The aviation picture thread

My profile pic.... I didn’t take it, public affairs did. I was holding the flag out the hatch returning from Hurricane Dorian over the Bahamas last year.
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I will go through some pics and find a better one of the vapor trails coming off the prop tips during takeoff roll... I like to tel people they are miniature chemtrails
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Inverted in a real one, you would want to make sure the honey bucket was tied down. But then most of my rides were in B and E models. Likely the later ones improved back there, I hope.

 

Can’t go inverted, or at least pull negative Gs, in the C-130 H models and earlier as the oil system (and probably some other stuff) aren’t designed for it. I can’t remember the numbers anymore but you could have zero/negative G very briefly but beyond that it was very bad news for the engine/prop gearbox to suck air and lose oil pressure. People would still sometimes do some aggressive pushovers but the flight engineer would keep a very close eye on the G meter and gearbox oil pressure. In the J model all that stuff is tracked by the computer systems that will tattle... Not sure how much more I can say other than I wasn’t involved. One other random thing which comes to mind is that the VVI in the HUD maxes out at 9,999. The Lockheed guys did that almost a loop in a J model but that’s a bit different than flying inverted. I do know some guys who were inverted briefly in an H model after a pilot pulled the engines past the stops and put the props into reverse in flight, but the result wasn’t exactly controlled flight and everybody thought they were gonna die. There was also the Navy C-130 that had the life rafts deploy in flight and wrap around the tail, there was a story about it years ago in a Navy safety magazine. If I recall they were inverted a bit and pulled something like 4 positive Gs either while they were out of control or in the process of recovering.

The H3s that were built in the late ‘80s and J models have something pretty similar to a flushing airline toilet... it’s still in the back and just has the curtain for privacy but it’s a far sight better than the older models.

On the old models up to H2 there were pee funnels in the back for normal ops and honey bucket for emergency procedures. Most of the horror stories I have heard of are with a plane load of army guys on a long flight in the desert and don’t actually involve the honey bucket. One crew had a army guy somehow drop a deuce in a pee funnel which then clogged it up and made a giant mess as other army guys continued to pee in it and it didn’t drain/vent out the back of the plane as designed. Multiple guys I have known have had army dudes simply take a squat behind a pallet in the back and drop one which was then stepped on by a loadmaster. Ultimately it’s kinda the loadmasters fault for not sufficiently briefing the pax... or it could just be army dudes screwing with the AF.

 

Mufflers on the exhaust pipes of the model engines. Neat picture of an RC model.

 

The first commercial LM-100J Hercules actually did a loop at the Farnborough airshow in 2018! (But after that, the customer for whom the aircraft was intended refused to accept it!)

 

Loops are not hard on aircraft as long as you have enough airspeed over the top so you do not fall out of it and have to pull a bunch of g's to recover.

 

I’m too lazy to google it now but I think there was some issue the purists brought up regarding whether it was a loop in the strictest definition. For air show viewer though it was a pretty awesome loop.

I work with some of the guys who are with that org and fly their planes. Apparently they weren’t all that thrilled about paying full price for a plane that had been put through the wringer like that. Kinda like buying a low miles rental car... it may be perfectly fine but it may end up having some issues down the line and how are you gonna prove it was because of that demo flight?

 

That would be an RC model of a Herk based on the engines....
Neat picture of an RC model.

OK, OK, GOT IT! I'm just a civilian ya know......

 

Some of my best friends are civilians.

 

I'm certain that the aircraft was not overstressed. As the late Bob Hoover proved repeatedly, you can safely roll and loop aircraft not intended to be flown that way if you are careful about it.

 

If anyone is looking for some gently Used C-130Hs*, they are having a buy one get two free sale right now! Trade-a-plane.

*May need work...

 

Same as Tex Johnston did with the -80 . The flight engineer told me that it was 1G all the way around...twice. Hoover did a video ( a motion film) pouring a glass of tea during a roll in the Shrike.

 

Big difference between a loop and barrel roll.

 

Over the top was prohibited in lots of aircraft, including the one I flew.

 

Action photo. RF-4B on the cat. Image Unavailable, Please Login

Dog Sabre. Nouasseur A.B., Morocco. Circa 1958. 357th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. A crew chief sent me the original photo with the period unit patch.