Just out of curiosity - Airplane Guys

I dunno Pete. 6 F-35's will give them a run for the money. I've heard both too.

 

Shortly before they were phased out, I used to regularly hear the incredible roaring whoop of the Starfighter engines being run up at Prestwick. Scottish Aviation had a contract to do something with them, so they were regular visitors. I don't know if any were based there, but the public road used to take me by the back of the SA hangar and quite often one of them would be running up. What a glorious sound.

 

A Cessna Dragonfly is a close second.

 

Veteran's Day! I'm a few days late, but as I assume most of you guys have been in the armed forces, and you, Jim are the most obvious. Well, I want to say thank you all for serving and protecting our country. I was not in there helping out, because my Mother wrote a letter to Sen. Williams in NJ asking to not draft me because my brother Tom, "Wonder Warthog", his call sign, 1st Air Cavalry, was severely wounded on his 2nd tour in Vietnam. I was #6 in the lottery. He is still with us, it's amazing. I'm glad my big brother is still here.
And here's to my Father in Law, Guy Moulton who was shot down in his B17 on his 2nd sortee and was a prisoner of war for 2 years, or till the end of WWII. After that, I guess, nothing really bothered him.
To my Father, who wanted to go overseas, but his high blood # kept him in the states flying and training bombardiers in his modified Beechcraft.
To my Uncle Howard and his friends who flew Mustangs and P47's over Germany.
To my neighbor, Mr. Leonard, who flew P38's in Japan.
To my good friend's Dad, Mike Galiano, who spent all of WWII in the Pacific on the ground. Another guy that was never bothered by anything. A "just do it" kinda guy! He always called me Heath! My name is Keith, and my Mother got that name from a high school friend that died in WWII. So here's to Keith!
And here's to all my high school friends who died in Vietnam!
Again, thank you all for serving and protecting our great nation! You too, 2M!

 

Today on the VFT.

 

One of my favorites. Today on the VFT.

 

Here's a good read. The many proposed variants of the Valkyrie. Need to move 80 troops at mach 3? Here's your man.

 

Can you imagine....80 troops doing 2000 MPH....
....imagine the breeze when they open the jump door....

 

Say goodbye to my afternoon
Thanks Jim

 

The Greenies would have whinged about it, and hopefully the Govt of the day would have told them to shut up, national priority and all that.
It would have been nice to see another SS transport in the skies.

 

I have become a YouTube fan and two of my favourite channels are:

• The History Guy (an American chap from Illinois who really nails some great topics - although for some reason he cannot seem to pronounce the military rank “lieutenant” correctly....);
• Drachinifels (naval history - quite superb actually);
• War Stories with Dr. Mark Felton.

OK - that’s three - so sue me!

Here is a great one from Mark Felton on the first jet-vs-jet combat in history and if I am not mistaken, it happened quite near to where our good friend Jim was born at Manston, UK (...errr, ummm...several years later).

 

Here's a question for the airplane guys. Say you're taking off. As soon as your wheels are up, something unknown happens that could make you crash in a quarter of a mile. No specific threat yet, but something unknown is wrong. Say the controls feel strange. You have plenty of runway left. Do you land wheels up and destroy the airplane and probably walk away, or do you risk it?

 

I am in no way a pilot. I do believe once you pull the wheels up you are committed. I've flown on many commercial jets where the take off speed (wheels up) was over 150 mph. At that speed 1/4 mile is only going to give you enough time to say "OH SHIT". I think the is also a point and I can't remember what's called. Basically go or abort, after that point if you have committed to take off you try too.

 

Rings a bell about somebody taking off after a shoddy pre-flight check and there was an obstruction to proper tail or rudder control. He crashed.

 

I like The History Guy in small doses.
Drachinfels is excellent.
Gone off Mark Felton after binging on him for a while.

Indy Neidell is superb - working my way through WW2 at the moment, about a year behind.
I sure hope nobody puts up any spoilers - I want to see how it turns out.

 

I'm not a pilot. But talking to my pilot friend, this is exactly the kind of thing they train for. Regular sim checks throughout a flying career. In the simulator, all kinds of things go wrong, engine failure on take off, engine failure on landing, loss of controls, etc.

I think - and once again, I'm not a pilot - that once you are past the point of no return, you need to land ahead somewhere. Apparently, a lot of pilots have died when they decided to go around to land back on the runway but had insufficient speed or altitude. So you discount that option, look for the best place to come down and take a rapid decision. Like the one Sullenberger faced when hitting a flock of geese shut down both engines just after take off from La Guardia and he put the plane down in the river. Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing . . .

 

The maxim in aviation is that just about all aircraft will keep flying as far as the site of the crash.

 

Back in my SeaKing days, the pilot would just pull into hover and lower the gear down and we would land. On the tarmac if able, or the grass. No worries....

 

Or the water for that matter as the mighty SeaKing floats...

 

Bob Hoover used to say never quit flying the plane. To quote.... "fly the airplane as far into the crash as you can."
RE the question posed... commercial aircraft have what's called a V1 speed. It's calculated off several factors... mainly current gross weight and runway length. It's defined as the speed where safely coming to a stop is no longer possible. When V1 is called out, you're committed to continuing the take off no matter what failure happens. You press on and work the problem in the air.
Small single engined planes don't normally use V1. If I'm in a small Cessna taking off on a 10,000 ft runway and I have a failure at liftoff, I'll likely have about 9,000 ft of the runway still ahead of me... plenty of room to settle and come to a stop.