|
You'd still get stuck next to a snoring fatass who smells like that horrible combination of fajita and baby powder.
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 03:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 16:01 |
|
|
Also, been meaning to share this from my QUEST! Starting with most recent... 7975 - March Air Force Base - Riverside, California - December, 2010   7961 - Cosmosphere - Hutchinson, Kansas - September 2010  6925 - USS Intrepid Museum - New York, New York - September 2010   7972 - Smithsonian Udvar Hazy Museum - Washington, D.C. - September 2010  7968 - Virginia Aviation Museum - Richmond, Virginia - September 2010   6930 - US Space and Rocket Center - Huntsville, Alabama - September 2010  7973 - Blackbird Air Park - Palmdale, California - July 2010  6924 - Blackbird Air Park - Palmdale, California - July 2010   6927 - California Science Center - Los Angeles, California - July 2010  7976 - USAF Museum - Dayton, Ohio - September 2009  I want this picture so loving bad. It's like 4 feet tall!  6935 - USAF Museum Annex - Dayton, Ohio - September 2009  9764 - SAC Museum - Ashland, Nebraska - September 2009   6933 - San Diego Air and Space Museum - San Diego, California - July 2009  These are not my pictures, but I have seen the following aircraft. I plan on revisiting them soon. 7956 - EAA Fly-In - Oshkosh, Wisconsin - August, 1997, saw the fly-by!  6940 - Boeing Museum of Flight - Seattle, Washington - June, 1997  7977 Cockpit - Boeing Museum of Flight - Seattle, Washington - June, 1997  6931 - CIA Headquarters - Langley, Virginia - September, 2010  I managed to spot the tail of this A-12 while we were sneaking around the rear access roads for the complex. I could probably have snapped a picture but we didn't want to wear out our welcome since we had to be in New York later that night... So, that puts me at 17 seen out of 30 on display!
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 03:24
|
|
|
This weekend we passed the 75th Aniversary of the Spitfires maiden flight. As we've all seen many pictures of them I thought I'd mention one of the interesting groups that flew them and many other war aircraft. The women of the ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary) The ATA was set up during the war as an aeroplane ferry group to move planes from factories, to military units for fit outs and onto the main airfields. All of the flights were done without any radios and flown / navigated visually, official instrument flying was not allowed or taught. Initially the ATA pilots were drawn from people who had gained their private pilots licences before the war. Probably the most famous woman to join the ATA was Amy Johnson who initially made her fame by flying to Australia in 1929.  Amy sadly died on a ferry flight in '41 when flying from Blackpool to Oxford Kindlington. she overshot by approximately 100miles (probably flying in cloud) and ditched in the Thames estuary after running out of fuel. She drowned. Next up is Joan Hughes a diminutive young lady who was around 5 feet tall yet went on to fly some of the biggest aircraft in the RAF. She gained her pilots licence at 17. She became the only woman pilot to be qualified to instruct on all the military types in service. Here she is pictured below with a Short Stirling. Later on she piloted some aircraft for films. In the 60's she flew the small monoplane in the magnificent men and their flying machines, as she was the only pilot they could find, small, light and with enough experience to fly the replica.  By 1945, it had 650 pilots from 22 countries around the world including Chile, South Africa and the U.S. Of these, 164 were women. Pilots mainly came from the commonwealth countries.   Finally I must finish with a mention of Group Captain Douglas Bader. Despite losing both his legs showing off doing low level acrobatics in a rather unstable aircraft. He managed to get back into RAF service during the war. Flying Hurricanes and Spitfires in the battle of France and Britain he was often known to celebrate coming back over the channel, by dropping low, opening his canopy and lighting and smoking his pipe. He was shot down over enemy territory (possibly a case of friendly fire) and ended up in Colditz where he caused as much disruption as he could. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 04:17
|
|
|
Boomerjinks posted:
Those two stars are CIA Intelligence Stars. I wonder if who won them and why will ever be released to the public. Maybe in another hundred years or so. EDIT: On further investigation, it appears that particular bird was part of operation OXCART. The pilot and RO both got intelligence stars for that one. MA-Horus fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Mar 10, 2011 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 04:51
|
|
|
MA-Horus posted:Those two stars are CIA Intelligence Stars. I wonder if who won them and why will ever be released to the public. All A-12s were project OXCART, weren't they? The interceptor and SR-71 were spun from OXCART but were quite different. BTW I emailed CIA for the press kit on the A-12, its pretty sweet. Got it in the mail 3 days after asking.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 05:30
|
|
|
Tremblay is 100% correct. Also, the A-12 was a single-seater.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 05:41
|
|
|
Boomerjinks posted:Also, been meaning to share this from my QUEST! Starting with most recent... Very cool! The Kalamazoo Air-Zoo SR-71B is a nice display, and they have some pretty neat stuff in their restoration hangar and old building. The museum proper is expensive and a little weird, but still worth a day even if you aren't on a quest. I love that there were enough Blackbirds that some relatively po-dunk outfits ended up with one. The Virginia Air Museum, for instance. [edit] Nevermind, that was the one at Oshkosh. Who all is going to Oshkosh this year? I'm shoving vacation time around to fit, hoping to crash with a friend who usually gets camping space in the warbirds area. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Mar 10, 2011 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 08:05
|
|
|
Slo-Tek posted:Very cool! Well, my mission is to see and touch every Blackbird, so I'll have to visit that plane one day. I tell you, barrier-hopping at the Smithsonian is stresssssful.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 08:22
|
|
|
Okay, last post of the night. Er, day. gently caress. I think I love it. More here http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?cnsearch=1512/F016&distinct_entry=true
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 10:17
|
|
|
Colonel K posted:The ATA was set up during the war as an aeroplane ferry group to move planes from factories, to military units for fit outs and onto the main airfields. All of the flights were done without any radios and flown / navigated visually, official instrument flying was not allowed or taught. It should be emphasised this doesn't mean they flew only VFR. They frequently flew in total IFR conditions in order to get aircraft where they needed to go, despite having zero instrument training and relying only on visual navigation (using breaks in cloud cover and an intimate knowledge of the terrain - or just letting down to nought feet through cloud or fog and hoping they didn't run into a solid object). And of course they had no contact with the ground or other aircraft, since as above they weren't allowed radios. As the ATA was a civilian organisation, the aircraft were unarmed. On top of this, they flew an enormous number of single and twin engine types without being checked out on any of them, relying solely on experience and ATA reference notes for each aircraft, where available. Imagine dumping a PPL holder into a Spitfire or an Airacobra with no more than V numbers and a couple of basic checklists and telling them to get on with it. To top this off, a good proportion of the aircraft involved were cutting-edge combat aircraft, designed at the limit of contemporary technology, with very challenging handling characteristics. You only have to consider how many people these aircraft killed during conversion, operating in better conditions and with far more training and support, to appreciate the pucker-factor involved. Aircraft in those days were also designed by people with a fairly rudimentary sense of what constitutes a good "man-machine interface" (there's got to be a better term for this), so that even if the stick-and-rudder side of things was mastered, there were often many ways to break the aircraft and yourself if you were not completely conversant with its systems and what you could and could not ask it to do. In a rare exception to the rule, Joan Hughes and Lettice Curtis, who were the first two female ATA pilots to be permitted to ferry four-engined aircraft, had to qualify on Stirlings before they were allowed to ferry them. (IIRC, Curtis was the first female pilot to be permitted to fly one, but ran into a particularly misogynistic instructor who wouldn't pass her.) This was apparently because the old boys' club didn't believe a woman was physically capable of flying one of these aircraft. Ultimately, the ATA pilots qualified on heavies were flying enormous aircraft whose flight crew (one would imagine) would normally have included a pilot, co-pilot, navigator and flight engineer, in all weather and without ground communication, navigation equipment or formal IFR training. The ironic twist in the tale is that the pilots of the women's section of the ATA found themselves unemployable at the end of the war, despite the most senior of them having demonstrably more impressive records than most of their male contemporaries. With large numbers of qualified pilots being demobbed, the economic austerity of Britain in the late 40s and the social reaction accompanying the end of the war, they were simply excluded from consideration for most civilian jobs, and needless to say there was no question of any of them finding work in the RAF. Having returned as bidden to the kitchen (barefoot and pregnant presumably), the head of the women's section, Pauline Gower, avoided death by airplane (or enemy fire) only to die in childbirth in 1947. Lettice Curtis, in a rare exception, was able to find a non-flying role at Boscombe Down, and later worked for Fairey developing and testing new aircraft.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 11:39
|
|
|
Boomerjinks posted:Why does every forward point of the Blackbird point down? Something to do with airflow in supersonic flight? Nice pics boomerjinks.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 13:00
|
|
|
Aircraft fly in a natural pitch up attitude to generate static lift.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 14:05
|
|
|
Boomerjinks posted:Well, my mission is to see and touch every Blackbird When you make your way to San Antonio to get that shot, look me up, I can make your life easy getting on base to get the shot.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 16:48
|
|
|
Lilbeefer posted:Why does every forward point of the Blackbird point down? Something to do with airflow in supersonic flight? I think a lot of it has to do with subsonic flight. A lot of those older aircraft that were designed to fly fast were horrible at slow speeds. One way to keep razor-thin wings aloft was just angle the plane up and overcome it with the engines. http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/movie/SR-71/HTML/EM-0025-04.html You can see in that video just how much they have to keep the nose up to keep the plane flying. So, yeah, static lift, basically.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2011 20:06
|
|
|
Boomerjinks posted:Okay, last post of the night. Er, day. gently caress. Digital camo is so cool. It redeems 30 + years of grey-on-grey boredom. Imagedump of the Tu-22 Blinder, mostly. The Tu-22 was the Soviet's first supersonic bomber, and like the F-14, even though it is obsolete, it appears to my eyes to be highly futuristic.          Confusingly the Backfire is the Tu-22M.    From the JDF airbase at Sendai:  Floatplanes are the best because they land in pretty places: 
|
|
#
?
Mar 16, 2011 22:27
|
|
|
Although the TU-22 looks cool as hell, i've heard it was quite difficult and unforgiving to fly. Except that the TU-22M did use a weapon system based on the system used in the TU-22, it is not the same aircraft at all. It was just called TU-22M to make it appear as if it was just another variant of the TU-22 project so that the soviet government would fund it. I Like them both. Aleks_r fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Mar 17, 2011 |
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2011 09:17
|
|
|
I'm poking around on the F-15E site, and have come to the conclusion that the Mudhen* is pretty   The hottest poo poo in air superiority fighters, with an added crew member and extra fuel tanks, and bomb racks on the added gas tanks. It also has its amusing bits -- the bomber version has dual controls, but the WSO's gun trigger does nothing, and the "pickle" button only drops bombs (as opposed to the pilot's gun and bombs/air-to-air missiles, respectively). You'd think the if the bombardier was flying the plane because the pilot was incapacitated, he'd need all the air-to-air possible, but no, he gets nothing. The only defensive option when flown from the backseat is to dump the bombs, firewall the throttles and leg it at "over Mach 2.5" (apparently top speed is classified but if they'll admit to Mach 2.5+ actual top speed is probably closer to Mach 3).  Of the F-15's 101 or so (some sources say 104) air-to-air victories, only one was by an F-15E -- during Desert Storm, a Mudhen was providing close air support for some Special Forces troops, and dropped a GBU-10 2,000lb bomb on a Hind unloading Iraqi soldiers. The helicopter took off, the F-15E pilot thought the bomb had missed and selected a Sidewinder missile to have another go at it, but the helicopter was vaporized before he could pull the trigger -- the bomb had hit its target, estimated by the SF guys on the ground to be at 800 feet altitude on impact. The fighter-bomber crew was about to engage the other enemy helicopters, but a flight heavy bombers rolled in, so they broke off to avoid sharing the Hind's fate. They weren't officially credited with the kill until 2001.  Edit: Also the fucker can fly on one wing like it ain't no thang. In 1983, an Israeli F-15E had a midair collision with an A-4 during a training mission. The Skyhawk exploded on impact; the F-15 went into a spin. The pilot went to full afterburner and straightened it out, took a look at the damaged wing but couldn't see anything because of the cloud of leaking fuel, so he decided to try to land. He came in at twice the normal landing speed, tore off the tailhook, and finally brought it to a safe stop. He turned around to shake his WSO's hand and saw that he was missing an entire loving wing. When McDonnell-Douglas engineers came out to look at it, they assumed the crash had occurred while taxiing, because seriously there's no loving way that thing will fly with an arm off ... but it did. Apparently their simulations failed to take into account the fact that it has a greater than 1 power:weight ratio and therefore doesn't really need wings at full throttle, plus the engine intakes and wide fuselage provide quite a bit of lift. The pilot later said that if he'd been able to see how bad it was he would've ejected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LveSc8Lp0ZE  Edit again: the one-winged one was a D-model two-seat trainer, not an E-model bomber, but it had two seats and the Israelis love their conformal fuel tanks, so it was a pretty much a Mudhen in all but ordnance. (Third edit: looking at the photos, it didn't have the CFTs mounted at the time.) *The Strike Eagle's informal nickname is fairly amusing too. In addition to the low-and-slow aspect vs. the majestic soaring Eagle, it's a joke about the CFTs and consequent loiter time -- its feathery namesake "have considerable stamina once airborne." Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Mar 18, 2011 |
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2011 08:39
|
|
Bad Angus! Bad!
|
Enter crappy cell phone pics... Tooling around outside on Tuesday and I heard a bird that didn't sound like all the other ones (I live next to a small private air park). I was mostly just gawking wide eyed before I realized I wanted to take a picture and only managed to snap one non blurry one.  ENHANCE!  All silver plus the blue markings. After some light Googling I think I spotted Sentimental Journey, 1 of 11 operational B-17's. I could be wrong but the silver and blue were pretty distinct. My God she was beautiful.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2011 17:26
|
|
|
Found on fatpita of all places, rehosted on my personal site. Helicopter picking up a boat. Must be a USMC bird. Marine pilots have a reputation for doing crazy poo poo like that. (Edit: I first thought it was a CH-53, but that round window and the angle of the fuselage over the ramp say Chinook.) Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Mar 19, 2011 |
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2011 03:42
|
|
|
It's actually an Army tactic developed to avoid landing on mines when dropping off/picking up troops. In this case they just go about 3 ft lower. Edit: loving awesome though, I've never seen in-cabin video of it!
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2011 04:24
|
|
|
"Hop up onto the frame and suck it in" is a hell of a routine for the guys working inside the bird. Crazy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2011 05:03
|
|
|
The cleaning afterward must suck so hard. Take apart half the air frame and spray out all the salt. Then do it again.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2011 05:19
|
|
|
Delivery McGee posted:Found on fatpita of all places, rehosted on my personal site. That is an amazingly bad-rear end GIF. Also, I'm reminded of the two Navy helo crews that got disciplined for dipping their helos in Lake Mead (or was it Tahoe). Different situation though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2011 21:08
|
|
|
 MiG 23 in Libya, I wonder who got it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2011 23:17
|
|
|
The Third Man posted:
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2011 23:29
|
|
|
Hidden in Fort Eustis, near Yorktown, VA, behind a boring facade, is the US Army Transportation Museum. It features exhibits of notable Army Transportation like horse-drawn wagons, jeeps, trucks, hueys... and the Piasecki flying jeep. US Army posted:In 1957, Piasecki Aircraft was awarded an Army Transportation Command contract to develop a "flying jeep." It was to be a VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) vehicle capable of operating at low altitudes at speeds up to 70 mph to deliver atomic weapons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SERvwWALOM Here's a shot of the back:  ...and wait a minute, what's that beside the flying jeep? Is that what I think it is?  Holy crap, it's a Curtis-Wright AirCar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajvqBbEz0x4  ...and wait another minute, what's that in the background? Oh poo poo, it's the DOAK 16!  US Army posted:The DOAK Model 16 was the first vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft to demonstrate the tilt duct concept successfully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Vc5Ass7w8 ...and then, over at the end of the row we have...? Oh, you're just loving with me now, Army.  GE Walking Truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGCFLEYakM They also had a rocket belt and De Lackner Aerocycle (aka suicide machine) in the main exhibit hall, but I was too damned astonished to think to take photos. Edit: not my photo, but: 
grover fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Mar 23, 2011 |
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2011 02:17
|
|
|
Holy poo poo  @that personal helicopter. One slip on that thing and you'd be chopped to pieces!Did Engineers of the olden days really not give that much of a poo poo about personal safety? After looking at that picture the mannequin's constipated "oh poo poo oh poo poo oh poo poo" look is totally understandable!
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2011 19:51
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2011 22:05
|
|
|
Wicaeed posted:Holy poo poo The test pilot got the Distinguished Flying Cross for having the balls to pilot such an incredibly dangerous beast.
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2011 22:29
|
|
|
loving hell, that L-29 is too low to be considered low flying. That's a Schroedinger altitude where it's impossible to tell if the plane is crashed or not. By the way, googling the tail number for more info I came across this site: http://www.airplane-pictures.net/ At first glance it looks like a site that steals pics from airliners.net and hosts them with loads of ads. Or am I misunderstanding completely?
|
|
#
?
Mar 23, 2011 22:34
|
|
|
Not sure about the site but I found another and a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFbIyctcUgs
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2011 01:36
|
|
|
Its not how low you go, its how fast you climb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CDLbokf9sg EE Lightning doing its famous "tail stand"  The only plane to overtake Concorde in a stern approach intercept. Also climbed to intercept U2s at 65,000 feet, with the highest climb ever reaching 87,300 feet.  
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2011 19:28
|
|
|
U2 at 65k? Must've been on approach. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2011 23:28
|
|
|
Heid the Ball posted:Always love learning about a new aircraft, especially one as aptly named as that. Shame about the inlet design and poor avionics, it looks like it followed almost the same design philosophy of the original MiG-21 design (with the swept MiG wings instead of the deltas), which makes sense considering they were built around the same time for nearly the same job. I just love the hotrod interceptors (aka manned missiles) of the mid-50's through early 60's -- F-104, the MiG-21, and now this. Edit to contribute:   
Sterndotstern fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Mar 25, 2011 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2011 00:25
|
|
|
I do love the Lightning - it's just pure brute force. Bolt two engines together and stick a pilot on the front and 2 razor thin wings on the sides. Are there any other twin engine planes that have used that vertical stack configuration?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2011 12:04
|
|
|
So this week I started working on the Airbus site in Bristol, and today/yesterday the A400M was in town. I'll just leave these here -               And the view from the office I'm working in -  Also, video! Fly-by and Landing Apologies for the terrible iPhone videos.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2011 16:41
|
|
|
Those are pretty cool. No apologies needed for the photos, they're great. They're actually the first photos I've really seem of the 400M.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2011 16:49
|
|
|
Wow! An electric aircraft actually usable for single-seat leisure. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/03/german-electric-airplane-completes-first-flight/
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2011 20:23
|
|
|
Here's some videos: The Wonder Jet - 1950 Story Behind the Whittle Engine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKxsfE5Na8A Really interesting and pretty entertaining to watch seeing how the 'advances' in 1950 turned out. I went to A&P school a few years back. We got to run an old radial engine. I messed up the timing and made it backfire (technically an afterfire) pretty spectacularly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-SklRbt9bs We also got a jet engine running that was as old as that first video which was the highlight of the program for me. We also had a pt6 test stand that was fun, but not as cool. Only 3 of us got to run this old thing why the rest of the class used the pt6. It ran on avgas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlmIe6H3NMk It was a really fun program. A classmate was a retired dairy farmer with a huge passion for flying. He was building an RV-8 in his basement. It took the whole 2 years we were in school and I got to help him on most of it. On my first ride in it I also got to perform my first aerobatics, if you'll call it that, by doing a couple aileron rolls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgGk5i3ml8Q
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2011 19:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 16:01 |
|
|
A Challenger with a stuck front gear nearly crash landed in northern Quebec. Skip to 1:30 to see where it gets interesting. There is a snowbank hidding the crucial moment when the landing gear *finally* goes down, but it's still impressive/lucky... mostly due to the first aborted landing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu3pFBGlNX0&feature=player_embedded#at=236 From the video description quote:Emergency landing at the Rouyn-Noranda Regional Airport this afternoon. A Challenger CL-600 (Quebec 11 Medevac) from Kuujjuarapik, Quebec landed safely on runway 26 after its front landing gear refused to open. Fortunately, the train was open when the aircraft touched down at the last second. Five passengers including the two pilots, a patient and the medical team were aboard the aircraft. Fortunately no injuries to report.
|
|
#
?
Mar 28, 2011 19:33
|
|
