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thetechnoloser posted:Hey, I know a bit about that airplane. My mom was a project manager on the second round of restoration; she headed up a lot of the skin and spar stuff. Fun NC19903 facts: - There's an extra wing rib in there! The original blueprints specify 17; it was built with 18. This caused huge headaches when it came time to certify the plane as airworthy, even though it had been flying just fine that way right up until it ran out of gas. They definitely played faster and looser back then. - Papa Doc added a little modification of his own. There's a compartment accessible only from the outside, behind the port wing root. It's about 5' x 2' x 2', nicely sized for some guns or bundles of cash. Needless to say, this is also not part of the original blueprints, although it was kept in the restoration. It's juuuuuust out of frame in one of the pictures. You can see the latch if you know it's there, but it's pretty well concealed. I'd be interested to know whether the Smithsonian points this particular feature out. - It is, I hear, a fantastic place for the fanciest of parties.  In all seriousness, I understand why they can't let people inside, but it's still a shame. Boeing and the volunteer crew put an astounding amount of effort and money into the interior, and by all accounts and pictures, it's absolutely stunning.
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Oct 3, 2011 05:26
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The Locator posted:The QE2 has a fuel capacity of approx. 1,000,000 gallons. She has a claimed cruising range of 7500 miles, so rough math says 133.33 gallons burned per mile. Of course, there's a pretty big disconnect between a 777 set up in cattle-car configuration, and the QE2 or QM2 hauling around a bunch of staterooms, restaurants, and her own drat mall. Per pound or cubic foot of cargo, ships are much, much more efficient - that's why container ships and bulk haulers, rather than airplanes, are used to move non-time-critical stuff all over the world. When it comes to passengers, the equation does change somewhat. People can tolerate cramped coach seating for a flight, but on an ocean trip they're going to need a lot more infrastructure for sleeping, eating, showering, crapping, and so forth. And, naturally, there will always be a premium for shortening the trip from seven days to about half of one. Still, if you're looking at straight passenger-mile fuel efficiency, planes only win out because the few modern ocean liners are set up to be ridiculous floating palaces rather than efficient means of transportation.
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Oct 30, 2011 04:09
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Epic Fail Guy posted:That's globalism at work. A lot of nations that still have flag carriers are greatly influenced by manufacturing happening in their nation. I'm sure when it was time for ANA or JAL or whoever to sign the paperwork to buy 787s they were reminded of this. Boeing also went on a "we design airplanes and bolt 'em together, we can contract out all that pesky parts manufacturing" kick, sort of a civilian equivalent to the LSI craze (because, of course, that worked so well). A lot of the executives who led the charge had zero manufacturing experience, and didn't bother to look too closely at wildly overoptimistic cost and time estimates from suppliers. End result: ridiculous delays, big cost overruns, and Boeing's been spending huge amounts of money on in-house manufacturing R&D that they literally give away to their suppliers, in the hope that they'll be able to actually make the parts they promised.
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Nov 4, 2011 20:53
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grover posted:The F-35B looked like it was working pretty well when the marines conducted shipboard flight tests last month. Good to know that objective source LockheedMartinVideos says that there are no problems! Back in the real world, those tests had a few problems. Nothing serious, though - just enough cracking to stop all VTOL testing on three of five airframes. I'm sure that Lockheed can fix the problem on a shoestring. Probably not more than a few hundred mil, and what's that, really?
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Nov 22, 2011 12:08
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Alpine Mustache posted:Can you elaborate on the bolded part? Because what if you can't fly out of the stall? Then you're going to be on the news! If everything is working right, it won't be a problem. The stall warning system will sound before the aircraft actually stalls, and increasing airspeed will get you into a safer angle of attack (relative wind gets closer to the chord line). Plus, a modern fly-by-wire jetliner will either try to keep you from stalling altogether, or fight you, if you get too close to the stall. If you're talking about a stall close to the ground, flying out in the manner described is actually the safest alternative in a lot of ways. You don't want a pilot to hear the stall warning, push the yoke/stick forward to recover, and plow the plane into the ground. The problem, of course, is when the warning systems and automation fail, and training doesn't cover what's going on.
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Dec 14, 2011 01:16
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The Ferret King posted:The internal tanks are already physically capable of holding that larger amount of fuel, but you become weight limited when adding seats/passengers/luggage. Also, more weight means you have to make more lift to counter it, which means more drag. A lightly loaded aircraft is inherently more efficient than a heavily loaded one.
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Feb 10, 2012 21:12
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iyaayas01 posted:Yeah, the P-8, but it's a) a Boeing product, so room for potential competition, and b) a turbofan powered aircraft, which raises concerns about loiter time at low altitude vs a turboprop powered aircraft like a P-3 or SC-130J. It's an interesting idea, especially since a fair portion of the maritime patrol mission these days is more about sea sovereignty/other patrol type poo poo that doesn't require dropping ordnance and less about anti-submarine warfare, reducing the challenges posed by integrating external munitions on the Super Herc. Also, worth mentioning that they have already designed and cleared external hardpoints on the -J as part of the Harvest Hawk and Dragon Spear "improvised gunship" programs. On the other hand, if you're not that interested in ASW, why do you want to be loitering at low altitude at all?
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Feb 19, 2012 19:33
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Terrifying Effigies posted:It's been a while since I took Aircraft Performance & Design - I remember that forward-facing wing-mounted props give you a lift advantage by increasing the airflow over the wing, but is there a specific advantage to rear-facing props (besides looking Pushers tend to be more efficient when set up right - there's a lot more nice smooth, predictable laminar flow over the wing, and less turbulent flow. Some of Burt Rutan's older homebuilt designs use pushers and can get really impressive efficiency: a Long EZ can cruise at 100+ kts with gas mileage that'd be pretty good in a Civic. Godholio posted:About 13. Pretty sure Iraq had fighters, at least at the beginning. Also, keep in mind that most countries don't let their arms industry put their best stuff into the export models (or just outright keep the top of the line for themselves, like the US does with the F-22). A Sukhoi from Nation X isn't going to be as capable as a Sukhoi in the service of Mother Russia.
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Feb 22, 2012 01:55
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Throatwarbler posted:So the F35 can carry external stores. Suck it haters. Man, the standards for the F-35 have really dropped if the best "suck it haters" post you can muster is "look, it's managed to do something that warplanes have been doing for 80+ years." Cygni posted:Not sure why that flexibility can be considered a bad thing.  and development time.
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Feb 22, 2012 02:39
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Suicide Watch posted:e: was there specific USN doctrine during WW2 to use radial engines over piston? hellcats and corsairs just look so stubby compared to the sleeker mustangs and airacobras. even the RN FAA used seafires and sea hurricanes... You mean "inline," right? Besides the packaging issues Used Sunlight sales mentioned, reliability was big, as well (especially back in the 20s when they adopted the "radials only" thing). Air-cooled radials don't have to worry about a potentially unreliable cooling system, and many of them could take horrifying amounts of damage before they stopped working.
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Mar 3, 2012 22:03
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grover posted:No way the interior space in an Apollo capsule is as large as a Rapevan. Would be closer to the cab of a light pickup, I think. Is that 218 cubic feet including cargo bins and the like? There's a substantial amount of space behind/under the seats. It wasn't roomy, but it was nowhere near as cramped as that picture makes it look. 
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Mar 20, 2012 01:41
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dissss posted:Can you actually access that space though, or is it just sitting back their taunting you? It doesn't look like you could even get out of the seat to me. Yes. In fact, the navigator's station (complete with flight controls) is down there in what looks like the footwell from the perspective of someone sitting in one of the crew couches. With the lack of room in there, they couldn't afford to make a bunch of volume into nothing but a cargo compartment. As far as getting in and out of the couches goes, weightlessness would make things easier, and there's always the "you get to go to the loving moon" thing motivating you as well.
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Mar 20, 2012 04:30
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Sagebrush posted:Here's a birdstrike and total engine failure from inside an F-16 It was a Canadian Hawk on a joint RAF/Canadian Forces training mission. e: gently caress, beaten. I have to say, I've always loved the Pac-man-ish "game over" sound right at the end of that video. Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Mar 20, 2012 |
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Mar 20, 2012 23:23
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Preoptopus posted:All the money in the world, but he can't buy taste.
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Apr 1, 2012 03:17
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Nebakenezzer posted:I mean, if chumps like me can see how bad the program was turning out, surely they could, too. So why no change? Why this completely delusional insistence everything was fine? Did they expect Lockheed to suddenly reverse a decade of incompetence and vindicate their decision? Were a few key players so rabidly pro-F35 that they squashed any hint of doubt or dissent? Why such insistence on the F-35? Because they wanted to demonstrate what good Americans they were? iyaayas01 has made some great posts on this in the TFR airpower thread. Basically, Lockheed's marketing department has done an incredible job convincing a good chunk of the world's militaries that "fifth generation" is a clearly defined thing, only the F-22 and F-35 qualify, and the only thing "fourth generation" stuff is good for anymore is making the enemy laugh themselves to death. If you accept all that as true, then it's the F-35 or nothing, even if the F-35 has problems of its own. Throw in a healthy chunk of confirmation bias and organizational inertia, and it's no wonder that they didn't stop to think "hey, these cost increases and capability problems really suck, maybe we should be checking out other options."
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Apr 4, 2012 02:19
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joat mon posted:Engines It's a beautiful plane (those ailerons!), but it looks like it'd be absolutely terrifying to fly. With those engines where they are, you'd stall and go into a flat spin if you so much as breathe wrong.
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May 8, 2012 00:35
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Dr JonboyG posted:With two pilots, did they have to be ridiculously coordinated to prevent them from just flying around in circles, or did one steer and the other control the power, like an offshore racing powerboat? It was a night fighter. There was only one pilot; the other guy was a radar operator.
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May 9, 2012 01:41
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Delivery McGee posted:Did it have controls in both cockpits (like, say, the modern Mudhen) or was the RIO hosed if something happened to the pilot (as I assume is the case in two-place Navy jets)? From what I can see online, the P-82 prototypes and early versions kept dual controls, but later versions took out the right hand controls to fit more radar equipment. As for the F-15E's control setup, I think it's more so that the pilot and back seater can trade off napping and flying. There aren't many scenarios where you'd have a dead or incapacitated pilot, and a plane that's still capable of flying.
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May 9, 2012 03:26
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Choco Zulu posted:Dumb question: Why are interior ribs/skeletons of aircraft painted yellow like this? I see a lot of this color when people post photos of wartime assembly lines or the Boeing plant. It's zinc chromate primer. By itself, it's enough to protect interior parts from corrosion, and paint sticks to it nicely for the exterior bits.
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May 19, 2012 08:29
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Blistex posted:Ok, someone needs to explain this to me. Flying a real F-22 is very expensive. Flying a 757 is pretty cheap in comparison. If you just want to see how an F-22's radar and other avionics actually work in the air, it comes out cheaper to put them on a 757 and test that. Since the shape of the nose has an effect on the performance of the radar and other sensors jammed up there, you need to use a real F-22 nose; that in turn means you need to put other aerodynamic surfaces to compensate for the way it screws with the 757's design. There's a 737 flying around with an F-35 nose, but it just has a pair of canards instead of that funky structure on top of the cockpit. It's still pretty weird-looking, though: 
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Jun 1, 2012 16:30
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:Does its oxygen system kill pilots as well? Don't be silly. When a civil aircraft kills pilots, the manufacturer actually has to deal with the consequences.
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Jun 1, 2012 18:36
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iyaayas01 posted:That played a role in the American 191 mishap; when the aircraft lost a hydraulic system as a result of the engine falling off it caused the slats to retract on one of the wings and the asymmetric lift/stall condition caused the aircraft to uncontrollably roll inverted before impact. Although to be fair, asymmetric lift because of a mismatch between which high lift devices are deployed between the two wings isn't really a specific DC-10 problem. On the other hand, the slat system that was held in place solely with hydraulic pressure, and the warning systems that weren't on redundant power, were DC-10 problems.
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Jun 11, 2012 21:44
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Advent Horizon posted:A better question is, have we reached a point where enough parts have CAD drawings that we can feed metal into a machine and it will spit out the parts? Because I am totally down with reopening production. For the B-17? Most of those drawings aren't even digitized. And, most of the original drawings are done with the expectation that small parts will be hand-fitted. Even major stuff was done with an attitude that we'd consider unacceptably sloppy today - for instance, the 307 Stratoliner in Udvar-Hazy (which shares a lot of parts with the B-17) was built with an extra wing rib on one side. It's not just that we're not making the parts any more; production was fundamentally very different back then. Even if you had a friendly wizard give you full set of CAD models for every B-17 part, and a magic program that could turn 3D models into CNC/3D printer programs without any human intervention, you'd have to do a lot more work than just bolting the pile of resulting parts together. HeyEng posted:RETRO USAF would be amazing. Super updated F-4 Phantoms and poo poo. Well, if that's what you're after, there's one air force out there who has Phantoms and no annoying post-1980 US aircraft cluttering up their inventory. Hell, if you can find some F-14 parts nobody's using, they'd probably even give you a ride!
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Jul 11, 2012 03:05
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Advent Horizon posted:drat, man, you're a buzzkill. You don't have to be so mean about it At this point, you're not building a B-17 from the original design, you're designing and building a new plane that just happens to look very much like a famous WWII bomber. And, as cool as that would be in rich-guy-financed fantasyland, it's not really practical for a restoration job, even a "cut serial number out, weld onto new airplane" project like what's almost certainly going to happen with the Liberty Belle. (also, if you wanted a really badass private plane, the B-29 would be so much better - pressurized comfort, plenty of elbow room, and a panoramic front view!)
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Jul 11, 2012 03:55
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Advent Horizon posted:I know of a C-123 for sale, though... "Scrub out the Agent Orange residue, and she's all yours!"
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Jul 12, 2012 00:07
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The C-130 is an amazing aircraft - but man, it does not have a pretty face. Terrible Robot posted:Thank you, now I can be properly jealous of all the great planes you got to see. Looks like an O-1 Bird Dog.
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Jul 17, 2012 00:25
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iyaayas01 posted:You think that's bad, check out the early no radome models:  The early models might have had a big nose, but at least they don't have a giant tumor on the front.(still ugly, though)
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Jul 18, 2012 04:27
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Godholio posted:People seem to think the F-22 is invincible. That's retarded. The impressive thing isn't that the Typhoon beat the F-22 at the Typhoon's game, it's that they had to work at it. You want a jack of all trades? Check out the JSF program. The F-22 isn't flawless in every aerial combat regime. It's the best in the world at BVR, and one of the best at WVR...doesn't have to be the best at everything. If it did, they'd be running the new HMS the F-35 has, and they'll all be fitted for the AIM-9X already. The F-4 isn't flawless in every aerial combat regime. It's the best in the world at BVR, and still competent at WVR. It'd be foolish to think that a bunch of cheap, outdated MiGs with guns, of all things, could ever pose a threat.
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Jul 30, 2012 21:09
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MrChips posted:Also, I doubt the explanation of "hitting an air pocket"...forests create areas of sinking air above them, on account of the cooling effect they have. It looked to me like the pilot tried to turn just before the crash. My guess is that he had barely enough lift to stay airborne in straight-and-level flight, but not enough to keep altitude through the turn. The "air pocket" was a BS explanation for the buffeting at the beginning of a stall.
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Aug 9, 2012 07:15
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SybilVimes posted:Yeah, the -G and -H were WW2 attempts at a tank killer, the -G had a 75mm cannon transplanted from a sherman tank, but it was a tad heavy, so a special 'lighter' 75mm was made for the -H. They were pretty effective against stuff like coastal defences too. Yeah, bombs didn't work so well in the jungle, so the Air Corps asked for more and more guns. On top of the 75mm, the B-25H had fourteen .50 caliber machine guns at various stations around the aircraft. There was also the B-25J, that swapped the cannon out for another four .50 cals in the nose.
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Aug 22, 2012 18:08
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iyaayas01 posted:Gripen gets you 85% of the capability at 40% of the cost* The Gripen has a tiny little gas tank, though, and Canada's a pretty big country. grover posted:It sure will be when laser weapons are fielded and detection = instant death. Good old lasers, the wonder weapon of the next decade since the 1980s.
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Sep 11, 2012 17:10
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ApathyGifted posted:To the public maybe, but working for a company that used to be part of Boeing and knowing a lot of old-timer Boeing people, they call it the triple-seven. Yeah, I've never heard anyone at Boeing call the 777 anything but the triple seven. The 747-8 is the "dash eight" because it has a unique dash number. The same thing happened with the 367-80 - it was, is, and forever will be the "dash eighty," and nobody even remembers the 367 part.
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Oct 27, 2012 00:59
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Nebakenezzer posted:Lovely pictures! It's not even the first one made. It's the Dash 80 (well, technically the 367-80, but nobody actually calls it that), which was a prototype for what would become the 707. It first flew, in those colors, in 1954. It was also the airplane that did this: 
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Oct 28, 2012 20:40
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Godholio posted:How is that money not going into the economy? You'll have contractors or CF personnel doing the work, using (purchased) equipment, and getting paid. A lot of people really have their heads up their asses about military spending, and unfortunately that includes almost all politicians. Blistex was being a wee bit facetious. With that said, though - you're both getting into broken window fallacy territory here. If I break your window in the middle of the night, and you pay to fix it, I've stimulated the economy by making you spend money to replace the window - but I've also made it so you can't put that money to other, more productive, uses. Subsidizing Lockmart's "buy now, we'll fix it later, hopefully" development process, and big fat bonuses for foreign executives, is probably not the best way for Canada to spend its money. And, yes, anyone making a big purchase is a goddamned fool if they don't consider the lifetime costs. Government spending isn't like personal spending, but there are still some decent analogies to make. An iPhone doesn't cost $200, even though that's what you pay when you walk out of the apple store. If you run right up to the edge of your housing budget with your mortgage, your McMansion will fall apart in a few years. And, if you buy an older BMW 7-series on a Civic budget, you'll still be paying for maintenance and repairs on a high-end luxury car.
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Dec 11, 2012 17:47
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grover posted:The marines feel they need an LHA/LHD-capable aircraft that can perform close air support and air defense against a hardened foe in disputed territory off minimal airfields. To not have this capability severely restricts how we can deploy our amphibs; having this capability really does turn them into mini-carriers we can deploy independently of CVSGs in the force projection role and cover about twice as much of the world as what we could if they were tied to the hip to carriers. 20 years ago, they had choices on how to replace the AV-8B, but right now, they really only have one option left: F-35B. The Marines feel they need a lot of things. The fact is, they're never going to operate in contested airspace without the rest of the US military backing them up. It's not even a capability they really have right now to any great degree - the Harrier isn't exactly the world's greatest air-to-air combatant. There's at least one other option left: cancel the horrific money pit that is the F-35B, and tell the Marines that helicopter carriers are for carrying helicopters. If they need fixed-wing support they can get it from the Navy, who will do it better for less money and with fewer mishaps. The F-35B owes its existence to territorial bureaucratic bullshit and nostalgia over the Cactus Air Force, rather than any legitimate need. grover posted:What, that they'll never be deployed independently of CVSGs? Because they are. Amphibious ready groups operate completely independent of CVSGs damned near all of the time. That's kinda what they do, they steam up and down foreign coasts, waving the flag, just like the CVSGs do. D-Day is not the only scenario the marines are involved in, you know. But they're not actually going in and doing much of anything in those situations; a guided missile cruiser would work just as well if you want a mobile flagpole. And, if poo poo gets truly serious, the real carriers are going to come in anyway. (also do tell us more about the proud history of the Marines on D-Day, grover)
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Dec 15, 2012 21:56
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movax posted:Bureaucratic bullshit is the cause of a lot of our horrific cost overruns, project delays and delivery of subpar goods. But hey, a few people get rich as a result so its all good Yes, bureaucratic bullshit is pervasive at every level, and impossible to solve completely. But here, it's particularly egregious both because of the scope of the problem, and because there is an easy solution. Just tell the navy's army's air force, who pride themselves on being a force that's had to do more with less, that they aren't going to get their very own special snowflake VTOL supersonic stealth fighter for Christmas.
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Dec 15, 2012 22:20
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StandardVC10 posted:I'm not an acronym Nazi and I kinda get the gist from context, but what's the meaning of SWAT? Some kind of mid-program redesign? "STOVL weight attack team," a crash weightloss program for the F-35B (and the other versions too, for the reasons iyaayas explained).
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Dec 16, 2012 01:22
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Sagebrush posted:Even if it's something developed by an independent contractor out of the blue? Assuming Northrop stripped out sensitive stuff and replaced it with internationally-available parts, what's stopping them from taking the YF-23 airframe and shopping it around to other countries? Sure, it was entered into a USAF competition, but if you take out the weapons and military radar it's just a big fancy carbon-fiber personal jet. Projects like the YF-23 are never developed independently, out of the blue. Northrop probably lost a lot of money on the whole project, but the US government underwrote a significant chunk of the cost, and provided all kinds of proprietary R&D information. Pure private development at the leading edge of aerospace is effectively impossible - even a simple, deliberately behind-the-curve design like the F-20 nearly drove Northrop under. As for the consequences, it'd probably start with permanent blacklisting from government projects (which would be an effective corporate death sentence). But, past that, there's more to a fighter than just weapons and radar. The engines incorporate all kinds of proprietary technology. The exact details of the airframe are incredibly sensitive, partially because of the whole stealth thing, and partially because airfoil design is still a big deal. Even the paint is top secret. If the US government said, "OK, you have our blessing, just take all the classified stuff out of it first," they'd still pretty much have to go to a clean-sheet design.
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Dec 21, 2012 23:47
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InitialDave posted:They should have tried this, just for a laugh. They were scrapping them anyway, it's not like it matters if it goes horribly wrong. They actually did it, so it could (no poo poo) fight Boeing jetliners. During the Falklands conflict, a Nimrod and an Argentinian military 707 crossed paths, but neither one could do anything but glower at the other guy. The Brits quickly knocked together a Sidewinder system and fitted it to the Nimrod, so if it ever happened again they would be ready.  Click for big, and they're clearly visible.
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Jan 26, 2013 19:46
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rscott posted:Is that a single DIN headunit in the middle? A lot of GA avionics use that form factor. It's probably a VHF radio or something. The whole panel looks like what you'd get if you gave somebody a government credit card and told them to put together an avionics package from Aircraft Spruce. Well, not quite, because they sell full-color HUDs for light sport aircraft now. Maybe there were packaging issues. But, for what it's worth, they have footage of the thing flying, or at least a model that looks like it. MrChips posted:gonna email that guy and tell him to put LASERS on it What, and just give away American advances in military fanboyism? We cannot allow a grover gap!
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Feb 2, 2013 22:51
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