The Aviation Thread [Contains Lots of Awesome Pictures]

Here's a story for the Vulcan fans:

BBC News - Vulcan Bomber XH558: 'Grace and style' in the sky

BBC News said:
They were once the UK's most potent nuclear deterrent and were on standby for a role in the Cuban missile crisis.

But in recent years there has been just one that kept the flag flying for the Vulcan Bombers.

XH558 is the final airworthy aircraft of its type and has been admired by thousands of people each year at air shows as a result.

But soon it too could be grounded like all those before it.

The "tin triangle", which is more than 50 years old, needs "challenging modifications" to both wings which the trust that owns it has decided cannot be funded.

The Leicestershire-based Vulcan To The Sky trust, which bought the aircraft in 2005, says escalating costs and limited engine life mean soon it will be confined to the runway for limited displays.

This last one is very impressive to see still flying and reminds me of the James Bond movie "Thunderball", where a Vulcan had a staring role.

:smile:
 
They reckon she's got one more display season left in her and that's it so if you want to see her in the air make sure you grab the chance while you still can. I've been lucky enough to see her three times this year after disappointments last year both at Shoreham and Dunsfold.
 
I just realized that in my post above, only the quote is shown and not what I typed :? Strange.

What I wrote:

The newspaper article also said, that the ultralight pilot is not known (at least when the article was written) and that they want to investigate that from radar data. It could have come from a range of airport in a radius of ~100 km. But it seems like the ultralight pilot didn't report anything.

Maybe he's afraid of consequences? I'm not sure how good radar coverage is here. Low flying aircraft don't show in flight radar here. So would it be possible to "escape" ?
 
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It's cool and all, and some great flying, but I get the feeling the guy on the left is full of himself.
 
[video=youtube;7IRiR3cF-cM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IRiR3cF-cM&feature=youtu.be[/video]​

:shock:

WFAA TV - Dramatic footage shows plane hitting car
WFAA TV said:
ROANOKE ? The manager of Northwest Regional Airport in Roanoke vowed Monday to see to it that a weekend accident never happens again.

"When you have enough accidents, either on the trees or the fence or whatever, the issue is not going to go away," Glen Hyde said. "The issue is going to continue to present itself."

Hyde said the he plans to work with neighboring landowners and the owner of a private road nearby to make the airport safer.

Meanwhile, the FAA is continuing its investigation into the crash, but because the airport is private, FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the organization has "no regulatory authority over safety measures at the airport."
YT video

No serious injuries reported.

I think the airport is this one:
Roanoke Regional Airport, Denton County,TX (wiki)

AirNav - Roanoke Regional Airport, Denton County,TX (525F)

The road is not owned by the airport.
A STOP sign on the road for cars 50 feet from the runway was ignored.
SUV driver & pax did not see approaching Cessna.


The runway is 3500 feet long, more than enough to land a Cessna.

Hence, it may have been prudent, for the student pilot to land further down the runway and therefore miss any obstacles on short final.


FAA are investigating, so will have to wait, etc, etc.
(PS Why aren't the FAA responsible for the safety at this airport, just because it is private?)

So, views gentlemen?

:smile:
 

Not a Boeing 707 or 720 nor a Douglas DC-8.

It is a Convair 990 called a Coronado, clue was on the tail fin! :rolleyes:

If you knew this already, then you are truely an aviation nerd. :tease:
 

The CV-990 was a real oddball of an aircraft in many ways. If you look on the top of the wing, you'll see some silver bulges - they're what they called "speed fairings':
CVns5.jpg

The idea was that the fairings would influence the location and intensity of the shockwave that forms on top of an aircraft wing at typical airliner cruise speeds. Surprisingly, they worked rather well; the CV-990 could cruise at Mach 0.91, which made it the fastest civilian aircraft in the world, until the Tu-144 flew eight years later. The aircraft wasn't a success at all, like its predecessor, the CV-880. Both aircraft suffered from a fuselage cross-section that was simply too small compared to the 707 and the DC-8, as well as lackluster manufacturer support. Beyond that, the M0.91 cruise speed necessitated a very high fuel burn, and the increase in speed simply didn't make any difference in scheduled service.

Another neat feature of the CV-990 was its unusual engines. It was powered by General Electric CJ805-23 turbofan engines, which are derivatives of the military J79 engine. What makes these engines unusual is their layout:
Y5gRv.jpg

This is how a CJ805-23 looks from the front as installed in a CV-990:
W8t7x.jpg


Basically, this is the idea behind these engines: In the late 1950s, it was evident that turbojet engines simply were not efficient nor quiet enough for widespread civilian use, so the engine manufacturers came up with the idea to use some of the exhaust energy from a turbojet engine to drive a fan, which had most of its air bypass the turbojet engine; this is of course now known as a turbofan engine. The problem is, how do you drive the fan of an engine, which should be at the front for many reasons, when you're extracting power from the back? For some manufacturers, like Pratt & Whitney, it wasn't an issue; their engines all used a two-shaft configuration (meaning two concentric shafts, driven by different turbines, drive different parts of the engine at different speeds); they could slap a fan on the slower-turning low-pressure spool and be done with. General Electric, on the other hand, traditionally built single-shaft engines, so this wasn't an option for them. What they did instead was stick a free-spinning power turbine behind one of their engines, and stuck a double deck of blades on the outside of the turbine, creating a bypass fan, albeit mounted aft of the core engine. While it was effective, there are a number of issues with this configuration; the ductwork is heavy and has all kinds of aerodynamic issues, and the fan turbine has all kinds of sealing issues, amongst others.

This is a GE CF700, not a CJ805-23, but this cutaway better illustrates the design philosophy of the CJ805-23:
dblhD.gif
 
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Is that a 990 or an 880? The Convair design is super obvious, some beautiful aircraft, but they never really caught on...
 

Not a Boeing 707 or 720 nor a Douglas DC-8.

It is a Convair 990 called a Coronado, clue was on the tail fin! :rolleyes:

If you knew this already, then you are truely an aviation nerd. :tease:

My mind immediately went to Convair because the engine layout is very similar to this:



B-58 Hustler. Plane of awesome.
 
The CV-990 was a real oddball of an aircraft in many ways.

* snip *

Another neat feature of the CV-990 was its unusual engines. It was powered by General Electric CJ805-23 turbofan engines, which are derivatives of the military J79 engine. What makes these engines unusual is their layout:
Y5gRv.jpg

This is how a CJ805-23 looks from the front as installed in a CV-990:
W8t7x.jpg


Basically, this is the idea behind these engines: In the late 1950s, it was evident that turbojet engines simply were not efficient nor quiet enough for widespread civilian use, so the engine manufacturers came up with the idea to use some of the exhaust energy from a turbojet engine to drive a fan, which had most of its air bypass the turbojet engine; this is of course now known as a turbofan engine. The problem is, how do you drive the fan of an engine, which should be at the front for many reasons, when you're extracting power from the back? For some manufacturers, like Pratt & Whitney, it wasn't an issue; their engines all used a two-shaft configuration (meaning two concentric shafts, driven by different turbines, drive different parts of the engine at different speeds); they could slap a fan on the slower-turning low-pressure spool and be done with. General Electric, on the other hand, traditionally built single-shaft engines, so this wasn't an option for them. What they did instead was stick a free-spinning power turbine behind one of their engines, and stuck a double deck of blades on the outside of the turbine, creating a bypass fan, albeit mounted aft of the core engine. While it was effective, there are a number of issues with this configuration; the ductwork is heavy and has all kinds of aerodynamic issues, and the fan turbine has all kinds of sealing issues, amongst others.

This is a GE CF700, not a CJ805-23, but this cutaway better illustrates the design philosophy of the CJ805-23:
dblhD.gif

Very interesting, I didn't know about the engine layout innovation, just that they were notoriuosly smokey to operate. (See the Spantax pic on the Wiki link as an example.)

My mind immediately went to Convair because the engine layout is very similar to this:

* snip B-58 pic *

B-58 Hustler. Plane of awesome.

Yes indeed some manufacturers had a "house style", an awesome cold war era airplane. Amazing to think that the B-58 first flew in 1956, just a little more than ten years after B-17s Fortresses went out of service. Now that was some progress!

Is that a 990 or an 880? The Convair design is super obvious, some beautiful aircraft, but they never really caught on...

Yup, I reckon. If you view the hi-res pic on the Wiki link, the tail number does look like HB-ICC, as noted, plus the tail fin has the "Coronado" tag on it.

Don't think the CV-880 had a name at all. Anybody else know? :think:
(Maybe the name of some other early American Conquistador?)
 
Don't think the CV-880 had a name at all. Anybody else know? :think:

According to my old and faithful paper encyclopedia , the company initially had the idea to name the plane "golden arrow" because the external surfaces of the plane could be gilded through a particular process of anodisation.
Later the idea was abandoned and the official name was Convair 880.
 
The wing fairings reminded me of this:

tu-95-01.jpg
 
I went to Uhmerica and I found this:

5kr5C.jpg


2x DC-10 Waterbombers
 
I went to Uhmerica and I found this:

* snip pic *

2x DC-10 Waterbombers

And speaking of three engined, flying wackyness, a few weeks back I saw a Boeing 727 landing here.

Then I saw the same aircraft again last week. Who the heck is operating one of those still, I wondered? :think:

Turns out it was this one:


Shows Bahrain Royal Flight Boeing 727 (A9C-BA) taking off from RWY 27L.
Nice quality pictures with ATC sound, but the video is a bit dull otherwise.

Maybe they flew over to go shopping. :lol:
 
When I was a little kid (3 years old I think), I flew to Yugoslavia with a Aviogenex 727. I still remember, that I wondered about the 3 engine layout because I hadn't seen them before. I had little models of 737 and 747 to play with with only had engines under its wings.
 
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