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Rotary engines are far more insane than radials. I don't mean those silly triangle engines, I mean the ones where you hold the crank still and spin the engine around it. http://thevintageaviator.co.nz/projects/oberursel-engine/oberursel-ur-ii-rotary-engine-build-history  
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Mar 13, 2010 03:46
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oxbrain posted:Rotary engines are far more insane than radials. I don't mean those silly triangle engines, I mean the ones where you hold the crank still and spin the engine around it. Also, they are ear-splittingly loud - and there is no throttle, it's either full on or full off - so you control your speed by 'blipping' the magnetos. Also, total loss oil system! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6PnKUEFX8g
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Mar 13, 2010 03:58
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Huh, I'd never seen a rotary aircraft engine in action outside the cowl - I knew the sound, but the motion had remained a mystery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UBAukXPD-0 Crazy... now I understand the gyroscopic forces that guy was talking about.
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Mar 13, 2010 04:33
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InitialDave posted:He was also madder than a box of frogs. He kept that thing stored, serviced and ready to fly at the drop of a hat for years, at enormous expense. He did that with several aircraft, including some that he flat-out lost and his accountants kept paying the storage fees on. There are several incidents where he flew into an airport and took another mode of transport out, and the aircraft stayed until his death. One such aircraft, his personal DC-6, is still flying out of Fairbanks for Everts Air Cargo. I believe it's the lowest-hour airworthy six in the world. Oh, and Hughes once publicly argued against an aqueduct to Las Vegas because he felt it would be detrimental to the health of residents, since they should be drinking milk instead. Tindjin posted:Yea I love that it has a longer wingspan and taller than the AN-225 and the Airbuss A380 (beats the A380 height by 4 inches!) and the whole thing is made outa wood with prop engines. I can't help but think that Airbus did that on purpose. It just seems like one of those records you'd honor for the sheer insanity of the thing. Too bad the Hercules never technically flew. Advent Horizon fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Mar 13, 2010 |
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Mar 13, 2010 05:08
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Plane question, and something I've wondered about for years: What dictates cockpit placement in fighters? Should the pilot be placed on the roll centerline of the craft? Because it seems like most fighters stick them above, for what I'm guessing is better visibility.
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Mar 13, 2010 06:22
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Hermansen posted:Also, H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose" , after googling the thing, I realized that the Evergreen Aviation and Spacemuseum must be visited before I die. It's pretty astonishing in person. They even have an SR-71 tucked under one of the wings (along with a ton of other cool aircraft). Fats fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Mar 13, 2010 |
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Mar 13, 2010 06:26
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A bit off topic bit still somewhat related it's pretty incredible how people handled the NATO bombings in the former Yugoslavia back in 1999. My grandfather who spent most of his days in a pretty rural area explained it to me the other day. They were meticulous in following a preset schedule for the bombings so everyone on the ground knew approximately where the planes were and what they were doing. My grandfather being an old school big wig communist politician knows a lot of people in his city so he was able to see some of the crazy poo poo people did. For example a bunch of college students passed the time by assembling a series of radio transistors or microwaves and setting them up in fields and stuff. I'm not sure exactly what it was but it emitted radio waves. They'd basically sit on lawn chairs on a hillside drinking beer and would turn on the contraption they built and in a very short time a rocket or bomb would blow it up. Apparently the radio waves generated created the impression that there was a SAM site or radar installation and the planes would make an attack run on it. In fact all sorts of civilian type activities like this were going on all over the countryside. The less technically inclined people were taking pipes and stuff and building fake tanks. If I recall correctly the Yugoslav forces were successful in concealing the bulk of their mechanized forces and most of the bombs only hit decoys. A lot of this was voluntary too and not coerced by the government in the slightest bit. One of the airfields in the area had the locals wheel out the planes and hide them in barns and stuff. The airfield would get bombed and cratered but apparently the farmers would gently caress with the Americans by laying out black tarp over the bombed out runways. The next day they would hit the field again and I can only imagine the pilots and intelligence officers analyzing the satellite footage wondering how dem dirty Serbian mud people managed to rebuild an airfield over night. I guess despite the NATO bombings succeeding in their objective, the general populace still felt they won a few symbolic victories like the F-117 downing or the fact that they managed to make fools out of the USAF by causing them to waste expensive bombs on fake targets. It's just interesting to see how a people can cope with what was essentially a war with an overwhelming and unstoppable force and how they found ways to make the most out of it and stay positive despite seeing parts of their home going up in flames. EDIT: Here's what the Russians think about the F-16 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHuml9pZJ5E DerDestroyer fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Mar 13, 2010 |
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Mar 13, 2010 07:20
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Phy posted:Plane question, and something I've wondered about for years: What dictates cockpit placement in fighters? Should the pilot be placed on the roll centerline of the craft? Because it seems like most fighters stick them above, for what I'm guessing is better visibility. Yep. Visibility, unimpeded ejection and of course room for all the systems and computers and poo poo.  But centerline seating, like on this X-3 Stiletto, probably has some advantages in that it's less disorientating. But fighter pilots have amazing spatial awareness, so it's no point making airframe sacrifices for it.
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Mar 13, 2010 13:10
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decahedron posted:It ain't WWII. If you're making strafing passes with your F-15, once again, you are doing it wrong. The military has aircraft and helicopters designed specifically for strafing. They use cannons. They're also slow and have good loiter time because that is important for ground attack aircraft. Strike versions of the F-15 and F-16 use guided munitions, not their twirly peashooters. There have been lots of strike aircraft making strafing runs in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 8 years. Sometimes its better to get something done now instead of waiting 30 minutes for the right weapons system to show up to the battle. Even a 500lb bomb has a huge blast area and there are situations where you can drop on a target because friendlies are too close. A well set up gun run is safer and better then nothing in those cases.
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Mar 13, 2010 23:43
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How about an F-14, a fleet defense / air superiority fighter, strafing in an urban environment? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=typFoXRW91Y From the Speed and Angels DVD which is amazing. Looks like all of it's on youtube.
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Mar 14, 2010 00:10
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Y'alls want an ex-Howard Hughes plane? I didn't even know there were any B-23's left... http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Doug...=item2a04d7422d
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Mar 14, 2010 00:18
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Postin' a link to Dos Gringos, a band composed of a couple of F-16 pilots. poo poo's hilarious.
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Mar 14, 2010 08:20
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Pretty sick vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPxk_A5YcxY&feature=related So pissed im color blind.
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Mar 14, 2010 15:29
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I've always been partial to this video. It's a couple Mirages over northern Africa flying low as hell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9T51UsuaPU
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Mar 14, 2010 19:31
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Preoptopus posted:Pretty sick vid The Thunderbird pilot swatting at debris floating in the cockpit while doing an 8 point roll is *awesome*.
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Mar 14, 2010 20:21
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OptimusMatrix posted:I've always been partial to this video. It's a couple Mirages over northern Africa flying low as hell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krC9M4OD0Dg&feature=related Jets over the desert always bring forth the dreams of being in the Air Force. I've wanted to be a pilot since I was about 3.
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Mar 14, 2010 20:54
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OptimusMatrix posted:I've always been partial to this video. It's a couple Mirages over northern Africa flying low as hell. There's something with the French and low level flight Puma weaving in and out of traffic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cFAm81wEw KC-135 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OowzP5280mQ
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Mar 14, 2010 22:12
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More James May stuff. This one makes him officially the luckiest man on earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6cZLfK4Zjk
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Mar 14, 2010 22:23
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blambert posted:More James May stuff. This one makes him officially the luckiest man on earth. Un-loving-real. 
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Mar 14, 2010 22:36
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It's the best bit of TV I've seen in ages. Start with this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvExCo43aq0
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Mar 14, 2010 22:51
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galliumscan posted:The Thunderbird pilot swatting at debris floating in the cockpit while doing an 8 point roll is *awesome*.
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Mar 14, 2010 23:05
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blambert posted:More James May stuff. This one makes him officially the luckiest man on earth. posted it already but no one noticed. 
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Mar 15, 2010 01:09
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dev/null posted:There's something with the French and low level flight French pilots are nuts. No idea what makes them that way though.
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Mar 15, 2010 01:20
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Preoptopus posted:posted it already but no one noticed. I noticed, and I almost stopped watching out of sheer jealousy. But then they actually got to where the sky above is no longer blue and I couldn't look away.
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Mar 15, 2010 01:34
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Preoptopus posted:posted it already but no one noticed. Yeah, that happens. It's an amazing piece, though. It's great that he knows how lucky he is to get to do stuff like that.
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Mar 15, 2010 01:41
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Preoptopus posted:posted it already but no one noticed. I watched it. I'll just say that I'm so speechless that I forgot to talk about it. The U-2 is basically just as impressive as the SR-71, except in a completely opposite manner. Which makes sense since it was built by the same people. Rather than using the SR-71's engine power approach to altitude, the U-2 is designed to fly high with lift. So it's built more or less by taking an F-104 fuselage and sticking on a set of sailplane wings. What happens when you put wings meant for a glider on a doublesonic turbojet interceptor fuselage? Well, it's so efficient that before the first official flight, the plane took off on its own in a taxi test. Watch the video and see how the plane basically jumps off the ground at 100 mph, and then shoots up into the air like a rocket. It flies nearly as high as the SR-71, but far more slowly. It's extremely efficient, so it can spend most of the mission near its maximum speed -- but the air is so thin up there that the stall speed is only 10 knots slower than its maximum speed! I forget what the pilots called that regime, but just imagine flying with only a 10-knot margin of error between overspeeding your engine and stalling out, for 6 hours over hostile terrain. Also, because the wings are so thin and entirely full of fuel, there is no place for landing gear. So the plane has bicycle landing gear, two pairs inline under the fuselage, and two little support "pogos" that hold the wings up on the ground. They drop off on takeoff. Landing is accomplished by having a high-powered chase car (Buick Wildcats back in the 60s and 70s) follow the plane along the runway and maneuver under one wing. The pilot drops the wing and it latches onto the roof of the car until the pogos can be reinstalled. Lockheed really makes the best stuff. dev/null posted:There's something with the French and low level flight Helicopters look slow when you see them at altitude, but seeing how fast the road goes by from not much higher than an 18-wheeler's cabin gives you a whole new perspective. orange lime fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 15, 2010 |
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Mar 15, 2010 02:14
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orange lime posted:Landing is accomplished by having a high-powered chase car (Buick Wildcats back in the 60s and 70s) follow the plane along the runway and maneuver under one wing. The pilot drops the wing and it latches onto the roof of the car until the pogos can be reinstalled. In 2008 I saw them using a mix of 4th-generation Z28 Camaros and 2000-something GTOs. Last summer it was all GTOs.
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Mar 15, 2010 02:38
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blambert posted:More James May stuff. This one makes him officially the luckiest man on earth. What the gently caress... the pilot is wearing glasses??!?! Since when was that allowed 
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Mar 15, 2010 04:15
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dietcokefiend posted:What the gently caress... the pilot is wearing glasses??!?! Since when was that allowed Pretty much forever. To be a pilot, the requirement is 20/70, nav is 20/200, abm is 20/400. All have to be correctable to 20/20 and not have any serious injuries, scratches, or astigmatism (some astigmatism is ok).
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Mar 15, 2010 04:30
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1929 Ford Trimotor stopped by my local rinky-dink airport. Had my second ever plane ride in it. Click here for the full 604x453 image. It has 3 of these things, hence the name:  Click here for the full 604x453 image.
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Mar 15, 2010 04:35
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OptimusMatrix posted:I've always been partial to this video. It's a couple Mirages over northern Africa flying low as hell. Personal anecdote with no video to back it up: A-10s doing canyon runs outside Why, AZ. I was on my way to Puerto Penasco, Mexico, and watched a flight of two A-10s taking turns through mountain passes, orbiting back, and doing them again. They fly out of Tucson and were over a wilderness national park about 130mi west of their base. They appeared and disappeared behind individual mountains as they flew through the canyon, tossing those long straight wings side to side and with canopies glinting like mad crazy diamonds. I stopped at one of the nearby picnic grounds to watch, and they continued for about 30 minutes, taking run after run down the canyons then popping up on the other side of the ridge, sometimes early, sometimes making it completely through. It seems the USAF flyers out here at Davis-Monthan get to have tons of fun, as I've also seen aerobatics and mock-dogfights taking place over the base in F-16s, F-15s and even some (German? British?) Tornados. We enjoy the combat landings the A-10s perform directly above one of the large retail furniture warehouses in town. From the parking lot, you can make out the color of the pilot's helmet as he banks over the store at about 75* with the gear out and flaps down, then rolls out and settles on the end of the runway 1/4mi away, brakes sharply, and whips off onto the very first taxi-way. Tucson is definitely an Air Force town. Edit - this is the mountain range I saw the A-10's flying through: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...=h&z=13&iwloc=A
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Mar 15, 2010 04:38
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Fake dogfights (BFM) is pretty standard training. It's a loving BLAST, too. There's also a lot of BVR (beyond visual range...ie, radar & missile work) too. I'm surprised it's low enough for you to actually see it. It's usually way too high.
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Mar 15, 2010 04:55
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Godholio posted:Fake dogfights (BFM) is pretty standard training. It's a loving BLAST, too. There's also a lot of BVR (beyond visual range...ie, radar & missile work) too. I'm surprised it's low enough for you to actually see it. It's usually way too high. That's just the way it is out here in Arizona I guess. Hell, I even get low altitude flybys with F-16's in lower Chandler, AZ (outside of Phoenix). On the flip side of technology I get to regularly see some vintage biplanes painted up in Blue Angels garb have fun right over my house. 
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Mar 15, 2010 05:11
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So I hear this U-2 is a hard airplane to fly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eamnTyfkUBY
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Mar 15, 2010 06:34
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Maker Of Shoes posted:That's just the way it is out here in Arizona I guess. Yep. Up here in Tempe, you'd think that you get used to the sound of jet engines from the one airliner every 90 seconds landing at Sky Harbor...and then some of the F/A-18s come in off training or whatever and you remember what a turbine REALLY sounds like.
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Mar 15, 2010 07:30
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Godholio posted:Fake dogfights (BFM) is pretty standard training. It's a loving BLAST, too. There's also a lot of BVR (beyond visual range...ie, radar & missile work) too. I'm surprised it's low enough for you to actually see it. It's usually way too high. Are they like laser tag? Does the aggressor "shoot" at the target and both planes calculate whether the target plane gets hit or not? Or is it just a lot of maneouvering.
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Mar 15, 2010 08:00
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Slide Hammer posted:Are they like laser tag? Does the aggressor "shoot" at the target and both planes calculate whether the target plane gets hit or not? Or is it just a lot of maneouvering. It's both. Yes, they have computers to calculate hits and locks and things like that, but any short-range combat is almost entirely about maneuvering. Rotary cannons fire so fast that you can literally put 30 explosive rounds into the enemy plane in less time than it takes for you to say "bang", so once you're close enough to have a firing position, the guy you're chasing is as good as dead.
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Mar 15, 2010 08:05
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Autism Sundae posted:How is it a really ingenious idea? Some dude basically said "hey check this out, you know tanks have like turrets on top? Let's do this poo poo on a plane". Nobody else did it because in every other air force there was another dude that took about ten seconds to think about it and said "no, that poo poo's retarded". If you were intercepting bombers, it would allow you to engage more targets quickly than a traditional fixed gun fighter that has to make multiple passes at the target. Plus, traditional fighters were relatively vulnerable from a variety of angles (especially with the RAF squadron-element tactics) and the Defiant was designed in part to work in a mission that was already obsolete. And anyway, the Defiant had a significant amount of success until some squadrons got equipped with them and decided to fight them like they were Hurricanes, which obviously wasn't going to work. If you described an ever-descending spiral to get down on to the deck, it would be very easy to keep a pursuing fighter engaged nearly continuously with the turret. Keep in mind that when the Defiant was designed, like someone else pointed out, nobody really had any idea what the gently caress was going to work and what wasn't. Thus the Germans dropped a bunch of money on the Zerstorer type fighters which were total poo poo, the Italians continued to pursue biplanes long after they were viable, and the Allies continued to outfit their strategic bombers with tons of defensive armament and additional crewmembers (not to mention the USAAF's lol precision daytime bombing). People did dumbfuck things even during the war after they should have known better. Also do you mean that turret armed fighters continued to be a popular idea later in WWII? Because the Mosquito night fighter and the P61 were outfitted for turrets, and the German Schrage Muzik system was very similar in execution (although fixed). The Defiant would probably have been pretty successful as a night fighter if the airframe was better - the problem was the Mosquito was so much faster and with longer loiter time that it didn't make sense to spend more money on the Defiant - plus you could make the Mosquito out of wood.
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Mar 15, 2010 15:50
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The mosquito is my favourite plane of all time. I might make an effort post about it later on.
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Mar 15, 2010 16:15
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Slide Hammer posted:Are they like laser tag? Does the aggressor "shoot" at the target and both planes calculate whether the target plane gets hit or not? Or is it just a lot of maneouvering. It depends where they are. There's very good performance data on how missiles act and perform, and the pilots know the basic parameters a "good" shot needs. They also know how the enemy can defeat certain shots...put these together, and you have a good idea if A) your shot was valid, and B) the enemy's maneuvers could have defeated it. It's math, but they use vague and simple numbers so they actually decide real-time. Some bases (Nellis, Tyndall, MCAS Yuma, for a few examples) are equipped with tracking pods that make all this MUCH more precise...in large exercises (Red Flag) there are range controllers whose only jobs are monitoring for safety and scoring kills (this requires pilots to actually call their shots and missile impact times). After the fight there will be a massive shot validation debrief, where you sit and watch the whole thing recorded by the pods, where every shot is assessed. If the range controllers gently caress up they pay $5...likewise for a pilot who doesn't bring his info. I've never seen the ACMI pods used to score a BFM fight.
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Mar 15, 2010 16:25
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