Stuff you'd like to know..

There are military ranges where aircraft can fly supersonic.... In fact I have heard/felt sonic booms from the F-35 at Edwards AFB (Air Force Flight Test Center) a few years back.

Probably at military ranges to start with. NASA has their Dryden flight test facility co-located at Edwards and has flown a variety of high speed aircraft there including SR-71 Blackbirds that they inherited from the USAF.

 

You can usually fly supersonic over the ocean off both coasts, at Edwards AFB and China Lake NAWS, as mentioned, the huge Nellis AFB ranges are supersonic cleared, Eglin AFB has a supersonic corridor, and there were corridors from southern Colorado (Alamosa) to southern NM and over other unpopulated areas, if they still exist. Exercises often open up airspace for supersonic operations, too. The F-35 is more limited by intake geometry than drag and T/W, so gets up to max Mach pretty quickly in a fairly limited amount of airspace. Older supersonic aircraft like the F-111 and F-4 took a lot longer to get to their Mach 2.2-2.5 limits.

 

I think there's a supersonic test range in eastern Tennessee....

 

Jim- Supersonic corridors were scattered all over the US at one point, but I usually only used the ones out west, except during exercises. We did blow out $50,000 worth of windows during a supersonic test of the MK-84 AIR (air inflatable retard) at Eglin AFB one day. Winds and weather conditions not as predicted and we got ducting to a small town near Ft Walton Beach.

I am not as familiar with Navy ranges except China Lake, but am sure they have supersonic corridors and areas for Patuxent River NAS and the Atlantic Test Range, the Navy's version of Edwards AFB.

We did do supersonic drops of GBU-15s on the Navy's Point Mugu Sea Range, with land impacts.

 

I think we did out mach runs in North Eastern Alabama and just above there in Tennessee somewhere. (F-22)

 

Tim- I was not sure what the restrictions were on the F-22's supercruise capability.

 

Anyone here been hit buy a supersonic blast? If it blows out windows what does it do to humans? Anything? I guess not from watching this cool video.

The Sonic Boom Explained | Military.com

 

Too close to one can burst eardrums, although that is rare. Windows are vulnerable because of the large surface area facing the wave of high pressure air.

 

We used to fly T-38s supersonic Northeast of Phoenix in our MOAs every day...short runs though, and planned.

 

I experienced many booms. Every Armed Forces Day Air Show at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque as a kid.

They would have multiple Mach+ flyovers in front of thousands. (F-100, F-101 Voodoo, and ???)

The plane would scream by with absolutely no sound whatsoever... then... BOOM!

And you would randomly hear them at almost any time during the year.
"The sound of freedom".

 

I'm under the impression that supersonic flight in the T-38 is limited due to fleetwide inlet modifications.

Yep, loud bang kinda similar to a gunshot. I have been directly underneath a variety of supersonic military aircraft. It's loud and kinda shakes things a bit but not a huge deal.

 

Your best bet to experience a sonic boom is to go to Edwards AFB open house. They open up the show with a boom at a set time. Also hang around Rachel, NV during a Red Flag exercise you will hear plenty in the afternoon M-F.

 

We used to get the in Orlando every time the shuttle landed - freaked you out if you missed the paper that morning and forgot it was happening! Rattled but never broke windows (ours anyway).

Adding to the stupid question, the shuttle was always a double boom, one less than a second after the other - are all booms double booms to observers, or was there something about the shuttle that was special?

 

Those tests of dropping GBU-15s at Mach 1.6 were for training 48 TFW crews for max glide range releases while the F-111F was staying out of range of air defenses in an undisclosed location. A hard, descending turn was made after weapon release to exit the area while the GBU-15s were guided via data link.

For the MK-84 AIRs we dropped at 700 KCAS and 200' AGL, those were part of qualification (Seek Eagle) tests to establish envelopes for the weapon/F-111 combination. We used both an F-111F and an F-111D for the tests. The F-111F, even in combat trim with pivot pylons installed, could have easily beaten Darryl Greenamyer's 1010 mph (877 KTAS, ~Mach 1.3) low altitude speed record set in his F-104 in 1976. Nobody would let us do that.

 

Maybe the T-38C...

T-38A without travel pod was 1.3M@30,000 and doing a supersonic flight was part of the UPT syllabus. These were done in the Williams MOA (over land) which went away after Willie closed sometime after '92.

 

I was reading local magazine where was article of Piper Cub. What got my eye was take of speed 50-60 km/h and stall speed of 60 km/h. How the take off speed can be lower than stall? Is stall speed allways told with out flaps or does the ground effect help on take off?

 

That's the stall speed in a clean configuration.

 

I've got one that no one seems to know the answer to:

When do I need to have my airplane de-iced (or more appropriately anti-iced) assuming the flying surfaces are free of contamination?

 

Are you asking at what point in flight do you turn on the anti-ice? I've always been trained +5 to -10 c and in visible moisture. However, I've experienced icing outside of those parameters (colder).

 

No, sorry. I'm very comfortable with deicing operations on my aircraft. I'm asking what meteorological parameters would convince one to get the plane sprayed with anti-ice fluid prior to flight.

 

When the owner of the de-icing operation has planned ahead to account for the expenses related to servicing his new boat..... You probably need to de-ice.