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Originally Posted by FG28_Kodiak
Have found this table for the Allison V-1710 Models 'E' and 'F' (from Allison Service School Handbook ALD-SSH-5) I know its not a Merlin
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That's very useful. It also confirms what most people have been saying, that the temperature of the exhaust gas and the subsequent colour is a consequence of a variety of factors that can affect fuel burn. High or low power, mixture settings, etc, all seem to play a role.
The most interesting part in the picture you posted is the possibility to diagnose problems or verify the correct operation of the engine.
For example, leaning the mixture. In today's general aviation piston engined aircraft, leaning is usually done by moving the mixture lever back until you see the EGT (exhaust gas temperature) gauge reach a peak, if you lean any further it will start dropping again. So, for example let's say the peak EGT occurs with the mixture lever at the 75% forward position. If you move it forward/backward from that position the EGT will drop. What the pilots do is start leaning and watch for the reversal in the needle (watching it rise, then drop again from over-leaning), at which point they enrich it a bit to get it back to peak EGT.
Then, they enrich a bit further until the EGT drops a set number of degrees, which is usually specified in the aircraft manual. This is usually stated like this: "lean mixture as follows: for best cruise enrich to 50 degrees below peak EGT, for best economy enrich to 30 degrees below peak EGT". Peak EGT is not a constant but that doesn't bother us. For example, if running 75% power the EGT on the whole (which includes the peak value) will be higher than what we would get if running at 60% power, but all we care about is "catching" the highest temp on the gauge and enriching a set number of degrees from that, not what the highest temp actually is.
So, why do we care? Because i think most aircraft in WWII didn't have an EGT gauge, but the picture you posted showed the same method being possible to use by watching the exhaust stacks.
Lean mixture on the allison gives a blue flame, rich mixture gives a red flame near the stack and a blue flame further away but it says the blue flame moves closer to the stack as the mixture is corrected. Finally, the correct mixture has the blue flame near the stack and the red flame behind the blue one.
So, one could theoretically lean the mixture until he sees too much of a blue flame that signifies the peak EGT (the higher temperature of exhaust gas, which gives off the blue glow). Then, they would have to enrich it a bit as described before, judging when to stop by the appearance of red flame behind the blue one, but not going as far as having the flames reversed (blue after red) because that would signify an overly rich mixture.
Excellent stuff!