The Aviation Thread [Contains Lots of Awesome Pictures]

The barrel roll is a relatively gentle manoeuvre and doesn't actually cause a massive amount of stress to an airframe. I rolled the Falcon 7X sim that rdketchup let me play with last year with no problem at all but when I tried to loop it the electronics took over and it just did a gentle stall.

When someone pulls off a loop or a stall turn in a commercial airliner then I will be impressed. I seem to recall that on paper at least the Concorder should have been capable of executing a loop without incident although to my knowledge they never actually tried it.
 
As Tex himself pointed out, it was a 1G maneuver and didn't really stress the plane. Consider, though, that this was at a time when Comets, the first jet airliners, had recently been falling out of the sky in quick succession with the 'official' cause not well proven yet. Jet airliners were thought to be fragile, unsafe things that the wings could come off of at any time.

Along comes Boeing with a jet airliner they're apparently not afraid to aerobat - everyone on the ground thought it was a high stress maneuver, including Tex's boss until he explained it. The apparent sturdiness of the Dash 80, later 707, was what sold airlines on it. And not incidentally, pretty much killed off Comet sales.

I commend FedEx Flight 705 to your attention. The pilot executed a very high speed reverse Immelman to throw off a hijacker on board. So fast, in fact, that the empennage started experiencing transonic flutter. Read the article - the pilot was throwing the DC-10 around the sky like a fighter and it held up despite being stressed way, way, way beyond its design limits.

The airplane in question? Still in service today.
 
Last edited:
I need to track down the episode of Air Crash Investigation and check that out. I bet the graphics showing the manoeuvres are pretty stunning.
 

Here ya go. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: MWF
Thanks and :+1:
 
I can top that. A close family friend of a friend of mine was a fast jet pilot with the RAF and got kicked out. He was en route back to base on a zero feet exercise over the North Sea when he thought it would be a good idea to buzz an oil rig in his Tornado GR4, inverted, with the afterburners lit. He would probably have got away with it if he hadn't succeeded in blowing out the flame on the top of the gas derrick! :lol:

Was his call sign Maverick?
 
Awesome video of an Emirates A380 flying in formation with guys wearing jetpack wingsuits.


Theres a making of video on the Facebooks - https://www.facebook.com/Emirates/videos/781263928650025/ - havent been able to find it on YouTube yet.

Very cool! From the reddit thread I found this video showing just how slow the A380 can fly. It's like a bumblebee up there.

[video=youtube;8EUr-5fOLvE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EUr-5fOLvE&ab_channel=TomasPauko[/video]
 
Last edited:
I see your single A380 low pass, and raise you a double A380 low pass

 
I guess, that the A380 isn't actually flying THAT slow. I've been spotting in Frankfurt regularly, when my wife still studied there. Approaches of the A380 seemed always slow, because of the sheer size of the plane.Objectively the approach speed of a A320 and an A380 in a typical configuration landing configuration is about the same. Only that the A380 is more then twice the lengths of the A320. So when both planes are flying at the same speed, the A320 covers over twice its lengths in ground distance, while the A380 only covers once its length in the same time frame.

That's why the A380 always appears rather slow. When we now assume, that, for showing off, it has no payload and a minimum amount of fuel, full flaps configuration, it can fly even slower and appears much slower. I have no exact data for an A380, but on my simulator on A 747-8i, with no payload and 7 tones of fuel, it has a landing speed of 120kt. That is rather slow in comparison to the typical jet operation speeds that you can see at an airport.


Concerning that wingsuit video: :?:?:?

I wonder how dangerous that was because of wake turbulence. Because once, I've almost been blown off my bike from an A380 passing over me at the airport fence in one situation.
 
Last edited:
I knocked out my instrument written exam with a 92%. :dance: Stage 2 check was today and I'm onto my first instrument cross country Saturday. If all goes well I'll have the rating in just a few weeks. Hurrah!
 
Congratz :thumbup:
 
For reasons I have yet to determine I have downloaded X-Plane and am going to figure this out if it kills me.

So far I managed to fly from Boston to Worcester in a Cessna but I spent 20 minutes going the wrong way because I didn't know how to read the GPS :lol:
 
I did the same about 2 years ago... but started right away with the 777. Its fun. If you have specific questions... don't hesitate to ask.
 
I don't have a proper flight stick so there's only so much I can do trying to keep things straight and level with an Xbox 360 controller. At this point my main goals are to learn the navigation techniques (did some VOL practice yesterday).

I knocked out my instrument written exam with a 92%. :dance: Stage 2 check was today and I'm onto my first instrument cross country Saturday. If all goes well I'll have the rating in just a few weeks. Hurrah!

Now that I fully understand what this means, congrats!
 
Last edited:
Ok. I can't tell you anything about "manual" navigating. I spent most of my time learning how to program the FMC, reading charts and the use and programming of SID/STAR procedures. Until today, I've never flown a "simple" plane in X-Plane.
Only 777,747,A320 and A350.
 
JATO just kicked in yo!
 
Ok. I can't tell you anything about "manual" navigating. I spent most of my time learning how to program the FMC, reading charts and the use and programming of SID/STAR procedures. Until today, I've never flown a "simple" plane in X-Plane.
Only 777,747,A320 and A350.
There are some good free apps out there for practicing how to interpret and navigate using single vor/ndb needle.
 
There are some good free apps out there for practicing how to interpret and navigate using single vor/ndb needle.

I actually found VOR and NDB tracking suprisingly easy and logical. Approaches are the next hurdle, at least for airports without ILS. I found where to look up approach plates now I just need to figure out what they mean and how to do the thing they describe... the default Cessna doesn't have DME but it does have GPS with an approach function.
 
Top