Airplane photo thread

What a fabulous picture! Truly awesome. Yes, it really does get me going! I want to rush to the airport and hop in my plane and for a little flight...but I have to wait till the morning as I am not instrument rated yet. Love this pic...it's going to be my wallpaper for a while. Thanks!

 

"All rights reserved. The use of this photo is not approved without prior permission from [email protected]."

This is on each and every one of his pictures...hope you got permission.

 

I loved that Avro triplane replica in "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines", and I'm glad that it is still airworthy.

 

Not my shot. These kind of pictures are always a bit heartbreaking, but they can't all be saved I suppose. There's one in similar condition within a few miles of me, now performing wasp-incubation duties.
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North American/Ryan Navion.

Designed by NA to be a post-WWII private plane with the 'look' of its P-51.

There is an active restoration group, that, despite making replacement parts, has a goal of resuming production.

 

R985. If there's no oil on it or under it ........
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This is the best picture, great composure and feeling.

 

Ah ! An early Aeronca Chief. I flew one in 1947. Will spin quicker than the tandem.

 

This one appears to have an L-3 nose bowl, cowl, and exposed cylinders of the A65. The wing, struts, and tail feathers look to be similar to the L-3 also.
Nice flying little airplanes and thanks to Russ for posting.

 

Typical Aeronca. Seventy miles per hour on a good day. Nicely balanced controls, clean stall, due to, I guess, the two degree washout that they all had. NACA 4412 airfoil and light wing loading made it easy to fly. Frise ailerons coupled with the 4412 allowed the wing to hang on for dear life in a high angle of attack and when it finally broke, it was a slow easy stall. My old L-3 still had ailerons when it was down to a stall of 40MPH and below. You could do normal turns with almost no airspeed registering. Spins were quicker in the Chief than in the Champ or other tandem Aeroncas. Don't know why. Personally, I liked the L-3 and the Champ with sticks over the wheel in the Chief. The pre-War Chief wasn't much different than the Post-War Chief from what I remember. Ain't no expert, Russ, just going back to some fun days when I was a kid.

 

Got to thinking about some stuff. I disliked the way the Porterfield/Rearwin 90 flew. It was heavy and sluggish compared to others. The Cub , of course, was the perfect little trainer and did all things well. It MADE you fly correctly and exposed the lack of coordination when one was sloppy. The T-Craft was also a nice little airplane , very light and smooth and one had to work sometimes to get slowed down and planted when landing....it could be a bit of a kite in a good wind. All of the Aeroncas that I flew were friendly airplanes and were well designed, I thought. I never flew one but I have been told that the LC is a delightful little machine and ,again, well balanced smooth controls. I have flown the Champ and Grasshopper at near ( maybe over) gross weight and they struggled but did it if handled gently. A classic Ford powered Pietenpol Aircamper is fun but has crude aerodynamics about it. Aerodynamically tail heavy and rather short coupled but if you fly it like a 1930's design, it is a lot of fun. The wing section designed by Bernnie Pietenpol is amazingly good and out climbed us in the mountains and performed well with a heavy load. Aileron seal tapes are a must, however.
Just digging up stuff.

 

Not sure if this will post but this picture was taken this morning of my college roommates DC-3.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3314856466113&set=a.3163592124599.2121646.1109238767&type=1&theater

Gorgeous plane

 

I haven't ever looked at C-17 stuff but it looks like they are flying three ship elements in that pic with formation lead probably out of the picture in that shot. Some of them are out of position, particularly towards the back, but it actually looks pretty good. I'm not familiar with the station keeping equipment they have so for all I know they could just be kicked back letting the computer fly the thing.

Being towards the back of a medium to large formation is a difficult thing you accordion back and forth as each preceding element leader is adjusting his own position and airspeed. Of course being the very last element isn't too bad as you just hang back long off of your lead and watch the show as all those other guys work it.

Biggest formation I have been a part of was a 16 ship and that was quite a thing to behold. Ten aircraft taking off from west Texas and joining up with six more enroute to Nellis AFB. We were second to last in the formation which was an interesting place to be.... the formation was just all over the place. Once we hit the Nellis range it was a zoo as everyone went their own way It really is a miracle when the large packages come together, there are plenty of days where half the planes break before it's time to taxi.
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Not sure what you mean by fleet services..... But for us it generally means the toilet emptying mx guys. Of course for a lot of the C-130s the "toilet" is just a urinal which empties directly out a small tube just aft of the main landing gear. Which leads me to a story that, in retrospect, is a bit funny.

A few years back we called a mission short just a little early due to a fume situation that had developed. The urinal drain system is kept from freezing up at altitude by a very small amount of bleed air. Now I'm not familiar with all the intricacies of this system but I know this... If it goes bad it can fill the entire aircraft with what I can only describe as the exquisite smell of boiling piss. Most Herk folks are pretty good about air sickness but an all pervasive urine stench will overcome all. The biggest tragedy was that the aircraft commander at the time expressly forbid me from calling in A3 for rotten urine in the cargo compartment.

The new C-130J has a chemical toilet which has it's own idiosyncrasies.

 

This is funny. Reminded me of how the pee tube outlet pitot would occasionally freeze and turn the pitot from a suction device into a high powered scoop that blew all the pee back into the airplane. Some war time B-17's and B-24's were stinking messes from all kinds of stuff.

 

reminds me of messing with newbie pax when they needed to use the relief tube... we would " conveniently forget" to tell them to push the button valve on the side of the recepticle to activate the drain / suction... remember lots of screams coming from the users, both that the container was about to overflow and they couldn't shut theirs off...

there was an action film that used "blue ice" as part of solving / exposing a crime...it may have also been titled Blue Ice

 

I find it amazing how one question could trigger the need to drag out the mental microscope and look at things that lie in the recesses of the mind. For the last several days I have been mentally rummaging around in the dark corners of my mind finding old musty things to look at again. One can always find a pile of ancient incidents and images just sitting there like they were 70 years ago. And they are still vivid in most cases but others may have dimmed a bit like old photos. Work the memory pump harder and the clarity gets better sometimes but I have found that the happier the incident, the clearer it is to begin with. I'll bet that I can mess this place up with a lot of stuff out of the attic.