Aviation Thread.

[Titan]

The A-12/SR-71 are an unbelievable piece of engineering.

The stats of what they achieved back in the 60's still boggles my mind.

The one on display in the Smithsonian museum in Washington set a flight time record of 1 hour 4 minutes and 20 seconds flying from LA to Washington DC on it's very last flight before it was retired to go on display.

Would love to see one someday,amazing they have one sitting on a carrier deck in New York.

Kelly Johnson was one of the very best aeronautical designers and engineers.

[fast focus]

The whole lot is on the intrepid. I was geeking out on the whole thing. Seemed a little sad to have them left out in the elements sitting there. A big ugly coat of thick Matt black on the a 12. The windows painted on a lot of other stuff as they had yellowed from the sunlight. Bit of a shame for such amazing machines but I was glad to be able to see them. I seen an sr 71 years ago in duxford too.

[fast focus]

Few more I took was pleasantly surprised to see Concorde there too. Seemed a little out of place with what else was there.

[Titan]

Not too surprising as to what was used to start the engines of the SR-71...it is America after all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjdyQpEUYzI

And here is the last flight from Okinawa Japan 21st January 1990.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFO--wzFfUs

Quality is a bit ropey but if you keep moving your cursor over the video it settles down a bit.

[GeeTI]

This video of a low, low pass by a Chinook helicopter has been doing the rounds on social media for the last week or so. Lots of folk claiming it to be fake... though I'm not so sure.

https://aviationsourcenews.com/news/...t-of-soldiers/

[GeeTI]

Top what? 😂

[Titan]

This video of a low, low pass by a Chinook helicopter has been doing the rounds on social media for the last week or so. Lots of folk claiming it to be fake... though I'm not so sure.

https://aviationsourcenews.com/news/...t-of-soldiers/

Is that the helicopter equivalent of Top Guns buzzing the tower?

Touch on the low side alright.

[GeeTI]

Low passes like this were pretty common back in the 70's and 80's... not so much in the PC world of today. 😂

[Boris]

I was on an A330 the other day and on the inside nea in line the forward line of the engines there was an upside down triangle sticker on the walls. Anyon know what it means. I'm sure I've seen it on other planes too.

[DaveD_XB]

They tell the crew which are the best windows to look out to view the slats & flaps of the wings if they need to confirm them visually for the pilots

[GeeTI]

Yep..

https://youtu.be/JZnBehNpBYQ

[Titan]

Fair play to this fella in Florida, he landed the plane after his pilot passed out.

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/artic...ane/index.html

Cool as a cucumber.
Great job by the air traffic controller as well.

[Alfaguy]

[Cold]

YT kindly recommended a nice documentary about the F-117 Nighthawk (good name) the other day which was fundamentally about how they figured out how to get a stealthy diamond shaped object to fly. The business case was around the Soviets having improved their SAM capabilities and based on high Israeli aircraft losses in the Yum Kippur war they extrapolated that a NATO airforce would be toast in a conflict against that capability. My question... now that's been figured out, why would you want an attack aircraft that's not stealthy? As in let's say the F-16.

[Ming]

My question... now that's been figured out, why would you want an attack aircraft that's not stealthy? As in let's say the F-16.

Proper stealth aircraft are expensive and high maintenance - there are in fact only two (in current service) that are proven, the F22 and the F35 (the Chinese knockoff of the F22 and the MiG 57 are at best a work in progress). F16s and other stuff also carry a lot more more because the stealth craft lose their stealth profile with missiles slung on outside pylons. See here: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/lock...configuration/

The F35 can carry 5,700 lbs of ordinance internally and up to 22,000 lbs also using external pylons.


So one of the principles behind this mix is that the stealth stuff goes in first (maybe with drones) to make the anti aircraft defences reveal themselves and then the stealthy fighters kill them, leaving clear skies for hordes of non stealthy fighter bombers to come in, maybe with a few also carrying more missiles designed to home in on any remaining missile launchers. Only the F35 is configured for this mission, the F22 is a pure interceptor.

What complicates this is the longer range Russian defences like the S500 which can apparently engage from 400km+. But those are few enough in number and also expensive. And maybe need more than washing machine chips too.