Aviation Awesomeness
 

If you come across aviation or space related awesome in your peregrinations, post it here.

This is a checkout on the SR-71 cockpit instruments and controls by one of the SR-7 pilots. The awesomeness level here goes to 11.

What? No ADF? :D

Gotta say that instrument panel's a bit more complicated than the ones I installed in Cessna 182s thirty years back. Thanks for sharing; neat stuff.

:D and +1, Wolf :)

I think the entire space program was awesomeness personified. Here's a clip about the development of the Lunar Module.

Good stuff, Cloth (even if the writing in the Apollo 13 section was a bit overblown).


You all will have to forgive Duck for getting all excited over ADFs. It's just that they're a big improvement over her usual navigation method of IFR -- I Follow Railroads. ;)

:science: :)

Official B25 training film.

If you're doing an Oregon road trip:

http://www.tillamookair.com/

http://www.evergreenmuseum.org/the-m...raft-exhibits/ (this museum has the Spruce Goose...and tucked underneath its wing is an SR-71)




I liked James May at the Edge of Space: http://youtu.be/IFhuqN3yr9o

Great looking museums, and certainly worth a visit.

I've seen an SR-71 fly, but never got a close look at one.

I watched an SR-71 take off at K-16 for a flight over North Korea back in '86.

I had an SR-71 kick it into burner directly over my head. It was better than sex.

Cool, Wolf! In once had a Concorde fly right over my head, and the thing that made it extra special was that its presence was a complete surprise. I had a few hours to kill, so I decided to spend some time at a rocky beach near the airport. I was half laying on the rocks, waiting for the next airplane to appear onto final, when zoom/whoom, there it was! There it was, with its perfect birdie-beakiness bearing right down on top of me! It was impressively fast, too, as it wasn't actually landing. (As it turned out, it was on its way to an airshow on the mainland, and it zoom/whoomed over Victoria as a sort of tribute on its way.) That was pretty darned sexy! It basically flew right up my legs!

:science:

(Speaking of aviation awesomeness, I miss Old Overholt and his models. :()

He hasn't logged in since April.

This isn't aviation, but holy fuck!

AgentJayZ and the boys have put a 1250 horsepower turbine in a boat.
It doesn't look like much until the engine gets into the sweet spot on the RPM gauge, then watch out. Watch at 8:14 where they pull away from a piston boat like it's in reverse.

I once got to watch a Blackbird shoot touch & gos at March AFB. A whole bunch of us pulled onto the shoulder of the freeway to watch, including a couple of CHPs. When the pilots were done, they stood the bird on its tail, lit off the burners and vanished. The troopers looked at us, casually mentioned that they were going back on duty in 3 minutes, and gave us a chance to get out from under the sign that said "No parking or stopping." :p

Quote from AgentJayZ: Everybody loves afterburners

:science: Indeed!

Here is an awesome Russian fire fighting plane.

Wow. That is very cool. :wow:

I think the western states should probably buy some of those for use in fire season. The ability to load up on a lake during a touch and go is really something.

A few years back during one of the huge California fires, Russia offered the use of one of their fire-fighting planes and crew. We turned them down. I am in awe, not so much for the plane as for the skill of the pilots who fly that thing. It has a payload capacity of 20,000 pounds more than the planes presently used by Los Angeles and San Diego counties for fire-fighting.

The Skunk Works is working on the successor to the SR-71. Dubbed the SR-72, it will be hypersonic and able to get anywhere in an hour.

http://news.yahoo.com/hypersonic-spy...123608347.html

But tragically, no pilot. Damn.

The thing is capable of Mach 6...at that speed, a pilot may not be able to react fast enough for any kind of control input, although I confess I'm just guessing here.

But it's got missiles. :wow:

The flight control surfaces on military jets have been handled by computers for several generations of planes now. The pilot just tells the computer where he wants to go. From my casual reading it seems to be mainly due to three factors:

1) Designing for a pilot takes a lot more size and weight than just the pilot. It takes several tons worth of stuff including the panel displays, ejection seat, armor, controls, oxygen, etc etc. Also the guy needs to be able to see out, which puts some inconvenient constraints on layout.

2) Even the toughest human can only take around 9 gees max, and then only for a short time. The airframe can take at least twice as much. In combat that's huge.

3) Those damn little computy boxes are way bunches more capable than even a couple years ago.

I know it had to happen, I guess I'm just a nostalgic old fart.

Last month I went on a foliage flight in a biplane in the Berkshires. It was fun.

http://i.imgur.com/3SnXLx5.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GP5vdif.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/VvoBEoR.jpg

Foliage flight? That's where you come back with branches stuck in the landing gear or something? Whatever you call it, that kind of flying is pretty awesome too. I like the panel on that plane. These days even an ultralight has more instruments.

Don't mess with Texas.


Big tip of the hat to the Confederate Air Force for preserving as many of these old planes as they have.

Best spot I've seen since someone did a literal riff on the old "herding cats" line.

Here's a company that makes furniture and art out of old airplane parts. If we still owned my mom's Mid-Century Modern house, that coffee table would have been perfect.

I keep hearing "K-16" and heard a "K-1" and a "K-6" along the way, but have yet to see them on a map. Where is this airstrip? It's probably by a different name and I just don't know it.

My awesomeness to add:

i've seen nothing more powerful in life than a "elephant walk." Consider all available aircraft at a field slowly taxiing to the hold short line, and then launching at minimal intervals, one right after the other. I got to watch 16 B-52s launch at Minot AFB, and recently 48 F-16s at Kunsan AB. The Air Force frequently infuriates me with its bureaucracy, but then there are events line the "walk" and launch that make it all worthwhile.

I'll see if I can't find pictures when I get back to Korea.

Tripler
Our bombers will always get through.

Here are color photos of the interior of the Hindenburg. Even if built by the Nazis, amazing photos.

Cool! The interior looks nothing like I would have expected, though.

Other than allowing it to be built, I don't think the Nazis had anything to do with it. It was a privately-held company. I know the company director got in trouble with Goebbels for refusing to change the name from Hindenburg to Adolf Hitler. In any case, those are impressive photos.

That would have been weird, people would now be remembering 'The Adolf Hitler Disaster'.

I'd love to hear people say "I watched Hitler burn."

Amen to that.


Course, Herb Morrison should then have said, "O, the inhumanity!"

As it happens, we still remember "The Adolf Hitler Disaster," except we call it WW II.

The F1 engine turbopump:

The size of an outboard motor for a boat.
55,000 horse power.
Lasted for 150 seconds.
Pure unadulterated awesomeness.

linky, it's the thing on top

Stuff like this is the reason we went to the moon and the Soviets did not.

I'd pass on the name of that book on the development of the Saturn-class rockets I read a couple of years back if I could remember it. One hell of a lot of good engineering went into those puppies.

A great video of how the Soyuz undocks from the space station and re-enters.

A "how to fly" the TBF Avenger torpedo bomber. I saw one of these up close and personal on the USS Midway and they are huge!

Hmm...you're older than I thought..

He was just a wee tyke. They found him clinging to some wreckage, and dressed him in a tiny uniform and kept him around the bridge as a mascot. But he proved to have such a knack with a Bofors gun that before long he ended up in charge of the starboard batteries. They found it was quicker to teach him what not to kill.

That was pretty cool! I had no idea the Soyuz could affect its lift (and thus lateral motion) by rotation! I want to go dust off my astrophysics books now. I used to be familiar with orbital mechanics, but like all things, if you don't keep up, it gets rusty, and then ya forget.

Tripler
. . . but I was practicing my Russian with the video though.