@john-norris

The F-5 has always been one of my favorite a/c. Which is why I'm sad that the F-20 never caught on. And why I was so excited to snag that photo of the TacAir F-5 at AUS last year.

@john-norris

Trumpets is what I do for a living, such as it is.

And thank you.

@ttyymmnn Just want to point out that the Gimli Glider is more proof that the metric system is the tool of the devil - my car gets 632,000 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it.

@benn454 The Ascender was just ahead of its time. The same basic layout was used by Burt Rutan for a number of aircraft as well as the Beechcraft Starship.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Starship

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@ranwhenparked

Agreed.

@ranwhenparked said in This Date in Aviation History: July 10 - July 13:

@ttyymmnn And here's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth checking out the bomb damage to Buckingham Palace. Fairly minor, but supposedly wasn't fully repaired until the 1960s

Famously, Queen Elizabeth said after that incident “I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.”

@facw yeah, but they've supposedly got 80 of them listed as "active", its plausible that less than half of those are actually flight-capable, and of the ones that are, you could still have a lot that are just patched together well enough for a ferry flight.

I mean, we know Kim doesn't trust his own VIP configured Il-62M to be reliable for long-distance trips, and if they were able to keep any plane working properly, you'd think that would be one of them.

@nowhere said in This Date in Aviation History: July 3 - July 6:

Great post! I love how wide ranging you are in these.

Thank you! I do try to cover as many bases as possible, so my definition of "aviation" may be a bit broad at times. I also try hard to represent more women who were aviation pioneers, since they still get short shrift these days.

As for the Lego Winnie Mae, I recently built the Amelia Earhart tribute set. As soon as I finished it, I wondered if I could order all the pieces in white and make a Winnie Mae with the same instructions. Then it would just be a matter of sourcing the stickers somewhere. Oh, and trying to find a one-eyed Wily Post minifigure....

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https://opposite-lock.com/topic/10654/legolopnik-amelia-earhart-tribute-set

https://opposite-lock.com/topic/10047/legolopnik-crazy-idea

@ttyymmnn vote Quimby!

@ttyymmnn That's evil. I like it.

@ttyymmnn I enjoyed this one with flying boats and flying wings!

@ttyymmnn said in This Date in Aviation History: June 19 - June 22:

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June 21, 1961 – The first flight of the Aviation Traders Carvair, an aircraft developed from the Douglas DC-4 by entrepreneur Freddie Laker to allow travelers to take their cars with them on holiday. The DC-4 was modified by placing the flight deck in a raised section above the main fuselage to provide room for five cars and 22 passengers, or three cars and 50 passengers. The flexible design of the Carvair meant that the configuration could be changed on the ground between flights in as little as 40 minutes. A total of 21 DC-4s were converted and flown by various airlines in Europe, and one remains in service, based in Denton, Texas, which set a world record in 2005 when it carried 80 skydivers aloft.

Pretty sure when it grows up it'll become a 747 😛

@krieger22 said in This Date in Aviation History: June 16 - June 18:

predictable ingress and egress paths.

You'd think they would have learned from Gary Powers.

@gmporschenut-also-a-fan-of-hondas Yeah the Germans were always good for routine during the war.

mmmm flogging....

@ttyymmnn said in This Date in Aviation History: June 5 - June 8:

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June 6, 1915 – Zeppelin LZ 37 becomes the first Zeppelin destroyed in air-to-air combat. During WWI, the Germans used Zeppelins to carry out strategic bombing missions against France and England. On the night of June 6-7, LZ 37 of the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) took part in a three-airship raid on Calais and was attacked by Royal Naval Air Service pilot Reginald Warneford flying a Morane-Saulnier L fighter. Warneford climbed above the Zeppelin and dropped bombs on the airship which set it on fire and caused it to crash. The explosion caused Warneford’s fighter to roll and lose power. He was forced to land behind enemy lines, but was able to restart his fighter and return to base. Eight members of the nine-man Zeppelin crew were killed, along with two people on the ground. For his actions, Warneford was awarded the British Victoria Cross and French Légion d’honneur.

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Per his Wiki:

Having no alternative, Warneford had to land behind enemy lines, but after 35 minutes spent on repairs, he managed to restart the engine just as the Germans realized what was going on, and after yelling "Give my regards to the Kaiser!", he was able to achieve liftoff and returned to base.

The balls.

Unfortunate fate for him though, dying ferrying an aircraft returning from receiving the French Légion d’honneur

@bicyclebuck

Then perhaps there's a better wording, such as "engine quits" or "engine dies from fuel starvation under negative Gs" or something.

Thanks.

@gmporschenut-also-a-fan-of-hondas

Every time we watched, there would be a scene on some Pacific island and my dad would walk into the room and say, “Looks like California.”

Thanks, dad.

@facw said in This Date in Aviation History: May 26 - May 28:

, so Taiwan developed their own 4th-gen fighter backed by US technology transfers which is how you end up with a weird thing that looks like a F-16 from the top and an F-18 underneath.

I have to wonder, just how many F-CKs were given?

@glemon

That engine was first run in 1936, and then built in great numbers throughout Europe under license.

A lot of the German build up before WWII was in aircraft that were ostensibly for civilian use but were really meant for military use. They also did a lot of pilot training in Russia, of all places. German pilots who died in training were sent home in boxes marked "spare parts." At first, Hitler tried very hard to conceal his military build up, but in the end he just said screw it and gave up the deception.

@annoying_salman

I hadn't heard about that. I will definitely add it to the story. Thanks!

@racinbob thanks for the pics, they had to balance weight vs safety on the mounting arms and such, not to mention bearings. just amazing

@ttyymmnn Sad but true. I am given hope by how much interest and excitement there seems to be for space exploration missions these days though.

@krieger22

Thanks for the long reply. I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to argue any one point versus another. I will take your exception to "brilliantly" under advisement.

@ttyymmnn Re Hindenburg:

"All Change Points, from Xerxes to the last presidential election, create worlds with clean, efficient Zeppelin traffic. Changing history may produce Zeppelins as an inevitable by-product, much as bombarding uranium produces gamma rays. Often, the quickest way to tell if you are in an Alternate History is to look up, rather than at a newspaper or encyclopedia. From this premise, it is not outside the realm of Plausibility that our history between 1900 and 1936 was, in fact, an Alternate History. It would, at least, explain a lot."
— Kenneth Hite, "An Alternate-Historical Alphabet," January 14, 2000

Often abbreviated as Hite’s Law: Alternate histories always have Zeppelins.