|
slidebite posted:To continued on the discontinued aircraft tangent, why did the Bae 146 seem to fall out of favor so quickly? I used to see them quite often up here in Canada but haven't seen a flying example in years. I loved the idea of a little 4 jet turbofan Obsolete, basically. The E-jet (for example) can do anything the Avro RJ/BAe 146 can do, with just two engines and for like 30-40% less fuel. There was a very limited market for short-range stepp-approach/short-runway capable jets. Either a more modern regional jet, or a turboprop, is better in any situation these days. They're all 20-30 years old now and wearing out, so most airlines are looking to replace them - Titan already has dumped its last two, CityJet is probably ordering E-jets, Swiss is either buying C-Series or E-jets, Flybe and BACF have already dumped all theirs... Most of the remaining airframes are either owned by charter/wetlease companies - WDL, Cello, Atlantic Airways to name three I know of - or off in Africa seeing out their last years with local operators. Saabchat: There's a pair of Eastern Airways owned Saab 2000s that hop in and out of London City all day every day - Cityflyer uses them for route-proving and for providing a high-frequency low-capacity service on two routes. They do seem to be wearing out as well - few months ago, both of them went tech multiple times in the space of a week. They look nice though and seem to be quite successful when they're not broken! Brovine fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Jun 6, 2014 |
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 22:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 01:34 |
|
|
slidebite posted:To continued on the discontinued aircraft tangent, why did the Bae 146 seem to fall out of favor so quickly? I used to see them quite often up here in Canada but haven't seen a flying example in years. I loved the idea of a little 4 jet turbofan Other types are allowed in London City.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
The 146 with it's four turbines is not the way to get good fuel economy with a jet. And that's key these days. Smaller jet engines get lower compression ratios which have lower BSFC. And so.. if you can make two with two bigger engines, you will.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 22:17
|
|
|
Nerobro posted:The 146 with it's four turbines is not the way to get good fuel economy with a jet. And that's key these days. Smaller jet engines get lower compression ratios which have lower BSFC. And so.. if you can make two with two bigger engines, you will. In case anyone was wondering why they never re-engined the 146 with two better engines: they wanted to. However, when BAE designed the plane, the wing and engine were made by the same company - and they weren't interested in redesigning the wing to fit two engines when they could spend no money.effort and keep selling four engines instead!
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 22:53
|
|
|
Brovine posted:In case anyone was wondering why they never re-engined the 146 with two better engines: they wanted to. However, when BAE designed the plane, the wing and engine were made by the same company - and they weren't interested in redesigning the wing to fit two engines when they could spend no money.effort and keep selling four engines instead! Plus there's the whole 'militaries will buy it right..... about......now..... drat it' thing that's been going on for the past 30 years or so (the RAF have 1, and there are a couple that did get sold to places like Saudi Arabia, but still).
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2014 23:13
|
|
|
Seems like it'd be a good candidate for some sort of wacky small engine test bed or something. Did any end up doing that?
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 00:05
|
|
|
I just found out that B-17 Yankee Lady is coming to the local air show here next weekend, and they're doing rides at $450 apiece. Juuuuust a bit more affordable than the $2500 the CWHM want to go up in their (freshly overhauled!) Lancaster. Probably sold out by now, damnit. I will do the Lanc one day though, come hell or high water.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 02:21
|
|
|
slidebite posted:To continued on the discontinued aircraft tangent, why did the Bae 146 seem to fall out of favor so quickly? I used to see them quite often up here in Canada but haven't seen a flying example in years. I loved the idea of a little 4 jet turbofan North Cariboo Air has one or two based out of YYC. They use them for oilfield flights or charter work.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 03:18
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:340s are cool as poo poo. Who cares if the manufacturer is out of business? Saab is still very much in business, they just make Gripens these days.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 03:58
|
|
|
Speaking of (as a casual reader), is Sweden like an Aeronautical Galapagos or something? Saab's fighter designs go from a pusher prop, to a flying barrel, to a double delta wing and then canards as far as the eye can see (also sort of related, the Stridvagn 103). Supposedly they were quite good designs but I don't think any other planes really picked up on their design details?
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 08:56
|
|
|
Sweden had a specific set of requirements, and built to that spec. Neutral in WW3, but if the poo poo hits the fan and the Russians come through, hold them off for a couple days until NATO gets there to preserve their neutrality. So they needed a badass fighter with no legs, and a main battle tank that was basically a TD with a driver in the back.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 09:17
|
|
Bad Angus! Bad!
|
Eej posted:Speaking of (as a casual reader), is Sweden like an Aeronautical Galapagos or something? Saab's fighter designs go from a pusher prop, to a flying barrel, to a double delta wing and then canards as far as the eye can see (also sort of related, the Stridvagn 103). Supposedly they were quite good designs but I don't think any other planes really picked up on their design details? Well, the Gripen shares its layout with the Typhoon and Rafale, so there's that. The double delta never really caught on because the idea was to give the high supersonic performance of a delta wing without its drawbacks (namely high drag in turns and high takeoff speed); aerospace design was advancing rapidly enough that they soon figured out how to make conventional swept/clipped delta wings work at high speed, so the double delta fell out of use just due to being unconventional and designers having more experience with other layouts. As for the earlier planes, WW2 and the early jet age were times of extreme experimentation in general, lots of unusual designs. Some were garbage, some were fine aircraft that set the mold for future designs, some (like the Saabs you mentioned) worked satisfactorily but just never caught on; no drawbacks, but no real advantages over more conventional designs, so again convention won out. The S-tank was just a highly optimized piece of hardware built for a very niche purpose, namely drawn-out fighting tactical retreats to make invading Sweden not worth it for the Soviets. There's some really good posts about it in the Airpower thread in TFR, as well; you might want to check that out.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 09:32
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:Isn't there a guy with glowy stick walking behind the plane when they push back? I don't get how this happened. Quoting from last page, the answer is simple: it wasn't pushing back, the aircraft was parked but it was very windy. What about chocks and parking brakes, you may ask? It seems that the pilot forgot to engage the parking brake. Also, the company that does ground handling for Ryanair at Ciampino just went belly-up but the workers are being forced to work by The Man (for free) until a solution can be found (otherwise it would be "disrupting a public service", I don't know if it works the same way in other countries), and some of those workers "forgot" to put chocks on the wheels. Simple as that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 14:52
|
|
|
Gonna give this a shot today http://www.slrcfa.com/wordpress/ Weather doesn't look like it is going to be fit, but I really want to see flying B-36 half the size of a 172. Pictures to be edited in if there are any.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 15:08
|
|
|
Mikl posted:Also, the company that does ground handling for Ryanair at Ciampino just went belly-up but the workers are being forced to work by The Man (for free) until a solution can be found (otherwise it would be "disrupting a public service", I don't know if it works the same way in other countries), and some of those workers "forgot" to put chocks on the wheels.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 15:22
|
|
|
Speaking of airlines with obsolete planes, Rex Airlines manages to cover a lot of very large country with Saabs and Pipers! Most of the BAE 146s here seem to still be operated by National Jet Express.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 17:02
|
|
|
ewe2 posted:Speaking of airlines with obsolete planes, Rex Airlines manages to cover a lot of very large country with Saabs and Pipers! I did a lot of the GPS/FMS installs for those Rex birds too, a few years back. Do they all seem to be getting places OK?  (I never get to really play with them after they leave)
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 17:39
|
|
|
Acid Reflux posted:I did a lot of the GPS/FMS installs for those Rex birds too, a few years back. Do they all seem to be getting places OK? Rex is one of those outfits that just defy expectations. The local airport here is a joke, they're always coming up with silly plans to upgrade it so a Qantaslink service can operate but they never include a VOR so it never happens. I'd like to see Rex come here though, they'd do well.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 18:21
|
|
|
Wind can do bad things to airplanes, even when they're secured. We had a DC-10 turn 45 degrees, and roll a plane length away from its parking space one night, despite being chocked. (-30s often get parked without the brakes set, because you can't load or unload them if the parking brakes are set.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 18:39
|
|
|
MrYenko posted:Wind can do bad things to airplanes, even when they're secured. We had a DC-10 turn 45 degrees, and roll a plane length away from its parking space one night, despite being chocked. (-30s often get parked without the brakes set, because you can't load or unload them if the parking brakes are set.) I've had to (indirectly) deal with a 737-800 which got turned round a fair way by hurricane strength winds, which also mostly sheared (some of?) the rudder linkages. Pre-flight inspections didn't include anything in-depth enough to catch that and they were just intact enough to work fine during the pre-flight control surface tests. They were NOT intact enough to last through takeoff. Thankfully the crew managed to retain enough control to declare emergency, do one circuit and land immediately... Cue a fortnight's overtime for a Boeing AOG crew, and a worldwide urgent modification program on something like two or three hundred airframes between certain manufacture dates - including thirty of the airline I was working for at the time. And plenty of extra work for me moving parts around. The same winds, if I recall correctly, destroyed part of the Faro terminal roof and damaged the control tower.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 18:53
|
|
|
Brovine posted:I've had to (indirectly) deal with a 737-800 which got turned round a fair way by hurricane strength winds, which also mostly sheared (some of?) the rudder linkages. Pre-flight inspections didn't include anything in-depth enough to catch that and they were just intact enough to work fine during the pre-flight control surface tests. They were NOT intact enough to last through takeoff. Thankfully the crew managed to retain enough control to declare emergency, do one circuit and land immediately... At the very least, with a failed rudder you can still get limited yaw control with differential thrust; they'd be right hosed if an elevator had gone.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 20:45
|
|
|
Fucknag posted:At the very least, with a failed rudder you can still get limited yaw control with differential thrust; they'd be right hosed if an elevator had gone. With regards to the elevator missing, they still have another on the other side, in addition to a still working stab trim for pitch control. The elevators and ailerons on a B737 will even still work with no hydraulics.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2014 20:56
|
|
|
I have a friend in flight training, and he is (I'm presuming) at a bad flight school. The reason is simple: the business operates the flight school, and a local airline, EVAS air. They use all of their resources on the airliners and leave too little left over to maintain the trainer aircraft properly; as a result 25 students are fighting over the one functional airplane. Two questions: 1. Is this SOP at most flight schools? 2. Is there anything my friend can do about this?
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 01:14
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:I have a friend in flight training, and he is (I'm presuming) at a bad flight school. The reason is simple: the business operates the flight school, and a local airline, EVAS air. They use all of their resources on the airliners and leave too little left over to maintain the trainer aircraft properly; as a result 25 students are fighting over the one functional airplane. 1. Depends on the flight school. 2. Go to a different flight school.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 04:02
|
|
|
Edit: woops Carry on. Preoptopus fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Jun 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 14:22
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:I have a friend in flight training, and he is (I'm presuming) at a bad flight school. The reason is simple: the business operates the flight school, and a local airline, EVAS air. They use all of their resources on the airliners and leave too little left over to maintain the trainer aircraft properly; as a result 25 students are fighting over the one functional airplane. Flight schools are famous for used car salesman levels of dirty and underhanded poo poo. Stories abound of people forking over $10,000 or more to reserve a spot in a school that suddenly disappears or the like.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 19:01
|
|
|
Silver State Helicopters and that ness springs to mind right there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 19:53
|
|
|
Eej posted:Speaking of (as a casual reader), is Sweden like an Aeronautical Galapagos or something? Saab's fighter designs go from a pusher prop, to a flying barrel, to a double delta wing and then canards as far as the eye can see (also sort of related, the Stridvagn 103). Supposedly they were quite good designs but I don't think any other planes really picked up on their design details? Well, during WW2 the one big lesson the Swedish leadership learned was that in order to maintain armed neutrality an indigenous arms industry is required. Saab's two first production aircraft were actually pretty conventional designs (Saab 17 and 18) but once some institutional knowledge was there, both the engineers, the company higher-ups and the air force seems to have agreed that indigenous ideas were just as good as anybody else's, and since it was probably hard to get reliable data about foreign designs they were probably sorta right, in a way. If you want to keep up with the bleeding edge developments you can't really wait for people to put them in production, you have to roll with your own ideas. A lot of the originality also came from a number of rather specific requirements from the air force's side; "Swedish conditions" were rather unlike everyone else's conditions. The pusher prop (Saab 21) in particular was pretty much a failure (designed as a fighter, was too slow and not maneuverable enough for that, repurposed as ground attack aircraft, had rather nasty cooling and reliability problems) although it did lead to Saab independently developing a very early ejection seat. The Tunnan was actually a pretty conventional design (it's very similar in principle to its superpower contemporaries, the F-86 and the MiG-15) and was at least in part dependent on German WW2 research on how swept wings worked. At this point though there wasn't really all that many ways that Saab could go; they only had one engine option (the de Havilland Ghost) and all they knew at the time indicated swept wings was a must, and so the plane was designed around that. The Lansen was basically a ground attack version of the Tunnan and is pretty boring, really. Except for the part where they developed the first (by a good ten years) long-range air-launched anti-ship missile west of the Iron Curtain for it, but that's a story for a different post. The Draken is a bit more interesting; I have a huge effort post about it that I never seem to be able to finish, but I can give a very brief summary. The chief engineer for the Draken project was a man whose only real prior experience in aircraft design was a very lightweight single piston engined single-seater hobby aircraft. He had worked at Saab for about five years at the time and was appointed head engineer "until someone more suitable could be found" (of course, that never happened). He later remarked in his memoirs that "I really wasn't qualified to design a supersonic fighter jet, but then again, at that time, who was?". The double delta design was a compromise in many ways (internal volume, wing thickness, supersonic performance vs subsonic performance, etc etc); the main alternative was an extremely thin wing, Starfighter style. The Saab engineers had to trust their own heads because they couldn't exactly look at anybody else's designs, since nobody else had built a supersonic fighter yet. The Viggen was probably the most unique of the Saab projects. Its primary role was maritime strike with long-range radar-guided missiles launched from very low altitude, which literally nobody else in the West was even considering at the time of its conception. On top of this the air force had a long list of other highly specific requirements (STOL capability, very short turnaround times, ease of maintenance with conscripted mechanics, supersonic performance at low altitude, would be nice with some fighter capabilities, doesn't have to fly any further than the other side of the Baltic sea, and oh it can't be too expensive so don't use two engines please) and the engine options were basically limited to either the Bristol Olympus (originally conceived as the engine for the cancelled TSR2 project, later repurposed for the Concorde) or militarizing an engine used on the 727 and the DC-9. All of this led to the funky stubby-tailed canard design. The Gripen is, as far as aerodynamics goes, built on the same general idea as the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Rafale, it's just a lot smaller and single engined for cost reasons. The canards are also bigger because they double as airbrakes, which let the designers do away with the thrust reverser that gave the Viggen the L part of its STOL capability. As far as the S-tank/stridsvagn 103 goes, the "defensive tank" stuff is probably a History Channel invention. This isn't the appropriate thread so I'll keep it short, but I've read most of the original design documents and related correspondence kept at the national military archives and it's simply not true. The army wanted a tank, they ordered a tank and they got a tank - not a tank destroyer. A tank is an offensive weapon, and the bulk of the Swedish tank force was stationed in the far southern parts of the country, where the terrain has a lot in common with the north German plains. The mission was to throw back amphibious landings from Poland and East Germany (Sweden was actually located east of the Iron Curtain) back into the sea before they could establish a beachhead. The entire thing with the gun fixed in the chassis was a compromise; a turret would have been better but the designers figured that they had invented the Next Big Thing as far as tank armor protection went. Protecting the tank from weapons equivalent to its own, as well as from those nasty HEAT shells would have made it unreasonably heavy, but by fixing the gun in the chassis you could have both a really good sloped armor all over the front of the tank (protected you from the tank guns of the day), a low profile (made it harder to hit you at all) and a slat armor that covered the entire front of the tank (protected you against anti-tank missiles and other HEAT weapons) while still keeping the weight down. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jun 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 20:05
|
|
|
MrChips posted:(even though it was a Q400 ten years before the airlines knew they wanted a Q400) The airlines don't want the Q400 because passengers don't want the Q400. Even though it's only about 10 minutes slower on flights <400NM and much more efficient passengers think that for some reason propellers = death trap. They're a lot happier on an ERJ-145 which is just a lovely prop->jet conversion than on the Q.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:45
|
|
|
KodiakRS posted:The airlines don't want the Q400 because passengers don't want the Q400. Even though it's only about 10 minutes slower on flights <400NM and much more efficient passengers think that for some reason propellers = death trap. They're a lot happier on an ERJ-145 which is just a lovely prop->jet conversion than on the Q. Air Canada and Porter both use the Q400. poo poo, that's all Porter even uses. There's plenty of propeller planes in commercial services, I don't know where you're getting that idea.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 21:52
|
|
|
KodiakRS posted:The airlines don't want the Q400 because passengers don't want the Q400. Even though it's only about 10 minutes slower on flights <400NM and much more efficient passengers think that for some reason propellers = death trap. They're a lot happier on an ERJ-145 which is just a lovely prop->jet conversion than on the Q. Of all the charts and graphs and PASMs and CASMs I've seen by which airlines measure what they do, nowhere have I ever seen a chart labelled "revenue lost due to passengers afraid of propellers [RLPAP]".
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 22:14
|
|
|
Linedance posted:Of all the charts and graphs and PASMs and CASMs I've seen by which airlines measure what they do, nowhere have I ever seen a chart labelled "revenue lost due to passengers afraid of propellers [RLPAP]". It's generally included in the section with the chemtrail equipment budget, very easy to overlook.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 23:32
|
|
|
Horizon Air is entirely Q400s now, I believe. The one time I took Horizon Air I remember the seats were very narrow and there was only one toilet. It kinda sucked. I don't think that was a Q400 though. Maybe one of the older variants?
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2014 23:37
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:Air Canada and Porter both use the Q400. poo poo, that's all Porter even uses. Many non-aviation-minded people equate a propeller driven plane with old technology. I know evidence is not the plural of anecdote, but even some of the physicians I work with seem to believe this. They would much rather take a DC-8 than a new Q400. My urging that the Q400 is a solid aircraft because of it's bush plane DNA does nothing to alleviate this line of thinking.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 00:17
|
|
|
A Melted Tarp posted:Many non-aviation-minded people equate a propeller driven plane with old technology. I know evidence is not the plural of anecdote, but even some of the physicians I work with seem to believe this. They would much rather take a DC-8 than a new Q400. My urging that the Q400 is a solid aircraft because of it's bush plane DNA does nothing to alleviate this line of thinking. I have fond memories of flights on the Republic Airlines Convair CV-240 fleet. There's something nice about being on a plane with only 40 people--quicker boarding and de-planing, kind of cozy... Also, on those flights they served these cherry danishes that were out of this world and better than what you got on the DC-9 flights. Is there any plan for a commercial airliner version of something like the Airbus A400M?
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 00:41
|
|
|
benito posted:Is there any plan for a commercial airliner version of something like the Airbus A400M? I don't think you could. Most people won't be too bothered by props (if flight time is the same), but there is a big thing about flying in an aircraft without windows, and retrofitting them to an existing design is impossible due to having to reenforce the fuselage for the cutouts to put windows in. Windows are just about the single heaviest component on a commercial aircraft (ok, maybe the full fuel tanks and then engines are first and second). It would have to be designed from scratch to have windows. Captain Postal fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Jun 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 00:52
|
|
|
Nebakenezzer posted:I have a friend in flight training, and he is (I'm presuming) at a bad flight school. The reason is simple: the business operates the flight school, and a local airline, EVAS air. They use all of their resources on the airliners and leave too little left over to maintain the trainer aircraft properly; as a result 25 students are fighting over the one functional airplane. EVAS is garbage, but they might be the only option out there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 02:04
|
|
|
Captain Postal posted:I don't think you could. Most people won't be too bothered by props (if flight time is the same), but there is a big thing about flying in an aircraft without windows, and retrofitting them to an existing design is impossible due to having to reenforce the fuselage for the cutouts to put windows in. Windows are just about the single heaviest component on a commercial aircraft (ok, maybe the full fuel tanks and then engines are first and second). It would have to be designed from scratch to have windows. They've shopped military cargo planes for civilian uses several times in the past. They don't get many takers because it turns out that airlines are concerned with things like "range without aerial refueling" and "cost per seat mile" instead of the military's concerns of "unimproved take off distance" and "ability to survive being shot at"
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 02:10
|
|
|
Anyone have an Air Canada promo code laying around? I have a last minute flight to book for my wife and I'd be most appreciative.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 02:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 01:34 |
|
|
hobbesmaster posted:They've shopped military cargo planes for civilian uses several times in the past. They don't get many takers because it turns out that airlines are concerned with things like "range without aerial refueling" and "cost per seat mile" instead of the military's concerns of "unimproved take off distance" and "ability to survive being shot at" Boeing did pretty well on the civilian market with its C-5 competitor.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2014 02:54
|
|
