willedoo

Interesting link, thanks Peter. Shame it never got a chance to go into service, certainly an opening for it at that time.

The third jetliner to fly, the French Sud Caravelle seems to have been a bit slow off the mark, taking four years to reach certification. The fourth to fly, the Tupolev Tu-104, beat the Sud into service by almost three years. With all the problems of the Comet, there would surely have been a market for the C-102.

Cheers, Willie.

I bet those new tail colours will be popular at this years European Air shows ..Dave C

Cheers, Willie.

Slideshow of A380 construction photos:

http://www.aex.ru/multimedia/15/

Cheers, Willie.

Link to a photo of some nice tail art on a Tornado GR4 to celebrate the centenary of RAF 11(AC) Squadron in May. Two other squadrons are also celebrating centenarys on the same weekend. Clicking the thumbnail expands the photo.

Cheers, Willie.

http://www.key.aero/view_news.asp?ID=4999&thisSection=military

Great read. Just one thing, when did they build a second pub at William Creek? :p

Cheers, Willie.

Now, that is a handy piece of equipment.

Cheers, Willie.

News item with video of Boeing's hydrogen powered Phantom Eye uav performing it's first medium speed taxi test.

http://www.key.aero/view_news.asp?ID=4994&thisSection=military

Interesting links - I reckon the average rag and tube owner (Thruster et al) would find much that was familiar about those aircraft. Funny how we have gone full circle.

Here's a link to some better photos of the Morane-Saulnier. The photo at the bottom of the link has a good view of the spider-web of wire stays.

http://wio.ru/ww1a/gal1.htm

Cheers, Willie.

An Su manual I was reading made reference to Nesterov's Loop & how to do it in an Su-27, so I just thought I'd post a couple of links about Pyotr Nesterov, the first pilot to perform a loop in 1913 in a Nieuport IV.

He beat French pilot Adolphe Pégoud to it by a few days, however Pégoud was able to claim to be the first fighter ace and the first pilot to parachute from an aeroplane. Legend has it that Pégoud gained some inspiration for aerobatic maneuvers while watching his aircraft fall to the ground as he descended with his parachute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_P%C3%A9goud

Nesterov was also famous for being the first pilot to destroy an enemy aircraft in the air. In 1914, he rammed an Austrian Albatross with his Morane-Saulnier, however, he was not belted in & fell from the plane to his death. The Austrian pilot & observer also died in the crash.

http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/military/pyotr-nesterov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Nesterov

Pyotr Nesterov.

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Nieuport IV.

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Morane-Saulnier Type WR, Russian modification.

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The remains of the Austrian Albatross.

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Cheers, Willie.

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Very interesting link, thanks, Peter.

Cheers, Willie.

A good(?) idea but guess what ... no joy.

http://www.enotes.com/topic/Piaggio_P.7

Cheers, Willie.

Here's another weirdo ... French (again).

Reminds me of that saying about aircraft, "If it's ugly, it's British; if it's weird, it's French; if it's ugly and weird, it's Russian." Although I think you could add the Italians in there somewhere. And it's a bit unfair as the British did build some beautiful looking planes, the Spitfire for example.

Cheers, Wilie.

In that case, all the more reason to chase up Not much of an Engineer by Stanley Hooker.

Cheers, Willie.

A bit of a radical concept in it's time, but I suppose no more so than parachuting them out, which is now an accepted norm. Found mention of them here,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_A-40

Seems like it glided ok, but slowed the towing aircraft too much.

Here's the T60 ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-60 , lists it as 5.8 tonnes. It doesn't look like very high speed track gear like the modern tanks. I'd imagine there would be a lot of clattering going on. I wonder if they had detachable gear for take off, like a sled with wheels or something that they could drop like drop tanks.

Cheers, Willie.

That's good reading, Peter. We sure have come a long way & probably take things for granted a bit nowdays.

That Piaggio posted above is an odd one, can't quite figure out how it's meant to work, or maybe it didn't .Looks like the prop would be below the waterline.

Cheers, Willie.

Cor! My comment was only a cheap throw-away line Willie ... I'm in awe of your research on the engines.The Lincolns, BTW, were I think a popular item for testing new engines as I seem to recall the Napier Nomad being stuck in the same (nose) position of one for flight testing.

Cheers, Geoff.

That photo of the Lincoln is at the Farnborough airshow, so I'd guess the Merlins are shut down as part of the demonstration. It would be interesting to know their test procedures, I'd always thought they would be running the test engine along with the main engines just to monitor gauges & performance. Maybe flying on the test engine alone is part of the process to check it under load. I've seen photos around the place of four engine a/c having one of the four replaced with a test engine, but this fifth engine nose job is interesting.

Cheers, Willie.

That just about takes the cake, Geoff. Certainly some ambitious (or crazy) designers around in those days. It looks like a house of cards.

Cheers, Willie.

Link to an article about flying without airspeed indication. Discusses ice issues & the loss of Air France 447 among other things.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=bca&id=news/bca/2012/03/01/BC_03_01_2012_p34-422240.xml&headline=Flying%20Without%20Airspeed

Cheers, Willie.

Did some checking & they are fundamentally different, the Dart a two stage centrifugal compressor & the An2's Ivchenko AI-20 is a ten stage axial flow compressor. The Wiki page (if it's correct) on the AI-20 lists the Rolls Royce Tyne, also axial flow, as a comparable engine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Tyne

It looks like the Avro Lincoln flew with one in it's nose as a test bed with all four Merlins shut down. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rolls-Royce_Tyne_Avro_Lincoln_Farnborough_1956.jpg

Cheers, Willie.

Wikipedia ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#Structural_defects

Cheers, Willie.

It would be interesting to see if there are any old designs more bizarre than this one.

Cheers, Willie.

Good link, thanks Peter.

I often wonder if that's why the industry was so prolific in times past, it was good incentive to succeed.The best outcome with failure was life in the nickel mine. He had a different way of doing things, that's for sure.

Cheers, Willie.

Would have been a good time to have the camera out. Seems to be a common trait with Russian turbines,whether prop, jet or low by-pass fan, as well as the heavy fuel consumption. The An 12 would have to be the worst of them for soot, I'd guess.

Cheers, Willie.

It's a long time ago that I saw that video, & thought it seemed a bit of an embellishment at the tme.

Possibly one reason we never went for F15's originally was the cost, but the F35 doesn't seem to be any guarantee of a cheap aircraft, so in comparison, I'd guess the F15's would be more viable now. It will be interesting in the future to see how history judges the attempt to have the western world equipped with a one size fits all, light combat fighter (single engine at that). There's been a lot of hype & spin, but the basic thing driving the JSF project is to reduce long term cost. It seems to be about saving money, rather than developing the most effective system. There's probably more than one better option, if you balance all the requirements. Unfortunately, I'll probably be too old to see it all pan out with the future sixth generaion aircraft, but the next 20 years will be very interesting.

Cheers, Willie.

Just wondering if anyone saw, or knows anything about Ukranian registered An12, UR-CAH in Sydney in early December. Belongs to Meridian Air Cargo, of Slovakia & arrived at RAAF Richmond from Christmas Island 1/12/11, Sydney on 2/12/11 & departed for Denpasar, Bali on 3/12/11.

http://www.airlinerphotos.com/main.php/2011/bsl/UR-CAH.jpg.html

Cheers, Willie.