The Aviation Thread [Contains Lots of Awesome Pictures]

KaJuN said:
I thought you called him Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Los Angeles Lakers.
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I'm sorry son, but you must have me confused with someone else. My name is Roger Murdock. I'm the co-pilot.
 
Spotted this on the back of a flatbed on the Newell hwy today. What looks to be a Spad XIII (well, most of one, the wings are wrapped up), although I'm not sure if it's genuine or a replica. The guy said he'd bought it on some sort of wild impulse from an air museum in Victoria and asked if we wanted to buy it off him for $6000. Tempting but I have no idea where I'd put it :p

https://pic.armedcats.net/r/re/redbull/2011/06/04/04062011_001_.jpg
https://pic.armedcats.net/r/re/redbull/2011/06/04/04062011.jpg
 


DH Dragon Rapide

The Rapide was a fairly successful short haul airliner of the 1930s. Classic De Haviland shaped tail and kinda handsome looking too.

:)

Red_Bull said:
Spotted this on the back of a flatbed on the Newell hwy today. What looks to be a Spad XIII (well, most of one, the wings are wrapped up), although I'm not sure if it's genuine or a replica. The guy said he'd bought it on some sort of wild impulse from an air museum in Victoria and asked if we wanted to buy it off him for $6000. Tempting but I have no idea where I'd put it :p

* snip SPAD pics *
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At $6000 that sounds cheap even for replica, maybe he stole it.

:lol:
 
1930294.jpg


Lockheed Jetstar
The Lockheed JetStar (company designations L-329 and L-1329; designated C-140 in USAF service) is a business jet produced from the early 1960s through the 1970s. The JetStar was the first dedicated business jet to enter service. It was also one of the largest aircraft in the class for many years, seating ten plus two crew. It is distinguishable from other small jets by its four engines, mounted on the rear of the fuselage in a similar layout to the larger Vickers VC10 airliner, and the "slipper"-style fuel tanks fixed to the wings.
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I've had the pleasure of getting to go onto one, years ago when I worked the line at KMDT. Beautiful airplane, but unfortunately, like most of Lockheed's designs, way to far ahead of the curve - and therefore never caught on like it should have...
 
That Spad 13 is definitely a replica. I can tell from the shape of the fuselage, the fake valve cover fairings, and of course, from seeing quite a few replicas in my day :p


I still would have been tempted to buy it though!
 
Strelok16 said:
That Spad 13 is definitely a replica. I can tell from the shape of the fuselage, the fake valve cover fairings, and of course, from seeing quite a few replicas in my day :p


I still would have been tempted to buy it though!
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That's what I thought, otherwise I would've bought it on the spot :(.
 
flyinhawaiian said:
Lockheed Jetstar

I've had the pleasure of getting to go onto one, years ago when I worked the line at KMDT. Beautiful airplane, but unfortunately, like most of Lockheed's designs, way to far ahead of the curve - and therefore never caught on like it should have...
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How expensive would it be to run one nowadays in terms of fuel economy and parts availability? I've been hooked on them ever since seeing its appearance in Goldfinger.
 
Labcoatguy said:
How expensive would it be to run one nowadays in terms of fuel economy and parts availability? I've been hooked on them ever since seeing its appearance in Goldfinger.
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Astronomically expensive. The closest aircraft in terms of size, payload and range to the JetStar is the Hawker 800. Both aircraft use variants of the Honeywell/Garrett TFE731 turbofan engine, but the Hawker has two engines as opposed to the JetStar's four. Right away, the cost of operating the JetStar has essentially doubled in comparison to the Hawker, before we even take into account the availability of parts (which doesn't favour the JetStar, I imagine), landing fees (the JetStar weighs empty what the Hawker weighs full) and other upkeep. For a couple of hundred hours of flying a year, I'd bet the cost of operating a JetStar would be north of $8000 per block hour - roughly on par with a Boeing 737NG.

Granted, the JetStar would have a lot of ramp presence, but the Hawker, especially a winglet-equipped 850XP, is no slouch either.
 
I don't think there are many jetstars still airworthy.

Personally, I'd take something like a Dassault Falcon.
 
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This is a fairly well known story in aviation history, which I hope may be new to some of you.

Wiki said:
?Lady Be Good? was an American B-24D Liberator, AAF serial number 41-24301, which flew for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Based at Soluch Field in Soluch (today Suluq and Benina International Airport, Libya) as part of the 514th Bomb Squadron, 376th Bomb Group, it failed to return from an April 4, 1943 bombing raid on Naples, Italy. At the time, the plane was assumed to have crashed into the Mediterranean Sea and its nine crew members were classified as Missing in Action.
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Seventeen years later in November, 1958 the nearly intact ?Lady Be Good? was discovered 440 miles inland, by an oil company survey flight in a DC-3.

Subsequent searches for the airmen in 1959, found eight of the nine crew and a diary of post crash events.

The crew had bailed out believing they were still over the Mediterranean, when two of the four engines had flamed out due to low fuel.

The plane flew on alone for a further 16 miles and made a reasonable crash landing all by itself, but broke in two.

Only eight of the crew were able to form up post bail out.

Believing they were near the coast, they walked north with only one canteen of water for 80 miles. After eight days, five of the crew were unable to go on any further.

Three of them decided to carry on which they did for another 27 miles, where sadly they died still more than 300 miles from the coast.

The ninth member of the crew was the Bombardier, who died during the bailout when his parachute did not deploy correctly.

https://pic.armedcats.net/h/he/heathrow/2011/06/06/A-LBGCrew.jpg

The accident was probably caused by an ADF problem or navigation error. The crew were returning to base near the Libyan coast for the first time, at night and in bad weather.

Of the 28,000 B-24s produced at time, many thousands were lost in action, this is the sad, heroic and mysterious story of just of one them.

:(

?Lady Be Good? (Wiki)

?Lady Be Good? Website
 
I love how shortly after the British/French said they want to restore a Concorde to fly over the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, the Russians quickly responded by saying they want to restore a Tu-144 to fly over the 2014 Olympic opening ceremony.
 
That can only be a good thing.
 
why does that third theory not sound unlikely? :think:
(the part about the imprisonment at least )
 
Heathrow said:
?Lady Be Good? (Wiki)

?Lady Be Good? Website
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This history is new to me.
Heathrow, you seem to be a WWII enthusiast so i can mention here another similar story which happened in the same bit of land and two years before and involved free french aviators.

First a little word about the context :

In september 1940, the territory known as Afrique ?quatoriale Fran?aise (now more or less Tchad, Cameroun and Gabon) seceded from the Vichy governement and rejoined the free french movement and the G?n?ral de Gaulle.
It was a major strategic move for the allies because it gave access to the south of Libya which was then an italian territory and permited an attack on two fronts (free french by the south and british by the east).

In November 1940, De Gaulle appointed the then colonel Leclerc (future four stars general) to conduct attacks of the italian fort of Koufra via northern Tchad
Carte.jpg


He has the support of a free french bomber squadron equiped with Bristol Blenheim , a two engines medium bomber plane
blenheim-french_600.jpg


Of course in this hostile and desertic environment , the situation is less than favourable , without navigational aids ,radars or radio , even the slightest navigation error can lead to a deviation of several kilometers.
The 4 february 1941 , a raid of four blenheim took of of Ounianga en route to Koufra .

One of them never return : the Blenheim coded T1867 was lost and its crew ( Sous-Lieutenant Claron, sergent-chef Devin and sergent Le Calvez) reported missing.

It's only the 29 march 1959 that the wreck was discovered by a group of sheperd in the desert of north east Tchad near the border of Libya and Soudan.
Three squeleton were found under the wings of the plane and send back to France.
grb18.jpg
 
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