion on a float equipped Murphy Rebel landing accident and subsequently the Murphy Rebel’s design….

All good info, especially the engineering aspects. I had heard of the Rebel accident but not of the factory analysis. Thank you all for the follow up posts.

[kestrel]

I might add that though my post above is critical of the Murphy analysis, it wasn't intended to be critical of the design because I don't know how that particular airframe may have been different from the factory design or how it had been maintained.

[aktango58]

Based on the Moose I know about, the build quality isn't the issue, but that will vary between builders anyhow. The rebel and the moose appear to be sufficiently different...

And pilots. Best way to ruin an airplane is let a pilot fly it, based on this Rebel video.

Skip everything up until the 3:30 mark.

Water has close to the same ability to break airplanes as trees.

This video is an absolute perfect training video on what not to do. Not sure a Beaver would have survived that poor handling.