Image Unavailable, Please Login A while back, I posted a picture of the coffee table I made from a Lycoming O-235 engine. After using it a few times, I decided that it wasn't practical so I redesigned it, making it two-tiered. I used the original glass top on the upper tier and had a new larger one made for the lower tier. I used the spinner from business jet engine (Garret, I believe). Came out quite well. Bob Z.
This is so cool. Very nice! I was just talking with a coworker about the T-38 slab I have that's getting shipped to me for the same purpose!
A guy in Texas apparently bought some crashed T-38 parts and sold me the slab. It looks crap but will buff out fine as it's straight.
On high performance aircraft, the horizontal stabilizer and elevator are combined into one large movable surface called, among other things, a stabilator or slab. On the T-38 it is called a slab. (I flew this very jet several times back in 2000.) Image Unavailable, Please Login
Cool! Thank you for the info as well. I always thought the T-38 was one of the best looking planes ever made. I see NASAs on a regular basis. Always cool knowing there is an astronaut in em.
When the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the B-17 was over and the visiting airplanes were leaving, I went up to an Airforce Academy T-28 ready to taxi out to thank them and I asked the cadet who was piloting it with an instructor how he liked the T-28. Answer. " This SOB will kill you!"
That's funny. I heard that a lot and had seen it written long before I ever jumped in a T-38, but the truth, in my mind anyway, is that the Talon is the easiest plane I ever flew. It's set up just right with respect to cockpit layout, smooth as butter on the controls, does everything the exact same way time after time. I just really had a great relationship with it. I remember somewhere near the end of pilot training, doing some solo hop where the weather sucked so I had to stay in the pattern and do touch n goes for an hour...after I was done flying, I had just returned to our ready room and was talking with some other studs when one of the older IPs from our Stan Eval section came in and called my name. I knew who he was of course, but I never met him and he sure as hell never knew me, but it turns out he was out in the Runway Surveillance Unit at approach end of the runway supervising the pattern controller and had been watching my landings for my whole flight. He looked at me and said "Dude! I just needed to see who you were and make sure you weren't a robot. I swear you landed 12 times in a row in the exact same spot in the perfect attitude...within about 5 feet...every time. We were joking that therewere two big rubber marks forming on tbe runway where your mains hit every single time. Unreal. Great job!" Then he just walked out. That was one one of the greatest moments in UPT for me. It was the Talon though, that made it easy.
