Forum menu
Cheers Mrmonkfinger
The barrel prop thing just reminds me of roadrunner cartoons where Wile e coyote gets some weird or wonderful contraption from ACME.
it does look like a cartoon, does it not?
But it is kind of similar in many respects to the pods that turbofans are housed in on a modern airliner.
That flying barrel led me to this:
[img] 
[/img]
it does look like a cartoon, does it not?
A bit, yeah,
Did that wingless tube fly?
Rocket assisted take off and landing on a C130, worth watching till the end!
Holy shit!
Fat Albert with motherflipping ROCKETS!
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Seem to remember the actual rescue attempt didn’t go much better!
Didn't the Germans have a bash at strapping rockets to a Starfighter to get it airborne in the length of a tennis court or something (apologies if someone else got there first)?
*googles*
The audacity of it. Take a massively unsafe aircraft (at least in the hands of the Luftwaffe at the time), mount a RATO to the back and hope that nothing goes amiss before those tiny wings grab enough lift to make the whole enterprise worthwhile.
From the same people who brought you the Spitfire...
Do you fly in it or do you stack your laundry on it?
I met the guy that was 'flying' this a few months ago.
Did that wingless tube fly?
Think it may be an annular wing.
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105
Now there's a lot going on with that mig. I'm off to wiki it.
A bit, yeah,
Perchy's cartoon plane is based on a real plane as well...At the time dubbed "theMost Dangerous Plane to Fly
The instagram link has kept me entertained for a little while this morning, and this description was most amusing:
The Cutlass has the distinction of being flown by the Blue Angels. This distinction is somewhat countered by the fact that it was such a wretched aircraft, the Blue Angels omit it from most listings of their past aircraft types.
Although the two examples were only utilized for what amounted to a sideshow, separate from their usual formation display, they were indeed painted in full Blue Angels livery.
It could be argued that the Cutlass put on a more entertaining show than the official jets.
While the standard formation display has always been notable, the Cutlass had the unique ability to wow the crowd with decidedly spicy performances involving hydraulic failures, a landing gear door that flew off and crashed into some grandstands, and an engine fire on takeoff where the pilot was forced to limp back to the runway whilst trailing flames at treetop height.
For my money, that’s a level of airshow entertainment that simply can’t be beat. 🙂
This is another treat 🙂
Back in my years working in bicycle shops, I masterminded a few solid workplace pranks, myself.
One of the most successful involved a coworker’s shoes.
This coworker would commute via bike every day, and kept a pair of comfy open-heeled clogs at work.
He bragged about his clogs constantly, always talking about how they were perfectly constructed, handcrafted somewhere in Scandinavia, and only became more comfortable with age.
He supplemented his bragging with criticism of our own shoes, wondering aloud why we would waste our money on such horribly inferior, disposable things that were terrible for our feet.
This whole routine became very tiresome.
One day, I decided to do something about it.
After he left work, I took one of the insoles out of his clog and traced the shape onto a piece of paper. I then cut out a large number of insole-shaped pieces of paper.
From then on, whenever he left work, I would grab a couple of the paper insoles, draw offensive cartoons on them, date them, and place them under each of his actual insoles. Most of the cartoons involved at least one penis.
Gradually, over the next several weeks, his shoes became tighter and tighter.
Eventually, he lamented the prospect of having to buy a new pair, reasoning that at 40 years old, he must be experiencing some kind of growth spurt.
It was, after all, unthinkable that the discomfort could possibly be attributed to his beloved clogs.
Approximately 5 weeks later, a tsunami of profanity and rage erupted from the back room. Suspecting that someone perhaps sustained a horrible injury, everyone ran back to see what the commotion was all about.
There was Mr. Clogs, out of breath and paging through each individual insole in complete disbelief that I had been screwing with him so consistently, for such a long time.
To this day, it was the most satisfying work prank I've had the pleasure of conducting.
@disco_stu; Thank You for reminding me of Jean Michel Jarre's genius. I need to go and re-listen to Equinox :o)
At the time dubbed “theMost Dangerous Plane to Fly
Ah yes, the Gee Bee racers! The 1930’s prop-driven equivalents to the F104 Starfighter: Take the biggest engine available and stuff it into the smallest fuselage able to contain it, with the smallest possible wing and tail surfaces necessary to enable the misbegotten to scrabble its way into the air. With no guarantee that it’ll actually stay there.
“How do you obtain a Starfighter? Buy an acre of land, and wait”.
The stall speed of 90mph might have been a bit spicy for pilots of the time to contend with.
Thank You for reminding me of Jean Michel Jarre’s genius. I need to go and re-listen to Equinox :o)
Seconded!
.
.
anyway - reminded by the jellyfish up there
A nice enough read about Have Blue and Tacit Blue with some great links to things like the Lockheed NT-33A that could mimic other planes handling for training purposes.
“How do you obtain a Starfighter? Buy an acre of land, and wait”.
The Starfighter is a proper aviation oddity in its own right. How they built so many is a total mystery (although apparently it had a lot to do with large brown envelopes). Even its official name suggests it wasn't intended for use in an atmosphere. Its many unofficial nicknames tell another story.
Another oddity
The F-104 is the reason that, every yer, I had to do bloody anti-corrupt foreign business practices training at my last company. Legend has it that the makers bribed the living shit out of NATO to adopt "The Widowmaker" as the standard airframe.
Starfighter was just a guided (by human) missile.
I imagine this required a particularly big pair of plums:
I've always found this a bizarre looking jet. Looks like a manta ray or something.
The F-104 is the reason that, every yer, I had to do bloody anti-corrupt foreign business practices training at my last company. Legend has it that the makers bribed the living shit out of NATO to adopt “The Widowmaker” as the standard airframe.
At least we got an album out of the deaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Lockheed_and_the_Starfighters
On richmtb's photo up there - has the woman on the bike just smashed her face into the back of that thing? 😁
Some great stuff here:
Brilliant summary of the Starfighter's colourful history too from the same author
Interesting that site references an incident my dad talks about with Italian F104's. Stationed at Gutersloh with 92 sgn flying Lightenings, he remissness that they often thought themselves as flying one of the most demanding airplanes about at the time. That is until they had an exercise with the Italians. He said that the weather wasn't great, and those Italian pilots had to work like heros to get the 104s back on the ground, and none of them were big guys as the cockpit was so tiny! Heavy rain, heavy fog, no radar to speak of, and 220knots over the threshold, it was a crazy plane to fly in those circumstances, and the Italian 104s were some of the better variants...Lost one due to loss of blown flaps, didn't even bother try to recover it, just banged out straight away!
blown flaps
*s****s*
The Lightning and F-104 were designed around a very similar brief - take off and climb quickly to intercept nuclear bombers and engage with two infrared missiles with cannon armament as a backstop. Both planes were designed for high speed performance, the F-104 being designed around feedback from Sabre pilots during the Korean War.
Lightnings suffered from a litany of maintenance and manufacturing flaws that at one point made them statistically less safe than Luftwaffe F-104s. I'm told that the Lightning was a far better proposition to bail out of (ignore the stories of downward firing ejector seats in F-104s only the short lived F-104A carried these). That said, the F-104 apparently had a relatively good safety record when flown by Spain and Canada.
The F-104 was a very difficult plane to fly with some nasty handling quirks. Luftwaffe pilots flying the thing had very little experience of fast jets, having only reformed in 1955 around Canadair Sabres. Moreover, Starfighters were used as a low level strike asset during the late 1960s and early 1970s, something the plane wasn't conceptually designed for.
The F-104 was a very difficult plane to fly with some nasty handling quirks
My dad was lucky enough to be flying in the RAF when jet development was moving incredibly quickly, he often says that Gen One fighters he flew, things like the Hunter and Javelin were just too reliant on what was effectually WW2 experience, technology and aeronautics, and as a consequence were easy to fly, but predicable and somewhat slow.
On the other hand; Gen Two fighters like the Lightning and 104 were playing with experiments and developments that were pushing knowledge like crazy (like area rule, afterburners, extreme aeronautics, flight computers, automatic systems) Plane designers were often not entirely sure they always knew what they were doing, and they were amazing to fly, but when things went wrong they tended to go wrong very quickly and often with catastrophic consequences, He's often said there wasn't really anything that was "easy" to fly until things like the F4 call along (and other Gen Three planes)
I’ve always found this a bizarre looking jet. Looks like a manta ray or something.
Saab Draken, predecessor to the Viggen. Both designed to be independent of established airfields, using stretches of motorway as a runway, with parking areas tucked away among trees, with mobile support services.
A very effective plane, as I understand it.
Older than I thought, designed in the 1940-50’s introduced in 1960, Western Europe’s first supersonic fighter, in service until 2005, due to delays with the Gripen.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_35_Draken
Regards the F-104, I remember being at the RIAT at Fairford quite a few years ago, and the weather was dire, raining with a cloud ceiling that must have been less than 500’.
There was a two-ship F-104 display team, which by its very nature must have been... challenging, but they were doing low-level fast passes with one inverted directly above the other, mirror-imaged! I think it was an Italian team, they were the last ones to fly 104’s I believe.
Completely bloody bonkers!
@nickc, aside from Lightnings, what else did your day fly?
The Draken was an interesting aircraft, it had a single afterburning Avon and thanks to that huge wing, it could carry a useful amount of ordinance.
Saw one at the Jersey Airshow. And lovely it is too
hey PMJ, usual stuff for a fast jet driver in the 60/70s, off the top of my head, I think he started flying Hunting Percival and then Jet Provosts, went gunnery school and flew Javelins and Hunters, then Lightnings, and last swapped to Phantom FGR (which he disliked, heavy and fat, in comparison to the Lightning, he referred to it as the "Family Estate" .
Off the books, I've a couple of photos of him flying A-4 from USS Hancock on exchange. Did some back seat joy riding in loads of stuff F-100 F-105, F-111, MIrage, probs some more, can't remember.
I think in those days it was easier the "kick the tyres and light the fires" so to speak.
On the other hand; Gen Two fighters like the Lightning and 104 were playing with experiments and developments that were pushing knowledge like crazy (like area rule,
Area rule was discovered after the lightning was designed. They were somewhat surprised when the apparently less aerodynamic 2 seat lightnings were faster than the single seat, due to unintended area rule effects.
Area rule was discovered after the lightning was designed. They were somewhat surprised when the apparently less aerodynamic 2 seat lightnings were faster than the single seat, due to unintended area rule effects.
I was about to reply along the lines of "nooo! You're all wrong", but having delved into the internet I'm not so sure. Whitcomb's discovery in 1952 of Area Rule would certainly pre-date the English Electric P1 design, but I believe that the ventral tank of the Lightning was designed with knowledge of area rule in mind. Certainly, the very first Lightning F1 (and prototype P1As) flew both with and without the ventral tank, by the time the F2A and F6 appeared, the ventral tank grew to Morrisey-esque proportions. Lightnings could fly at supersonic speed without afterburners, I don't know whether that's sheer brute force or aerodynamics at play. Just look at how difficult it was for Convair to get the Delta Dagger beyond Mach 1.
https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/mach-1-assaulting-the-barrier-22647052/?page=4
Certainly early Lightnings were more or less limited to mach 1.7, they were certainly slower than mach 2. Later models from the F3 onwards were mach 2 capable. The T4, T5 and T55 aren't lookers though, sadly.
@CFH, I'll raise you...
You want ugly?
this popped up on my youtube page