Aircraft Pic & Vid Thread

[Eric]

[Eric]

[Eric]

[Eric]

[Eric]

[gwalchmai]

[willie-pete]

I'll see you and raise.

 

 

 

 

 

[Borg warner]

Some great pictures here. Here's an interesting recent development. Does this mean that verything old is new again? (This "New" plane is a turbo-prop)

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13047/u-s-special-operations-forces-want-their-own-light-attack-aircraft

Edited August 22, 2018 by Borg warner

[Walt Longmire]

8 minutes ago, Borg warner said:

Some great pictures here. Here's an interesting recent development. Does this mean that verything old is new again? (This "New" plane is a turbo-prop)

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13047/u-s-special-operations-forces-want-their-own-light-attack-aircraft

If you come up to Alaska and fly out into the bush, chances are you will be in a Turbine Otter, or Beaver built in the 1950's with a recent turbine upgrade. Takes a vintage aircraft from 60 years ago, and makes it a very modern, classy airplane. Not a cheap conversion.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Walt Longmire

[Walt Longmire]

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=qa9LcNYT&id=90FF3E13D92F55986E47E8657D030D9348B6922B&thid=OIP.qa9LcNYTxgFWKFe5A-evXQHaFF&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2f736x%2fd5%2f9d%2f77%2fd59d779a559e38e5269169fedaea2013.jpg&exph=439&expw=640&q=turbine+otter&simid=608027407206452426&selectedIndex=3&qpvt=turbine+otter

[jilverthor]

18 hours ago, Glocks4Freedom said:

 

Was fortunate enough to get to see that a few years back.

[SC Tiger]

[gwalchmai]

This one could outrun everything but germs.

[Dric902]

 

[BillKilgore]

48 minutes ago, Dric902 said:

 

Darned impressive for a fat, 64 year-old, girl.

 

[willie-pete]

 

 

" You know that; now we know that, but let's not do it anymore. "

 

 

 

[Glocks4Freedom]

[willie-pete]

 

 

[Glocks4Freedom]

[Glocks4Freedom]

[Glocks4Freedom]

[F14Scott]

On 8/21/2018 at 2:16 PM, tous said:

Scott, what did the air crew think about going from 30 years of a stick and a GIB to just a stick in the F/A-18s?

Could you trust an aviator to fly all by himself?

Keep in mind, it was the Navy that told us to replace the backseaters with electrons.

A couple of thoughts, in no particular order:

1. The Hornet is way easier to fly.  I flew a ton in the simulators for both, and I flew the Hornet B on two adversary hops where I was the passenger and my pilot let me drive.  I also flew the T-34C and the T-2, and I rode in the Tomcat for almost 1000 hours in all stages of flight.  The old girl was all bell cranks and push rods (later mods added digital flight controls to the horizontal stabs, greatly enhancing slow-speed handling), and moving one thing meant all three axises were off to the races, coupled this and Dutch that.  If you've ever driven a newer Corvette, it is a very Tomcat-like experience: the nose kind of mushes around up there, and the whole thing slushes hard into turns; it has great traction and power, but if you don't know what you're doing, she'll get away from you.  Tomcat pilots were all really, really good sticks.

The Hornet, by comparison, was just like my GTI: small, nimble, and precise.  Point the sick, and the jet snapped to that roll angle or pitch elevation and stayed there.  The auto-trim was amazing, that way.  You could, quite literally, lift off the runway, point the nose 10 degrees up and set 90% on the motors, put your hands in your lap, and you'd climb straight and level until the air got too thin to climb any more, and then you'd level out on heading until you ran out of gas.  Flying the ball in it was more of a series of little angles you'd cut coming down the chute, whereas the Tomcat was this ungainly mess of repeatedly blobbing past your intended path and then blobbing back to it.  The good pilots made it look easy, but it was never pretty.  Hornets were pretty, on the ball.

Also, from a systems standpoint, the Hornet was also much easier.  I don't know how many circuit breakers a Hornet pilot could access (or ever needed to), but I had six huge panels in back and the pilot had two in the front.  We used a lot of the CBs as switches to control the equipment inside.  The Hornet did most of it's own diagnostics and troubleshooting, while almost all of ours was manual.  I carried several little books of computer codes I could type in to see faults, and then routines of CBs and switches to toggle to try to make things work or at least give the maintenance guys a heads up.  The Hornet just recorded it all on a tape drive for download.

The radars, the whole point of the jets, were sooo different.  With the Hornet, you just turned it on and told it where to look.  It would tell you it was working, and you had two possibilities: something was there and you'd see it, or nothing was there and you'd see nothing.

The AWG-9 was a mysterious, analog, crystal ball.  It would be powered on, but you had no idea if it were working right or not until you played around with it for a bit, turning gain knobs and applying filters and tweaking its settings.  Even then, there were *4* possibilities: there and seen, there and not seen, not there and not seen, and not there and (impossibly) seen.  It was my job to do the black magic interpretation and communicate what I saw to my pilot and wingmen.  It took everything I had to do it, sometimes.  There were many weapon (bombing, reconnaissance, and pod) and radar controls that I, alone, could operate, while I don't think that is the case in Hornets.

So, bottom line, to fly the Turkey, we NEEDED two guys.  To fly a Hornet, you just need one.  That fact always made me feel pretty good about my job; sure, I wasn't driving, but the jet's design called for two people, separately trained, to make the thing work.  In Hornet D and F models (which have many more dual controls in both the front and back seat), I often wonder if WSOs have the same feeling I had, or if they are relegated to "overflow managers."  Knowing how some pilots have their single-seat mentalities, I wonder if they say, "OK, WSO, I've got everything.  If I need you, I'll tell you." and "OK, I'm pretty busy.  Watch the gas for me."

2. Doing missions was something else entirely.  The fact is, when you show up to your squadron, you're an FNG and you barely know anything.  You have to start working within the squadron, getting quals and experience before you are useful.  For Tomcat crews, the new pilots would fly with the seasoned RIOs and the new RIOs would fly with the old pilots.  In the middle were the two-year JOs who were OK to fly with each other.  Thus, any Tomcat flying around the boat would be a fully capable Tomcat.  With the Hornets, the FNGs would start out as designated wingmen.  They had to do all their learning airborne.  So, it often took more than one Hornet to do the job of one Hornet.  Fortunately, since 99% of what we do is train, this paradigm is OK.  In a combat situation, both squadrons would just roll the FNGs to the lightest rolls and fill the seats with the experienced guys.  But, that gets your seasoned pilots tired out pretty fast and brings up

3.  Manpower.  Tomcat squadron: 12 jets, 200 guys, 24 pilots and RIOs.  Hornet squadron: 12 jets, 160 guys, 12 pilots.  Both squadrons need a CO, XO, 4 department heads, and two dozen other real and SLJ jobs ranging from a maintenance branch officer to the squadron dental readiness officer.  In my squadron as a JO, I had three jobs.  The Hornet JOs had five or six.  They were always very busy, and I suspect a lot of stuff got dropped.

4. Single seat vs. crew coordination.  We all know that flying around in your own private little jet is awesome.  The Hornet drivers were masters of their own destiny, for better or worse, and they, of course, claimed they liked it that way.  I see the great appeal of not having to listen to the trunk monkey and share the decision making (although, the Hornet guys usually had a wingman, who functioned as a wing monkey, for all intents and purposes).  As a RIO, I never had a choice; for me it was play as a team or don't play.  But, I have to admit, my personality type was and is OK with being part of a pair.  I know, for a fact, I made two decisions that each time saved a jet, decisions my pilots did not make, as well as several others that prevented very hazardous situations.  I also remember at least two times when I had big brain farts that, had I been alone, would have put me in similarly very hazardous situations.  But, with two brain housing groups inside the cockpit, we all managed to unfuck each other and land safely.

I know of many Hornet drivers that were not so lucky.  From simple GCEs (gross conceptual errors, like holding on the 180 radial vice holding heading 180 on the 360 radial) that made for entertaining stories of buffoonery, to CFITs, Hornet drivers' mistakes often went unnoticed until it was too late.  I know of no Tomcat that ever CFITted into the water, but plenty of Hornets have done it.  And, I know of no Tomcat pilot ever G-LOCing and crashing (since the RIO could either wake him up or punch them out), but two friends of mine and plenty more Hornet drivers have taken the dirt nap.

All in all, I'm not too proud to say, I was glad to have a second guy to catch my mistakes, and was glad to have caught those of my buddies.

[fortyofforty]

On 8/21/2018 at 7:50 PM, Eric said:

Doolittle and his crews had brass balls.  Brave men, many lost.

[Borg warner]

22 hours ago, Borg warner said:

Some great pictures here. Here's an interesting recent development. Does this mean that verything old is new again? (This "New" plane is a turbo-prop)

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13047/u-s-special-operations-forces-want-their-own-light-attack-aircraft

Here's the other plane that's being considered. It's the AT-6 Wolverine made by Beechcraft. it's similar to the Brazilian made A29 but has a higher top speed, 510 MPH compared to the A29's 366 MPH.  

[janice6]

Air "incidents" reminded me of the time an entourage from Boeing showed up at our labs.  The wanted to price out a "fly by light" flight control system for a commercial A/C.  We asked them why they believed they needed this.  We were told that they had at least one loss attributable to electronic interference in the "fly by wire" flight controls.  We all got into a conference room and they outlined the requirements.  We were asked to do a quick analysis of a fiber optic system based on a "military" design we had worked on.  Military because they wanted reliability in the hardware.

We got back together later and presented them with the results, a preliminary design (1st pass), and then the price.

There was a very audible gasp that went up from some of their people.  We were questioned in depth to justify the price.  When it came to making a decision, the comment was "Well. They had only one crash so far, and maybe it was too expensive for them to consider."

 

The primary cost factor is in the MIL SPEC testing.  The Optical transmitters alone: lasers had to guarantee 30,000 hours MTBF and the LED Systems had to guarantee 300,000 hour MTBF to be MIL SPEC.  This also required the electronics to be of comparable reliability.

 

 

Edited August 23, 2018 by janice6