The Aviation Thread [Contains Lots of Awesome Pictures]

Yeah, it's a good museum. All the good stuff is inside though. There's a SR-71 for example parked under the wing of the Spruce Goose.
The parking lot alone would be worth the visit to me. I just love the Starship. <3 Wonder if anybody will try again something as daring as the Starship any time soon. 'Plastic' is used a lot more these days and they might be able to make it work this time. Until then I shall continue ogling the Avanti.
 
So we're sitting there discussing the 5-12 seconds of usable consciousness you have at 35,000 feet following an explosive decompression and I mention how difficult it must be to get your mask on with the shock and the disorientation of the event, when my classmate turns to me and says:

"not to mention you've just crapped yourself..."

I lol'd
 
^
True, they never show that in Hollywood films.

Ahem, on a more serious air safety note:

The following report is of a near collision at JFK on Monday evening, which was a few seconds away from being a major incident, with an outcome not disimilar to Los Rodeos incident in 1977.

Aviation Herald - Egyptair B773 and Lufthansa A346 at New York on Jun 20th 2011, close encounter due to runway incursion

Aviation Herald said:
A Lufthansa Airbus A340-600, registration D-AIHM performing flight LH-411 from New York JFK,NY (USA) to Munich (Germany), was cleared for takeoff from JFK's runway 22R at approximately 18:52L (22:52Z), the next aircraft in sequence had been cleared to line up runway 22R, when the tower controller highly agitated called "CANCEL TAKEOFF CLEARANCE" at approximately 18:53L, Lufthansa 411 reported rejecting takeoff. The airplane slowed safely from high speed. Another crew on frequency commented that was very close. The Airbus A340 vacated the runway at taxiway H. The crew reported hot brakes and had the brakes checked out by emergency services.

An investigation is underway, I'd imagine but it looks like a good call from ATC.

:shock:
 
Yeah, I read about that on Airliners.net earlier today. Scary stuff for sure. Glad ATC caught it before we had a Tenerife-esque incident
 
Yeah, I read about that on Airliners.net earlier today. Scary stuff for sure. Glad ATC caught it before we had a Tenerife-esque incident

Same place I picked it up too, what is the ground radar equivalent of TCAS? (I guesss they have something at JFK.)
 
Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASDE-X

Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X, or ASDE-X, is a runway-safety tool that enables air traffic controllers to detect potential runway conflicts by providing detailed coverage of movement on runways and taxiways. By collecting data from a variety of sources, ASDE-X is able to track vehicles and aircraft on airport surfaces and obtain identification information from aircraft transponders.
 
^
I thought there would be something, thanks.
Good investment in the system and training by the ATC.

:cool:
 
Next time they're on strike around here, just pay them more. OK? :nod:
Can't, we must cut their pay to refinance the vote buying tax cuts we're doing.

Signed,
the CDU who's being led like a circus bear by a fringe party

[/ :offtopic: rant]
 
1940833.jpg


I hate that airplane, but this and the above photos are nothing short of stunning...
 
The big news atm is probably the air asia a320neo order
 
hill_1919472b.jpg


Hill's TAM (Transatlantic Model) 5, with a wingspan of 6ft and weighing less than 11lbs, made it from Newfoundland to Ireland with a few drops of fuel to spare, marking a record time for the flight of 38 hours and 23 minutes.

The flight recreated the historic first transatlantic journey of the British aviation pioneers Alcock and Brown, who made the crossing in 16 hours and 27 minutes in 1919.

A retired engineer, Hill had reason to savour his moment of triumph: 24 test prototypes of his design had wobbled into the air and failed, crashed or disappeared. But he was certain he could build a model aircraft that could stay aloft for 1,875 miles, enough to fly across the Atlantic.

In August 2002, TAM 1 climbed to 1,000ft bound for Ireland before falling into the ocean. Two days later TAM 2 stalled and met the same fate. TAM 3 disappeared in a rainstorm eight hours and 479 miles out.

Having made adjustments to his computerised autopilot system, Hill returned to Newfoundland the following year, launching TAM 4 into a cloudless sky over Cape Spear at 8pm on August 8 2003. Contact was lost at 430 miles downrange. Someone joked that the Bermuda Triangle may have had a cousin over Greenland. Or perhaps the Icelandic Navy was in need of target practice.

Undaunted, at 7.45pm local time the next day, Hill again held his breath as TAM 5 climbed rapidly, turning gracefully before disappearing out of sight on a 62-degree heading towards Ireland. By 11pm, satellite data showed the tiny aircraft still aloft at a satisfactory altitude, making approximately 43mph with no tailwind.

At 8.30 the following morning, the little plane, nicknamed The Spirit of Butts Farm, after the farm in Maryland owned by Beecher Butts where it had been tested, was roughly 560 miles out. But Hill noted some ominous data from satellites monitoring its telemetry.

The aircraft's four-stroke engine was supposed to be regulated at 3,900rpm, but the readings ranged from 3,100 to 4,100rpm. The plane's altitude was bouncing between 280 and 320 metres, suggesting a porpoising flight path from a shallow climb to a speedy dip.

"The Spirit trotted along all day Sunday," Hill reported. "Over the mid-ocean it picked up a 5-10mph tailwind and was cruising at 50-55mph. I went to bed at roughly 10pm, fearful that the cool of night would increase the viscosity of the fuel, taking the engine from lean to dead."

When he awoke at 4am, there had been no satellite data for three hours, and Hill believed the plane was lost; it was agreed to stand down the officials in Ireland who were making a special six-hour trip from Dublin to the landing site at Mannin Beach, Co Galway.

But just then, data from one of the satellites confirmed that TAM 5 was not only still flying, but was now far enough east to be in warming sunshine, and had shed a lot of fuel weight. By 9am local time (12.30pm in Ireland), the Spirit was a mere 70 miles from the Irish coast.

The landing was a cliffhanger. The engine had been set to run for roughly 37 hours, and Hill worried it might stop a couple of miles short of the landing site.

At 2pm Irish time, the Spirit of Butts Farm hove into view at Mannin Beach, and one of the Irish officials took manual control, banging the rudder stick hard right to kill the engine. A mobile phone link was opened to Hill as the Spirit made a dead-stick landing approximately five feet from the designated spot. At 2.08pm, hearing over the phone link the shout "It's on the ground!", Hill led a whooping cheer, buried his head in his wife's shoulder "and wept unashamedly for joy".

The plane's tank contained less than two ounces of fuel ? a quarter of a cupful. "In the model airplane world, this is no different from Armstrong landing on the moon," Carl Layden, an official observer of the feat, announced.

A blacksmith's son, Maynard Luther Hill was born on February 21 1926, in the coal mining town of Lehighton, Pennsylvania. He numbered Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart among his childhood heroes but was always more fascinated by tiny aircraft than their full-sized counterparts.

"By age 9," he wrote, "I had acquired a fairly serious addiction to balsa wood and glue."

In 1943, having graduated from high school, he joined the US Navy and during the Second World War served in Panama. After the war, Hill took two degrees in Metallurgy at Pennsylvania State University. His balsa-and-glue habit was already so severe that he had trouble controlling it, even during his final exams.

Years before his transatlantic feat, Hill had carved a niche in the aero modellers' hall of fame. In the 1960s, he set 25 world records for speed, duration and altitude, flying his radio-controlled aircraft as high as 26,990 feet, as long as 38 hours and as fast as 151mph.

Hill worked as a metallurgist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore, eventually persuading his supervisors that he should be allowed to develop at work the hobby he pursued in his own time in his basement workshop. He became a pioneer in developing unmanned aerial vehicles ? drones ? for the US military.

In the 1990s, by then retired, mostly deaf, and registered blind as a result of macular degeneration, he announced that he intended to fly a model airplane across the Atlantic ? from Newfoundland on the Canadian seaboard to Ireland.

Everyone thought this was impossible ? except Hill. According to international rules, to qualify as a model a plane must weigh less than 11 pounds ? fuel included. No such plane had flown even one-third as far as Hill had in mind.

Hill was inducted into the Model Aviation Hall of Fame in 1977. Several of his planes, including the Spirit of Butts Farm, are on display at the National Model Aviation Museum in Indiana. Another plane is in the National Air and Space Museum's collection.

Maynard Hill, who died on June 7, is survived by Gay, his wife of 59 years, and their three children.
 
Yeah, that boneyard has so many interesting aircraft... as well as many dismantled B-52's from the strategic talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
 
The videos showing how the wings were chopped off by just dropping giant metal blades was painful to watch.
 
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