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The Aircraft Thread!
- Thread starter PracticalMac
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I assume a lot of us read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, an outstanding story, and also a movie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/) of how the US threw their test pilots under the bus to quickly get into space to beat the Soviets.
Ok, not completely serious, but a pragmatic decision was made to focus on putting astronauts on top of rockets instead of aircraft capable of flying into space. It’s an engrossing read if you are into aviation stories.Flight sims
Speaking of X-Planes, this allows me to introduce a discussion of flight sims which I had a long time love affair with. I no longer actively fly them, venturing into the galaxy instead with titles like:
Elite Dangerous
These are Flight Sim titles I’ve had great fun with over the last 27 years or so:
- A-10 Tank Killer
- Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat
- Nighthawk F117 Stealth Fighter
- F-18
- Falcón 3.0
- Warbirds
- X-Plane
Warbirds was also in incredibly fun online multiplayer game where joint efforts in a variety of WWII aircraft types allowed players to take over bases, and control territory in a Pacific Island type landscape.
And finally X-Plane, still going strong today, but it is not a typical combat flight sim, in fact the last time I checked, it was not primarily designed as a combat simulator, but more of a design simulator, touting accurate flight models, allowing you to build aircraft, and included an incredible library of accurate commercial and military aircraft, and as far as I know, the only home simulator that actually uses airfoil drag and lift calculations to determine performance, not a performance chart. It has/had a great Space Shuttle simulation that allows you to start an approach for landing at about 500k feet if I remember correctly.
There were/are people there who actually operated virtual airlines for fun. The flight modeling seemed very realistic. You can gain some aviation mechanical flying experience flying these planes, but they are no where near as complicated as a real airplane.
The last airplane I flew in real life, the Airbus A320 is shown below as an X-plane (the simulation) creation. These are images of skins created by players and made available to the community, that are applied to the fuselage of the aircraft, free to download.
A-320 The NWA Bowling Shoe
Turned into the last NWA paint job
With the Delta merger, transistioned
to the above and present
In my career I went from props, to jets, to turboprops, to turbo jets
WWII era prop sounds outstanding. Although they were efficient, I never cared for turbo props. There were like 10 extra emergencies associated with have a prop connected to the front of a jet engine, along with extra vibration. Most of the commuters have transistioned away from turbo props primarily because passengers prefer jets (I think). The best sound and smoothest ride is the turbo jet.
Update: added Warbirds (the game) info.
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The "UFO" point is for things like X-planes and other fantastic air machines.
I assume a lot of us read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, an outstanding story, and also a movie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/) of how the US threw their test pilots under the bus to quickly get into space to beat the Soviets.
Flight sims
Speaking of X-Planes, this allows me to introduce a discussion of flight sims which I had a long time love affair with. I no longer actively fly them, venturing into the galaxy instead with titles like:
Currently I’m working on building a transport, assault ship in Empyrion:Galactic Survival, actually mostly banging my head against.
These are Flight Sim titles I’ve had great fun with over the last 27 years or so:
Of these, CYAC was incredibly fun in the early years of flight sims due to an early opportunity for networked player vs player combat. Falcón was just incredible because due to having F16 pilots consulting them, they produced one of the most realistic combat flight sims. It took me a week just to get through the tutorials. You could plan a combat ground strike mission, and flight plan from start to finish, not to mention having to dog fight in and out, which was not completely realistic imo.
- A-10 Tank Killer
- Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat
- Nighthawk F117 Stealth Fighter
- F-18
- Falcón 3.0
- X-Plane
And finally X-Plane, still going strong today, but it is not a typical combat flight sim, in fact the last time I checked, it was not primarily designed as a combat simulator, but more of a design simulator, allowing you to build aircraft, with an incredible library of accurate commercial aircraft, and as far as I know, the only home simulator that actually uses airfoil drag and lift calculations to determine performance, not a performance chart. It has/had a great Space Shuttle simulation that allows you to start an approach for landing at about 500k feet if I remember correctly.
The last airplane I flew in real life Airbus A320 as as X-plane simulation creation. These are skins created by players and made available to the community, that are applied to the fuselage of the aircraft.
View attachment 771932[doublepost=1532182101][/doublepost]
A-320 The NWA Bowling Shoe
View attachment 771935
Turned into the last NWA paint job
View attachment 771933
With the Delta merger, transistioned
to the above and present
In my career I went from props, to jets, to turboprops, to turbo jets
WWII era prop sounds outstanding. Although they were efficient, I never cared for turbo props. There were like 10 extra emergencies associated with have a prop connected to the front of a jet engine, along with extra vibration. Most of the commuters have transistioned away from turbo props primarily because passengers prefer jets (I think). The best sound and smoothest ride is the turbo jet.
If you want a combat sim, look into DCS. I’ve been having a blast with the F-18 and doing carrier traps.
Holy crap, the photo realistic fidelity of the video on this page, https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/ may cause me to break out my flight stick(s) again.
Update: found it! Warbirds http://www.totalsims.com/info_warbirds.php
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My granddad was a youngster when the Wright Bros persisted in going past just thinking that man was meant to fly. He was amazed at that, and so was further astounded when a Chuck Yeager flight went supersonic. But when I saw my granddad holding my nephew on his lap in a rocking chair watching TV during the first moon landing, he was practically stunned. He just kept softly pounding a fist on one arm of the chair and saying "will you look at that..."
He lived in an amazing era for technology rollouts including but not limited to flying: 1883-1973. "So much winning" and of course no end in sight even now, but to go from where electricity in a house was a big deal, to where landing on the moon was even feasible? People had to get their imaginations stretched again during his lifetime, for sure.
He would have loved reading about exploration of the outer reaches of our solar system. I keep wondering what we need to discover or build to get out of the galaxy. Talk about turbo boost.
My grandparents were more or less of a similar vintage to yours, yet both of my grandmothers, who were almost adult (if not actually so, one was training to be a teacher at the time) when the Wright Brothers took off in Kitty Hawk, actually flew on commercial flights in the 1950s - now, both had always had their own salaried careers throughout their lives and marriages - and each, in their own way, hugely enjoyed the experience of flying.
However, neither grandfather ever flew anywhere, though.
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I remember how, as an undergrad, in the 80s, in the house of a university friend of mine, his father (who was already then well into his sixties), recalled with awe the day, when, as a boy in his early teens, he had seen the airship R100 in flight.
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An idea about the speed of innovation:
When the USS Texas, Battleship BB 35, the year it was laid down (construction started) was 1912, same year HMS Titanic sank.
When BB 35 was retired was in the Nuclear Age.
At the declaration of war in Europe, 1st September 1939 all the air forces still used fabric covered biplanes.
When the war ended almost 6 years later, all metal jet aircraft was in productuion.
Indeed... and that one-liner deserves its own entire thread thanks to all the geopolitical considerations of striking a deal to make a new aircraft today...
When I was a kid there was an airstrip about 40 miles from here that my dad kept a Piper at for awhile. It was in a broad river valley, literally a grass strip with a windsock and sometimes a guy near the end to wave off the cows.
When they put up a building later on they stenciled "A I R P O R T" on the roof so you could tell it from a barn even if from the air it was still your best guess as a pilot where to set down a plane. Now their pilots' lounge advertises "Free WiFi" so they're into at least 20th century.
This came to Lexington, KY back in the spring. I had sort of forgotten about it, but was in Lexington, saw it flying around, and took a chance to get the best photo I could of it(couldn't quite get close enough, and since I wasn't planning on photographing a plane I didn't have a long lens with me).
I seem to recall that there are 17 of these total surviving, and only a handful airworthy.
![_DSC2527.jpg]( "_DSC2527.jpg")
I seem to recall that there are 17 of these total surviving, and only a handful airworthy.
This one still manages to make the air shows, and this past June was at the former "grass strip" airport a couple counties up from here that I had mentioned earlier. You could even sign up for a ride in the thing if you were brave. "That's pretty old," a friend of mine said. I laughed. "My kitchen range is a Kalamazoo from sometime back in the 50s and you're not afraid to eat what I cook on the thing, right?" but she couldn't be talked into flying in the SNJ-4... me either...
I'd have been thrilled to have had the opportunity to be flown in a craft something like that.
A private dream is to have a flight (that is, be flown) in a vintage biplane.
Do you know the airport code, or at least the name?
Could find it on this web site, Sky Vector.
Both she and you are afraid to ride in a 75 year old airplane.
Just goes to show how Hawaiian Shirt and shorts cocktail drinking comfortable we are.
If cabin pressure was lost, you suffocate instantly, unconscious in as little as 15 seconds, dead in 3 min, and frozen like the north poll in 1 hour.
[doublepost=1532278458][/doublepost]
Where are you?
$300 gets you 30 min or more.
The aircraft of my dad's youth was the Piper J-3 Cub. My dad and my uncle in their teens could be found around airports doing whatever they could in order to earn rides in one.
My uncle went on to aviation as a living, doing various things. At some point he was being paid to cloud seed for rain. He was never an airline pilot although he was involved all his life with CAP (Civil Air Patrol). I do not know if that was just financial support or being part of the organization.
My dad got his private pilot's license in the late '60s and he held a commercial license at the time I was born. That and his degree in electrical engineering were all courtesy of the GI bill (he was a Marine and Korea was his war). He went into aerospace and retired from TRW in 1995.
But my birth was the death knell for flying for him. My mom tells me they used to fly into Phoenix in light airplanes all the time, but not after I was born. If you don't keep up you eventually lose the privilege to fly and my dad stopped doing the periodic medical checks at some point.
For awhile in my early 20s he was trying to get back into it and was passing the med checks. But for whatever reason seemed never to go for that final check ride where the instructor would give him his ticket back.
I suppose that had something to do with the twenty or so odd years of change between the late 60s and early 90s.
I actually held a student license at one point until I realized that I loved SEEING and HEARING airplanes much more than I actually liked FLYING them. I tend to be dangerous when not paying attention when driving. That's disasterous when flying so I elected to stop. Overcoming all the obstacles I saw for something I didn't really love wasn't worth it.
It's up in Norwich, NY. OIC is the code. Lt.Warren E. Eaton Airport no less. Can fly little jets in these days, and they even have T-hangars now, or at least one of them. The state senator was forever bragging about that get.
A good classic. With all really old airplanes, proper maintenance is crucial, especially anti-corrosion measures. Otherwise every so often the wing falls off...
I am in Europe, (the British Isles), alas, but must keep my eyes open for such events and offers.
Closest airport to me is a little one that people are happy to fly into for breakfast sometimes. It's a lot closer to the reality of grass strip with windsock than most people realize is still a viable gig these days. EDIT: got my local breakfast fly-in type airstrips confused.. this one's NK68 over in Hancock... not a bad place to land on a nice day if you've been there before lol. Those are not clouds in the far background.
![Hancock Airport nk68 on a sunny day.jpg]( "Hancock Airport nk68 on a sunny day.jpg")
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Small turboprops can be extremely noisy - which is something that those venerable posters on this thread already know - but which came as some considerable surprise to me when, in recent years, I have had occasion to fly on them fairly frequently.
Their altitude seems to range between 9,000-and around 19,000, or 22-24,000 feet, not higher.
And, on that topic, maybe it is because some of the flights I have taken in the past few years have been transcontinental, but I note that the planes seem tone flying higher.
Flights (certainly in Europe) rarely exceeded 9,000, 10,000; now, 11,900 is not so unusual (granted, when flying from halfway down the Africa continent to Europe).
Their altitude seems to range between 9,000-and around 19,000, or 22-24,000 feet, not higher.
And, on that topic, maybe it is because some of the flights I have taken in the past few years have been transcontinental, but I note that the planes seem tone flying higher.
Flights (certainly in Europe) rarely exceeded 9,000, 10,000; now, 11,900 is not so unusual (granted, when flying from halfway down the Africa continent to Europe).
I'm surprised I don't see any more love for the SR-71 family.
![lockheed_sr71_l3.jpg]()
Designed and built with late fifties/early sixties technology, and still unsurpassed.
Designed and built with late fifties/early sixties technology, and still unsurpassed.
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Amazing aircraft, and if the X-plane flight model is accurate - this thing was super difficult to fly.I'm surprise I don't see any more love for the SR-71 family.
![lockheed_sr71_l3.jpg]()
Designed with late fifties technology, and still unsurpassed.