@ttyymmnn said in This Date in Aviation History: October 1 - October 4:

upgraded and more capable version of the original B-1A

save for that field so beloved of teenagers and people who like drawing circles on Google Earth maps, top speed

@Shop-Teacher @Miss-Mercedes Yeah, mostly meant it as a joke but it is a very cool old thing! 😄

@Exage03040

The first digital camera I ever had was a Canon PowerShot that had a tiny LCD screen in the view finder. Which meant that any adjustments I made to the camera were reflected in the view finder. When I made the move to SLR, I had to get used to the fact that the great balance I was seeing with my eye was not at all what the camera sees. And the camera is not able to handle wide differences between light and dark the way the human brain can.

In general, in situations like these, I will meter for sky, knowing that I can get the detail out of the shadows in post. I agree that shots can come out looking over-processed with too much fiddling. In fact, I think the finished photo looks almost like it has some sort of HDR filter put on it. But I don't think the camera could have dealt with the photo. But I don't shoot in Auto, so I'll probably never know.

@ForSweden RHD too. (unless its been reversed)

@Ad-absurdum-per-aspera
Down here, it's a polite way of describing a person with a high profile social life and either a colourfully eccentric attitude or a questionable source of personal wealth (or a combination of the two)...

@Krieger22 said in This Date in Aviation History: September 24 - September 27 [Updated]:

They're catching up

Gen. Mike Minihan, commander of Air Mobility Command, approved the KC-46A Pegasus for worldwide deployments to meet combatant

Then again, he probably had to. They desperately need those planes to be in the air.

Yeah, that paragraph probably needs a refresh.

@ttyymmnn 😁

@ttyymmnn said in I'm going to an air show this weekend!:

If I had $2,300, I could book a 20-minute flight in the P-51 ($3,700 for 40 minutes). Rides in the Liberator are a bargain at $524, but they can take up to 10 people at a time. Regardless, I think I'll stay on the ground.

Just $92.50 tax deductible doll-hairs per minute.... It's really your best value, speaking from experience!

Seriously, though you should go up in one of the birds. YOLO!

@ttyymmnn nope. H model listed at 8800 miles, B-1 3000

@facw oof!
looks like everyone walked away from that one tho...so thats good

@ttyymmnn -- Indeed, it seems to have more in common with Convair's contemporary fighters than with anything the US had tried to use as a strategic bomber. Tricky to fly, too. I recall reading somewhere that its pilots went through fighter lead-in training to accustom themselves to supersonic work, high approach and landing speeds, and a "hot" airplane in general.

There were two other crew and they were busy. Shoveling fuel back and forth to achieve the desired center of gravity, which was quite a bit different for subsonic and supersonic flight, was among the chores whose automation was not entirely reliably automated.

It used a lot of fuel, too, and even with an unusually good ratio of dry weight to maximum takeoff weight, it could only carry so much of the stuff. By this time SAC had a growing KC-135 fleet, but even so, B-58's staging to forward bases would have been a sign to have a bug-out plan and keep your fingers crossed about favorable mutations.

@Roadkilled I simulposted this until I saw @DrDanteiii 's masterpiece above 🙂

@ttyymmnn

Ah, how much for a couple of these?

b22c552f-25ce-4b87-adbb-3f62541cac14-image.png

@doodon2whls On big airplanes, brake heat builds up after the event for 15 minutes or so. So, fast stop, then 15 minutes later you might have a problem.
Some have brake temp guages, but not all.
Hot brakes can blow the tire adjacent and that can take out a hydraulic line, then things can get really exciting.

@ttyymmnn I have to add a picture of Art with his usual copilot:

perch017-1516786040.jpg

@GrindIntoSecond This is an excellent post here!

@MattHurting said in Subaru aircraft engines:

The company I work for owns 5 planes for aerial acquisition (Cessna 206s and 310s) and maintenance (mx) is taken very seriously. Oil change and inspection every 50hrs and a more significant mx at 100hrs.

Yeah, this is critical to safe operation of a plane.

@Roadkilled said in My annual reminder: Don’t ever point lasers at planes!:

In other words, you can use your iPhone face scan without worrying that the FAA will come after you

No guarantees the CIA won't though.

@facw said in Counterfeit hardware suspected in F-16 fatality:

@Just-Jeepin Note that F-35 deliveries are currently halted because a part supplied by Honeywell was discovered to contain a Chinese-made alloy. Lockheed put up this extremely gross statement:

“Honeywell was informed by their lube pump supplier for the turbomachine, that one of their suppliers has been using alloy sourced from China in their magnets. This supplier is a 3rd tier supplier to Lockheed Martin and the alloy provider is a 5th tier.”

That does not in any way exonerate Lockheed. If you don't have the capacity or competence to ensure your supply chain is complaint, don't outsource things.

In any event, Lockheed is now seeking an exemption to restart deliveries without fixing the issue.

IIRC the SR71 used Titanium parts from ore that was sourced from Russia. The CIA created various front companies to make this happen without the Russian's knowing.

Not that excuses Lockheed from the above.

@ash78 said in How the B-52 was born in a Dayton hotel room:

It was a hotel in Akron in 1949...or maybe it was Dayton. These memories all tend to run together after a while. The war was over and the the world -- especially America -- was riding high on a newfound exuberance that pervaded ever corner of every town in every little place in the whole great big US of A.

This hotel was nothing fancy. There might have been a television in the lounge, but the rooms just had radios, the kind where you'd put in a nickel and listen to Orson Welles or Howdy Doody through heavy static for about 15 minutes. The kind of place where a guy would just end up drinking his Jim Beam and staring at the paneled wood walls until sunrise.

When I came in , I saw her spread out on the bed like some kind of angel. I had seen her many times before, but not like this. Something was fresh and new in my eyes, a spirit of adventure. She had a look -- sort of a Germanic charm, even though she was born and bred right here in America. It was at that moment that I realized I just needed something new. I still loved her, but the spark was just gone. So I mustered up some courage, bent down, and folded her violently in half just as Chet said "Hey, Jim be careful with those B-47 plans, that's a master copy."

And that's how the B-52 was born. Or at least conceived.

I wish we had a comment of the year award, but I'll have to settle for a @cotd nomination

@ttyymmnn Ah that's amazing!

I enjoyed reading the upgrades between the C and the G.

Also if you have 20 minutes to kill, that AMC museum website has virtual tours of some of the aircraft, but sadly not the Boxcar.

@Just-Jeepin Really lucky to first survive the landing, and second not to be eaten by large reptiles that inhabit that area.

@facw I cheated and looked the plane up on FlightRadar24 after it went overhead 😄

@Mr-Ontop
They come in different sizes.. . The Goodyear ones are genuinely made by Zeppelin.

@ttyymmnn said in This Date in Aviation History: September 7 - September 9:

Since then, more than 44,000 have been built

I still think the production numbers on this airplane are higher.

6e197027-34e7-4007-9585-b7a4d9e15f98-image.png

@ttyymmnn said in QE2 in Austin:

@facw

Probably would have been cheaper for her to rent a bus and drive to Austin and back.

And we have just the bus for the job!

11e23230-a112-4da9-ad04-a88a48d25d9f-image.png

@gmporschenut-also-a-fan-of-hondas said in This is funny (Planelopnik):

)https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2022/06/russias-most-potent-submarine-base-decorated-large-painting-us-attack-sub

alt text

@facw No idea. I'm guessing the decision was made by someone that doesn't understand math or science as usual.

@ttyymmnn said in This Date in Aviation History: September 3 - September 6 [Updated]:

Was there any interest in changing the [Brabazon] design to accommodate row upon row of seats?

Apparently not. Would there even have been that much demand for what would have been essentially a jumbo jet in that era?

It's an interesting what-if. I'd guess that demand might have become sufficient to fill that many seats as transatlantic aviation came of age in the slightly postwar era. However, I further speculate that such a plane was ahead of the engine technology of the day (see also Convair's dreams of a passenger version of the XC-99, or the military airlifter version for that matter, which was based on the general idea of the B-36).

The right number of engines and right size of airframe that would bring pressurized comfort (though not dining rooms) to that market turned out to be the DC-6 and the Connie, and Bristol's turboprop Britannia.

@Just-Jeepin I have a dream of making one of those small sub-250 gram drones that don't require a drone license in a form like this with enough battery to do some long-range FPV...would be pretty fun!

@Darkbrador

The Cold War and today. An army travels on its stomach…

@john-norris said in You may be cool, but you're not fighter-jet-cockpit-in-your-backyard-cool:

@drVanTraveler said in You may be cool, but you're not fighter-jet-cockpit-in-your-backyard-cool:

@MarquetteLa If you think this would be fun to play with, think again. Old, janky, spider infested, hot box, cockpit section. Covered with heavy, janky, sun magnifier lifted by some even jankier mechanism.
Fun to get trapped in?
Fun for that canopy to drop on you?

Dream killer.

Maybe so, but if I could convince one of you not to play with one of these things, it would be worth it.

@ttyymmnn
Ye', the public were either wanting them to use military aircraft or commercial aircraft.
I'm not fussed about the U.K. government arriving on military aircraft, but like you say it looks better on something less military.
Most of the royal family, etc... use commercial flights.
There's always going to be someone offended.

@oldmxer

Thanks!

@SantaBarbarian

Sadly, we lost one of the N-9Ms, along with its pilot, back in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Northrop_N-9M_crash

@Stef-Schrader said in Ghana tells Delta where to stick it:

hear about your watch

Haha well this narrows down who youre talking about

@ttyymmnn

I have made an intercontinental flight in a Vickers Viscount. Oil was leaking out of one engine and onto the wing.

@ForSweden

@EngineerWithTools

I had an old CRT television when my son was young, but we got rid of it when he was 4. I don't think he even knows what a CRT looks like. He will find out soon enough. He starts as a freshman at Oregon Tech in a month.

@Arch-Duke-Maxyenko "We've discovered that putting pink doilies in all our vehicles increases combat effectiveness 20%"

@ttyymmnn said in This Date in Aviation History: August 20 - August 23 [Updated]:

The first VC-25 took its maiden flight on May 16, 1987, but the first completed aircraft wasn’t delivered until 1990

I believe 1987 was supposed to have been the in-service date, as well, but they found a lot of electrical problems in flight tests, and, in Boeing fashion, the fixes took 3 years to complete

@CarsOfFortLangley

Down here? When we pass our Prime? We no longer get Free Two Day Delivery-- and all the bad TV we can consume.

@ttyymmnn said in This Date in Aviation History: August 17 - August 19 [Updated]:

@Rusty-Vandura said in This Date in Aviation History: August 17 - August 19 [Updated]:

@ttyymmnn I loved reading that again just now.

I read it again too. I've been to that show at Fort Worth Alliance. It's a great show, and I think I may have seen a P-3 there. I think our years living in Norfolk have given me an affinity for Naval aviation.

Naval aviation isn't a bunch of dandies.

That doesn't seem like a bad deal honestly.

@CB

A certifiable classic. The fact that it was specifically designed to load a 55-gal barrel is just the icing on the cake. Talk about knowing your audience.

@e90m3

Fun with nodebb scheduled posts.

@MattHurting said in This Date in Aviation History: August 10 - August 12 [Updated]:

@Rusty-Vandura I mean, basic LEGO building taught us not to do that...

Yeah. Well said.

@drVanTraveler So true- but my experience is only in single engine aircraft, trying to figure out teardrop v parallel entries 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

@ttyymmnn

I don't know the exact quote, but I understand that Truman once said that he didn't care who got credit as long as things got done. Letting Nimitz get credit in Japan and Marshall in Europe went a long way to quickly rebuilding economies while keeping egos from getting in the way. That concept seemed to finally hit a wall with MacArthur.

@pip-bip @facw it isn't just spare parts but sending parts back to be recertified by the engine manufacturer. I worked for a company partnered with a manf and remember a part showing up at receiving. Barely made it in the building before being flagged. It was an obscenely late/out of date part from a blacklisted airline and was told it was going in the scrap bin.

@UpCreekwithShitPaddle Did someone say A-12 with canards? 9b1088f9-a420-47f6-a30f-6f839911ac57-image.png

image.jpg

@ForSweden alt text

@facw

So you can see that it trashed the leading edge, as one would expect it would. The leading edge is structurally pretty soft compared to the wing box. But it looks like it may have crunched a bit into the front spar of the wing box. That can be a huge problem. You can splice in new spar caps and webs if you have cracks and the engineers can show it good. But I'm guessing the engineers are going to push for a new wing.

The temporary repair for getting it ferried to a depot will be a huge ordeal. This will be an interesting one to watch.

@Skyfire77 noooo ....

@Urambo-Tauro said in Beautiful Plane photo:

@Vondon302 said in Beautiful Plane photo:

They sound good too. Especially buzzing hedges.

Hmm... should I be alarmed if there's a buzzing in my hedgerow?

Only if your a Nazi in Northern France.

@ttyymmnn I don't think the 777 situation was ice, but there is de-icing fluid on the ground. That stuff is slippery!

@ttyymmnn said in This Date in Aviation History: July 30 - August 2:

astronauts David Scott and James Irwin covered a total distance of 17.25 miles in the Rover.

And they are still getting calls asking them to buy an extended warranty on the vehicle.