|
It'll do for the F-35 what TG1 did for the F-14.
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 21:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 23:41 |
|
|
That tweet is a good joke. Top Gun 2 is real and yet also a joke.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 21:39
|
|
|
Hmm, sorry, I'll take a level 9 Thetan's word over yours.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 21:40
|
|
|
bewbies posted:It'll do for the F-35 what TG1 did for the F-14. There isn't enough CGI in Christendom to make an F-35 look as good as a *real* F-14.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 21:40
|
|
|
Dr_Strangelove posted:Hmm... Looks like a poorly executed copy... The Dreamliner crest is bigger on China...
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 22:00
|
|
|
C-130 is the best airliner because I can put up a hammock.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 22:40
|
|
|
You can string up a hammock on a biplane 
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 22:58
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:C-130 is the best airliner because I can put up a hammock.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 22:58
|
|
|
standard.deviant posted:You can do that in a C-17 too. True, but I've only deployed on C-130s. Despite the noise and the heat/cold, best flight I've ever taken.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 23:07
|
|
|
Had a FO string up a hammock inside a (cargo configured) Beech 99 while waiting out the middle of the day. Seemed like a nice setup.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2017 23:36
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:True, but I've only deployed on C-130s. Despite the noise and the heat/cold, best flight I've ever taken. Blew my mind when we flew from GK to Tinker nonstop.  No room for hammocks, though.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 02:23
|
|
|
Godholio posted:Blew my mind when we flew from GK to Tinker nonstop. When I came back from Afghanistan, they put up the stretchers, I took a pillow and passed out for 12 hours.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 02:43
|
|
|
Ours was 11, but yeah most of us were also passed out. Mostly because we'd just overnighted in Germany after a few months in the desert making sick per diem and staying in a hotel that had a weirdo techno dance club/bar in the lobby.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 04:08
|
|
|
The fact that I've been here for a little over 11 years and still haven't been up there is slightly criminal. https://twitter.com/FlyingHeritage/status/867449992214069248 ed: hah holy poo poo I didn't know they had an operational SCUD launcher up there. Duke Chin fucked around with this message at 04:48 on May 25, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 04:44
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:True, but I've only deployed on C-130s. Despite the noise and the heat/cold, best flight I've ever taken. Ladies and gentlemen, the face of Stockholm Syndrome. Yeah you get to spread out sometimes, yeah it's usually pretty nifty. And then you end up on a 9 hour flight from MSP to PAED where the floor heat fails 30min into the flight, and overhead heat flapper valve fails 50min in, and there are 9 people on an H model flight deck trying to keep from having to venture into the <10°F cargo area and freeze to death. And you spend 9 hours with 9 of your closest friends in a ~100sqft area. Or you are flying from Keflavik to Thule do a routine gas-and-go, and 20 minutes before landing you lose a engine generator, and have another go intermittently lovely, and you're stuck spending 4 loving days in the place where they won't even let you walk building to building because you might freeze to death or encounter hostile wildlife. And the only thing to drink is coronas and the only thing to watch is the same 4 hours of Icelandic language TV on repeat. Or you are are headed on what you think is a 10 man, 3 pallet leg to Key West, and then on to Curacao to do a sweet 2 month anti-drug counter-intel mission. And you land in SLC, and 38 Space-A PAX jump on, because "Hey! THERE'S SPACE-A TO KEY WEST!" And you spend 8 hours with a de-synchronized prop and ~50 loving people. E: and you have a single chem toilet for this entire flight.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 06:03
|
|
|
Kind of a perspective I haven't heard about being a corporate pilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQjsOnPuhRY Guy comes off as douchey/bro-ist, but at least he knows what he's doing.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 07:48
|
|
|
Dannywilson posted:Ladies and gentlemen, the face of Stockholm Syndrome. Look at you Gucci H2/H3 nerds with your fancy chem toilets instead of a literal bucket (bag for bucket not included)
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 09:32
|
|
|
Dannywilson posted:Ladies and gentlemen, the face of Stockholm Syndrome.  I stand by it, I'd rather poo poo in a chemical toilet and be able to sleep laying down on the plane than fly a red eye in confortable seats.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 15:19
|
|
|
BIG HEADLINE posted:Kind of a perspective I haven't heard about being a corporate pilot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQjsOnPuhRY LOL forever this guy. "I make just as much as my buds at the airlines" hahahahah no you do not. Do what you like but drat....
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 15:35
|
|
|
Arson Daily posted:LOL forever this guy. "I make just as much as my buds at the airlines" hahahahah no you do not. Do what you like but drat.... Great Lakes is an airline so he may be technically correct.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 15:38
|
|
|
Prop Wash posted:Look at you Gucci H2/H3 nerds with your fancy chem toilets instead of a literal bucket (bag for bucket not included) A flight equipment tech in our squadron ruined a box of piss bags by stapling them closed to prevent them opening and the powder spilling out. Guess when this was discovered? Thankfully we hot potatoed it from front to back pretty quickly. Yes, MV22 has no toilets or relief tubes. Just you and your Gatorade bottle (the liter size, Gatorade>Powerade due to wider mouth(prevents you from pissing all over the seat your sitting in or cycling you're holding)).
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 15:59
|
|
|
The C-130H1 was great because it had two standup urinals (unless you can't stand up to pee in which case lol). The urinals had a small connection to the bleed air system which allowed them to vent outside even at high altitudes when the piss might otherwise freeze. The side benefit of this was that we had the privilege of urinating on countries we didn't like (all of them). God help you if you decide to use them on a windy day while the engineer is using the fuel panel less than five feet away. Saw a loadmaster taste some flightline over that once.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 16:05
|
|
|
Psion posted:yeah, that's a good list. I've spent an unfortunate amount of time ("any") on a -200 in the back but at least now I know the two up front felt the same way, if for different reasons. Actually I'd love to read that kind of thing for every plane. Somebody find a Concorde pilot... So, Concorde stuff!  Over the last few years there was a Concorde megathread at PPRUNE, which is now legendary over there. It had lots of participation from Concorde pilots, flight engineers, designers, even a flight attendant. Here is the thread itself, and, even better, here is a thing where someone went through the effort of cataloging every post by topic, for some more targeted reading. My favorite topics are the engines, flight control system, and the autopilot (AFCS). Some of more interesting bits for me. It didn't spend most of its time in level cruise, sometimes even literally no time there. The design conditions were Mach 2 and 60,000 feet. Well, it would reach Mach 2 at full power somewhere in the mid 40s, and then do a gradual cruise-climb, at max performance, as weight reduced. On the more performance limited flights, it would be somewhere in the high 50s by the time it reached top of descent. On lighter/colder days, it would reach its 60K foot ceiling, (which, by the way, was defined by depressurization rate with a window blown out) and gradually throttle down to maintain Mach 2. (The Mach limit was 2.04, and defined by nose skin heating. In flight test it has been flown to Mach 2.23 and 69,000 feet. I think zoom climb, not sustained) On the topic of temperature and performance, as most people here are probably at last vaguely aware, low temperature gives high performance. So in which global region did Concorde (always without the definite article, in British style) struggle the most for performance? Most people probably would not guess, the North Atlantic, during winter! Isn't it cold there? Yes, at the surface. But you have to take into account temperature effects aloft. Generally, temperature decreases with altitude, until you reach the tropopause, which is the altitude at which the temperature stops decreasing and stays constant as you climb even higher. The tropopause varies seasonally, and with latitude. It can be as high as 60,000 feet at the equator (this is, by the way, good operational knowledge for the CRJ), and as low as 20,000 feet at the poles. So at equator, the surface is hot, but the air continues to cool all the way to the high tropopause, reaching mindbogglingly low temperatures there. In the North Atlantic, the opposite happens. The temperature starts off low, at least as far our little pink bodies are concerned, but not that low in the grand scheme of things. Then it cools only a little bit as we go higher, where we climb through the tropopause and then it stays constant. Therefore, as high as Concorde flew, it struggled for performance there while it thrived over the tropics. Another temperature effect is Mach. The colder the air, the lower the speed of sound, the higher the Mach number for a particular airspeed. Planes like these, during other than the departure and arrival phases, control their speed relative to Mach number, not knots. (This is also true for regular jets, a.k.a. "blunties" as the fine British folk over at PPRUNE have it. (Not the CRJ though)). Well, for fast-flying Concorde this would present another unforeseen problem, solved with an engineering solution of the autopilot design. As we all know (at least anyone who has driven up a mountain, or read this post) temperature changes with altitude. Also, as anyone knows who has driven from Minnesota to Florida, temperature also changes with horizontal position. And horizontal position is something that Concorde was really really good at changing very fast. What does this create? Temperature changes that it flies through, a.k.a. temperature shear. Every plane flies through temperature shears, but far too slowly to make gently caress all difference for anything. But Concorde ended up flying through temp shears (in degrees per second) several times greater than originally anticipated. Remembering that temperature sets the speed of sound and that Concorde cruised pretty much at its Mach limit, this means that if it flies through a hot to cold shear, its Mach number would suddenly shoot up and it would overspeed (yes, its actual speed didn't change, but busting its Mach limit was bad just the same). If in level flight, the autothrottles would of course throttle back, but the intake ramps would also contribute a lot of important work*. But if climbing (remember the long cruise-climb) then things got more complicated. This requires some background primer in basic autopilot modes. There are 3 things that autopilots control: Pitch, roll, and autothrottles. (I don't want to hear it; the CRJ is a complete airplane OKAY!) Roll doesn't matter here. Speed (regardless of whether we're taking about knots or Mach) can be controlled either by the autothrottles, or pitch. If it's under autothrottle control, it's self-explanatory. It simply varies engine power to maintain a selected speed, no different than a car's cruise control.  This is typically what's happening in level flight. In a typical climb though, the power is set at a constant setting (at or near max) and the pitch controls the steepness of climb, which in turn controls the speed. To slow down a bit, it pulls up a little steeper, and vice versa. All of this is just as true for Concorde as it is for us blunty flyers. However, it has long been conventional design wisdom that speed is controlled only by autothrottle OR pitch, but never by both at once. If it were, then both "channels" would be vying for speed control as they overcorrect the other one's inputs in unpredictable oscillations. So it's either "speed-on-pitch" or "speed-on-thrust," but never the twain shall meet. Well, the Concorde autopilot was designed to do exactly that, but without the nasty side effect.Remember temperature shears? They were just as much of a problem in the climb (which is, recall, where it spent most of its time) as they were in cruise. In a basic climb at max power where the speed was pitch-controlled, it would fly into a hot to cold shear, the Mach would shoot up, the autopilot would compensate by pulling up to slow down. Well, the required pullup was way too much to maintain a comfortable ride for all the ladies in the back eating caviar and sipping fine wine in their white gloves and funny hats. What's more, the pullup would put Concorde into even colder air, which would increase the Mach even more, thus requiring even more pitch up, etc. and the cycle would run away. Unacceptable. So they integrated the autothrottles into the process; now, if Concorde detected this starting to happen, it would freeze the climb into a very moderate 600 fpm rate, throttle back, and then very gradually throttle back up until it reached Mach 2 again and then went back to pure speed-on-pitch. Sometimes it would go through a few of these events during a climb. * I made a passing mention of the intake ramps. But I want to highlight how much of a masterpiece they are considered to be, and how vital to the effort they were. As with any supersonic design, the management of the complicated shockwave system going into the inlets is very important to prevent thermodynamic and pressure losses, and the higher the Mach number, the more and more critical this becomes. To do this, there's a complicated system of various ramps, doors, etc. that move according to a schedule based on all sorts of pressure/temperature inputs, under the control of a digital control system, which pioneered the use of such electronics. Basically, I look at it like this. The most viscerally impressive part of the Apollo program (comparing Concorde to the Apollo program is another thing the British love to do), the one that captures the awe of the public and the casual fan, is the raw power of the launch vehicle. But the real heart and soul of the machine, where it was enlivened and enabled, at least to me, was the navigation system. Likewise, Concorde had its sleek fuselage, javelin nose, and beautiful ogive wing that etched it into the public imagination, or maybe even the engines, but to the real connoisseur (if I may) the engine air intakes (both the physical and electronic control elements) is where the real magic lived. The hidden star of the show. There was even a separate offshoot thread about just the intake system, for those who might be inclined to descend that rabbit hole. Other interesting tidbits: Due to heat after shutdown, the shafts of the engines sagged, or bowed, for a while. So, if the next start was during a certain time window after shutdown, they had to do a “debow” start where they select a special setting for the FCU. That made it start to a much lower idle RPM than normal, where it could spend a few minutes warming up and straightening out without shaking itself to death. But to do this, the designers had to navigate around another problem, which was that there was a certain RPM range in which the compressor stayed in a persistent compressor stall, which was quickly damaging. So the debow idle was below this range, and then the engines had to quickly accelerate through it to get to normal idle, which was above it. The afterburners ("reheat" in British) were only used for takeoff, and supersonic acceleration (from .96 to 1.7). While turned on, they added about 25% to the thrust, but nearly doubled the fuel flow. This is normal for an afterburner system. There were plans for an upgraded Concorde B where the dry (non-afterburning) thrust was about the same as the original's afterburning thrust, and would therefore not have afterburners. Depending on the weight and other conditions, it was sometimes acceptable to continue a takeoff with one failed afterburner below V1. On the panel was a little plastic flippy tab, that was painted with the number 3 on one side and 4 on the other. Its purpose was to be set as a reminder for how many afterburners you need on this particular takeoff. When supersonic, the center of lift moves considerably rearward, which creates a strong pitch-down moment in need of compensation. This is true for every supersonic airplane, but not an issue for normal airplanes; for them, the compensation comes from the tail surfaces which work just fine. But a tailless delta like Concorde needs to shift the CG rearward to match, which it did by pumping fuel backwards through its complicated tankage system. (And forward when decelerating.) This was made easy for the flight crew. The pilots, on their Mach meters, have a pair of bugs that show the minimum and maximum speeds at the current CG. Conversely, the flight engineer's panel has a CG guage with a pair of bugs showing the CG limits at the current speed. Due to the high heat at Mach 2, the fuselage expanded a significant amount. This was, of course, designed for with specific expansion points in the fuselage where this took place. Especially for systems like hydraulic plumbing that had slip joints and things like that to make them receptive to the stretchiness. One place apparent to the crew was the space between the flight engineer's panel and the bulkhead behind it. There was no gap there sitting on the ground, but a gap opened up in flight. It was tradition, for the last flight of a specific airframe, for the FE to stuff his hat into that gap in flight, which would then close up after the flight, jamming it in place forever. Those hats still sit there in Concordes on the ground today, in echo of their operational times.  The only known picture of Concorde at Mach 2. (Fighters had trouble keeping up with it. They could only reach that speed in afterburner for a few minutes at a time, before bingoing out.) It's a stark yet beautiful, and extremely rare, glimpse of Concorde in its alien home environment, where our souls were not meant to tread. Note the black daytime sky and the harsh lighting from the un-diffused sun. And of course the Earth's curviture. vessbot fucked around with this message at 02:52 on May 26, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 16:29
|
|
|
vessbot posted:Concorde stuff! And to whoever some time ago said an unladen CRJ is half-decent to fly: Pretty much everything jet is massively overpowered with an airshow performance worth of fuel, two pilots, and nothing else, because they're meant to lift their dry weight and then some in pax/cargo or ordnance, plus fuel. All those C-17s that accidentally the wrong airport? Truck the cargo to the intended destination, offload fuel to minimum, and that big mofo can take off from the smallest GA airstrip in a stiff headwind.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 17:18
|
|
Bad Angus! Bad!
|
loving awesome Concorde post
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 17:59
|
|
|
Bob A Feet posted:loving awesome Concorde post
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 18:22
|
|
|
I want to highlight that you never say "the Concorde" or "a Concorde," it's always simply "Concorde." Thing was so unique and important that it has its own grammar exception. It reflects its ethereal character.
vessbot fucked around with this message at 18:34 on May 25, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 18:31
|
|
|
Automakers do the same thing with "F-150". It's nothing new.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 18:35
|
|
|
For those interested, it is possible to download scanned PDF of the 1979 revision of the official Concorde flight manuals and some other documents. Not sure if posting the direct link might be  or whatever, but just google "Concorde_Offical Manuals" and use the first Chinese link that contains exactly this string in its title. It's legit.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 18:47
|
|
|
Do British people tend to gloss over the French involvement in Concorde and basically claim it as their own? e: Wiki had this for skin temperatures, which to be honest is less than I would have guessed 
slidebite fucked around with this message at 18:59 on May 25, 2017 |
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 18:56
|
|
|
What exactly were the economic/technological conditions that led people to think SSTs would be viable?
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 19:01
|
|
|
People wanting to be somewhere 2x as fast in itself is not a crazy idea, especially in the decades before telecommuting, but the US banning supersonic continental overflights by passenger aircraft put a serious wrench in the works for the future of SSTs.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 19:07
|
|
|
bewbies posted:What exactly were the economic/technological conditions that led people to think SSTs would be viable? They could be economically viable today-Concorde was profitable-ish-but the ban on overland flight puts anyone developing an SST today at a disadvantage. Furthermore, a ton of money has been poured into making passenger jets economical, even at the cost of speed, work that doesn't translate to SSTs. That's what killed the Boeing SST the first time around, because flying 400 passengers in a 747 is so much cheaper than in a 707 that the slight price increase for supersonic flight became a much larger one. Boom is a start-up working on a passenger SST, and there's a revival of interest thanks to low-boom technology that could make flying over land viable again. We've got SpaceX landing rockets on barges; it's possible we could have an SST revival in the next 20 years. All it would take is a couple billion in upfront capital, passengers willing to pay a premium for travel, and changes in the law.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 19:15
|
|
|
bewbies posted:What exactly were the economic/technological conditions that led people to think SSTs would be viable? It was very much a past projections = future returns thing. There was an air Marshall in the RAF, Sir John Slessor, who started his career intercepting Zeppelins over England. When he retired in the early 1950s, he had overseen the development of the V-bombers: jet bombers built for attacking with nuclear weapons. Even in the postwar world, airliners went from piston engines, to turbines, to jet turbines in the space of about 15 years. People figured the next step was taking those supersonic aircraft and making a SST out of them. The drive for SSTs was rooted in that notion, and a huge amount of national pride/wanting to be were the aerospace industry was going. The two superpowers were spending unfathomably large amounts of money on RnD, and other nations (viz. Britain and France) recognized that aerospace was getting very concentrated in those countries because of it, and saw the SST as a way to stay in the game.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 19:59
|
|
|
bewbies posted:What exactly were the economic/technological conditions that led people to think SSTs would be viable? Once the Concorde program got started, there was a bit of a panic in the US, since the assumption was that SST's would replace existing airliners on oceanic crossings (to the point where Boeing thought the 747 would only carry passengers for a few years before being replaced by an SST), and the fact that Pan Am took out out Concorde options seemed to confirm that belief. During that time, long haul airliners only carried about 130 passengers, so the economics of "same number of passengers, but twice as fast" made sense, especially when you consider the fact that airlines in the US were still regulated, so there was less of a financial risk from being undercut by cheaper airlines. By the time the first Concorde flew, the 747 was already in service (carrying almost four times as many passengers as a 707, with only slightly higher operating costs), and it drove the cost per seat mile down to a point where the economics of a large fleet of SST's simply didn't work. The final nails in the SST coffin were a mix of public backlash over noise and oil prices quadrupling in the early 1970's, which not only meant that SST's were essentially restricted to oceanic crossings, but also made the already high operating costs of an SST even more infeasible.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 20:00
|
|
|
Delivery McGee posted:Does, say, an F-15 have the same problems when truckin' along at about the speed of your average .30-caliber rifle bullet (for much shorter time and distance, obviously)? I've read that the F-15C can exceed its structural speed limit when pulled 90 degrees nose-up as soon as Vr is achieved; the air's too thick down here, and can tear the wings off from frontal drag if they just firewall the throttles off the strip. I.e. most models of F-15 can the thing can hit Vne in a vertical climb, riding to Valhalla on twin pillars of fire. The main issue is that with the exception of modern fighters like the Typhoon & F-22 and, because Brits really like going fast, the English Electric Lightning, most fighters like the F-15 cannot supercruise. That means they can't keep up with Concorde without keeping their afterburners on full blast, a good way to run out of fuel really, really quickly. slidebite posted:Do British people tend to gloss over the French involvement in Concorde and basically claim it as their own? Yuuuuuuup. No idea if the French do the same. bewbies posted:What exactly were the economic/technological conditions that led people to think SSTs would be viable? The idea was that instead of having big planes carry a lot of people slowly, you could carry the same number of people by having a faster plane make multiple sorties. Obviously the technological reality was a bit different, but by the time that was discovered the project had both become a point of national pride for both Britain and France, and eventually the source of an international treaty between the two countries which was seen in some ways as proof of Britain's dedication to Europe over the US, prior to British accession into the EEC.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 20:01
|
|
|
That Concorde thread is an incredible read from start to finish, and with voices that we don't often hear from, like mechanics and flight attendants. My favourite anecdote is how the ROAD would send Tornado ADVs up to practice intercepts against Concorde, and one day some smartass Tornado pilot asked to practice an intercept from behind. Without doing anything other than follow their normal climb and speed schedule, the Concorde absolutely left the hapless Tornad for dead, and ATC made sure everyone knew about it, calling out the distance between the two aircraft from time to time, each time a larger number than before. Just think of how insane this actually is - two guys in bone-dome helmets and poopy suits, uncomfortable and cramped in their "high-performance interceptor", being clowned by an airliner carrying hundred people in shirt-sleeves and sipping champagne.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 20:34
|
|
|
bewbies posted:What exactly were the economic/technological conditions that led people to think SSTs would be viable? In addition to everything else, very cheap gas.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 20:54
|
|
|
Thanks Vessbot for that great post and that awesome picture...
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 21:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 23:41 |
|
|
MrChips posted:That Concorde thread is an incredible read from start to finish, and with voices that we don't often hear from, like mechanics and flight attendants. To be fair tail on intercepts are difficult no matter the speed of your target.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2017 22:07
|
|