willedoo

Checked out a Marseilles-Provence Airport guide & they call theirs a replica. One fairly old reference I found puts the original at Chalais-Meudon, but a lot of stuff was moved from there to Le Bourget from what I can gather, so it must be the real one at the museum. Cheers, Willie.

This experimental plane, the Fabre Hydravion or Le Canard is supposed to be the first seaplane to do a water take off under it's own power. It has a Gnome Omega 7 cylinder engine driving a push propeller with a monoplane wing at the rear. At the front it has unequal length biplane surfaces as a stabilizer and elevator. [ATTACH=full]1297[/ATTACH] Designed and flown by French designer, Henri Fabre, the first flight was on 28th March, 1910, for a distance of almost 500 metres, altitude of 2 meters or so.. It's been said that he had no flying experience before that day. It looks dangerous, but he lived to 101 years of age. [ATTACH=full]1298[/ATTACH] It performed a few more flights before being damaged during landing in 1911 and wasn't flown again. [ATTACH=full]1299[/ATTACH] Le Canard survived and is on display at the airport at Marseilles. [ATTACH=full]1301[/ATTACH] Here's a pic of a Gnome Omega at the RAF museum. [ATTACH=full]1300[/ATTACH] Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH]18239[/ATTACH]

The Sukhoi website has a few good high res photos lately, test flights, air to air photos etc. Here's the Su-35 high res gallery, http://www.sukhoi.org/eng/gallery/?gallery_id=56&cur_gallery_id=1112&page=1 The main page has menus to other galleries, no photos of the T50, though. http://www.sukhoi.org/eng/ Cheers, Willie.

Amazing loop, Peter, had no trouble viewing it. I wonder whether it's something to do with the version of flash required. I've had problems before with video on sites telling me I need a newer version of flash & the next day it plays perfectly without any updating. Hard to figure out sometimes. Cheers, Willie.

Today is 44 years since the first flight of the world's largest helicopter, the Mil V-12 (Mi-12). Only two prototypes were built, another example of good, successful design and technology being in the right place at the wrong time. In it's day, it won many awards, among them the Sikorsky Prize from the American Helicopter Society, for outstanding achievements in helicopter technology. It was a bit of a beast, 40' high & 120' long, setting quite a few records such as lifting a 44 tonne payload. MTOW is around 105 tonnes. The first prototype is still at the Mil helicopter plant and the second is at the Monino Air Force Museum. Here's one of those 360 degree click & drag type views of it at the museum, http://www.360cities.net/map#lat=55.83288&lng=38.18597&name=monino-2&zoom=17 Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH=full]1288[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1289[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1290[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]18237[/ATTACH]

It seemed to be a reasonably capable fighter, although I don't know much about it or it's successor, the La-17. The La-17 was a much improved version by the sound of it. Lavochkin didn't have too much luck after the war with the jets. A few prototypes culminating in their last jet, the La-15 losing out eventually to the Mig-15. The La-15's big problem was that it was harder to mass produce & build economically. The rest of it was a fair bit of politics, it's bad safety reputation was arguably undeserved in some peoples opinion. The crunch really came when Stalin's son's mate fatally crashed one & it was basically dropped after that. They say nowdays that the aircraft wasn't the cause, the pilot was doing aerobatics outside the plane's abilities. Lavochkin seem to be successful enough these days sticking to the space programme, though. Cheers, Willie.

Today is 69 years since WW2 ace, Lieutenant Alexander Gorovets downed 9 Junkers Ju-87 Stuka's in a single battle. 28 year old Gorovets, a Belarussian flying a Lavochkin La-5, was killed in the battle and posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. It was one of the highest recorded single mision kills in fighter history, others being Erich Rudorffer (13) and American naval aviator, David McCampbell with 9 Japanese aircraft. They say when Commander McCampbell landed on the USS Langley, he had 2 rounds left in his guns and his Hellcat was out of fuel, having to be manually released from the wire. Lieut. A.K. Gorovets [ATTACH=full]1285[/ATTACH] La-5 [ATTACH=full]1286[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]18235[/ATTACH]

I understand what you're saying there, Dazza. When I first started in the game in the early 80's, our standard hitch was 6 weeks, but 2 or 3 months on and 2 weeks off wasn't uncommon. So 2 on/2 off is like a paid holiday, but only relative to having once done worse rosters. It's a bit like someone hitting you over the head with a big stick 10 times a day; if they suddenly start doing it 2 times a day, you think that's a pretty good deal. The money is not anything great if you take all factors and hours into account, like the fact that you work 12 hours, but the company owns you for 24. The good part is that the opportunity is there to put reasonable money together fairly quickly. A lot of people with 9 to 5 jobs would probably like to work really long hours and get ahead, but the opportunity just isn't there where they live. Cheers, Willie.

I'll have to learn how to flip eggs. Looks like I've been in the wrong game. Cheers, Willie.

After spending more than half my life in a similar pursuit, I'd back you on that any day, siz. The newspapers love to quote the $100,000+ per year bit, but they forget to mention the 14 hour days, 7 days a week, 4 to 6 weeks & more on the job without a break, the sleep deprivation, flies, sandstorms, 50-60 degree heat in summer etc. And I almost forgot the bit about when you finally get home and your own dog bites you. Cheers, Willie.

Good reading, Peter. I'd never heard the word Mnemonics before, but it certainly works. I like the one about the parachutists. Cheers, Willie.

At a rough guess at the size of the tank and fuel consumption, I recon you'd be fairly close to the money there, Student Pilot. Cheers, Willie.

Found this link to a lengthy blow by blow description of the oil field fire suppression rig in the above video. Interesting reading if you like that sort of thing. http://www.caranddriver.com/features/stilling-the-fires-of-war Apparently it was based on a WW2 T34 Russian tank, and was designed by an Arab owned, Hungarian drilling company, using a Russian idea. The engines are Tumansky R-25's, which were used in the Mig-21bis. The T34 was retired after the Gulf fires and the rig was then placed on a T55 tank, as in the photo in the linked article. It's a bit of a beast. Cheers, Willie.

Looks like a PZL P-44 Wicher.

Found this old HT Holden advertising poster, circa 1969 showing a Ryan STM, VH-AGW in the background.It's not a very good scan, had to join two photos together. Appears it was one of the Dutch Netherlands East Indies Air Force planes evacuated to Australia during the war and absorbed into the RAAF. ADF Serials list it as RAAF serial A50-22, previous NEI serial S-29, later registered as VH-AGW. I was wondering if anyone knows anything about it's civilian and recent history. Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH=full]1278[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]18233[/ATTACH]

This would be a lot of fun to own. Stationary 14 cylinder Bristol Hercules radial engine being run up at an airshow in Sweden.

Here's a couple of photos of re-cycled Mig-15 Klimov VK-1 turbojet engines used as airstrip snow blowers and aircraft de-icer's in Russian airports. These were basically a clone of the Rolls Royce Nene. [ATTACH=full]1273[/ATTACH] This high mounted version with the extended exhaust is used for de-icing aircraft. [ATTACH=full]1274[/ATTACH] This one's for clearing railway tracks & still has the cockpit and part of the fuselage. [ATTACH=full]1275[/ATTACH] Water injected jets mounted on a tank and used to blow out oil well fires in the First Gulf War. Don't know what engines they are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyGDxglTVgA Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH]18231[/ATTACH]

Article with an update on the F-15 Silent Eagle development. Boeing has completed the wind tunnel tests on the Conformal Weapons Bay. Hopefully we'll see a lot of these in the future. http://air-attack.com/news/article/4833/06-25-2012-Boeing-Completes-Wind-Tunnel-Tests-on-Silent-Eagle-Conformal-Weapons-Bay.html Cheers, Willie. [ATTACH=full]1270[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]18228[/ATTACH]

Saw it on the nightly TV news. They described the pilot as an elderly gentleman and said he made a miraculous escape, particularly considering his age. So I was expecting them to report his age as being in his 80's at the very least least, and was quite surprised when they said he was only 71. I suppose to a thirty year old news reader, 71 must seem ancient. Most of the people I know at that age are still in the workforce, fit as a fiddle (well almost) and out there enjoying life and doing everything that they were doing in their 50's. I wouldn't have thought a 71 year old pilot was a big novelty, but that's the media for you. Cheers, Willie.

Thanks for sharing that, Peter, very interesting. Another venue for the bucket list. Cheers, Willie.

They were often referred to as the 'Flying Brick'. Some pilots joked that it didn't matter whether you were flying sideways or straight ahead, the handling was equally bad. Another common one was that the F-4 was proof that a brick could fly given enough thrust. McDonnell had to pull a lot of rabbits out of the hat during the design and development stage to get it to fly, with the help of BuAer's input as well. Some of the main concerns were roll coupling, pitch up at supersonic speeds, low speed stability and the spin characteristics. They designed 75 different wings and found only one resisted pitch up, hence the saw tooth on the outer leading edge. Part of the roll stability was to be provided by a six degree wing dihedral, but when the airframe was reviewed it was found to have negative dihedral due to the design of the main spar. By this stage the wing spar was already committed to production, so the outer wing was cranked up twelve degrees to give the whole wing an effective three degrees dihedral. Another method to control roll was the use of an automatic stability augmentation system to dampen aileron and rudder input. The twenty three degree anhedral on the tail complimented the wing to provide more roll stability. Low speed stability issues were adressed by the addition of a boundary layer control system with ducted air to the leading edge and trailing edge wing flaps. The ducts terminated in slots which were blocked off by the flaps in the up position. Lowering the flaps exposed the slots and via a mechanical linkage from the flaps, actuated the valves to allow hot pressurized air from the compressor to flow over the wing and flaps, delaying flow separation. The use of BLC was mainly due to it being primarily a Naval aircraft. The Navy influence carried on right through production, an example being that all F-4's built had folding wings. A fair amount of the design process seemed to be a bit of cut and paste. Aerodynamically, it really is a brick with just enough gadgets attached to make it fly. They say it still has to be treated with a lot of respect, particularly in regard to adverse yaw getting out of control. Cheers, Willie.

One of the Luftwaffe F-4's is to attend RAF Waddington Airshow next weekend. http://www.key.aero/view_news.asp?ID=5215&thisSection=military

Great photos, thanks Darren. Reminds me of the one and only time I ever flew to New Zealand. It was in the mid 70's and I'd never seen snow before or high mountains like the ones in your photos. The trip was from Brisbane to Christchurch and as we approached the west coast, I remember looking out the window and thinking ' they've got funny looking clouds over here in New Zealand'. Felt like a bit of an idiot as we got closer and I realized they were snow covered peaks. Hadn't seen that sight again, until you posted these photos, although I've still felt like a bit of an idiot several times since over the years, for different reasons. That part doesn't change. Cheers, Willie.

It's not a conspiracy. I've seen 'The Dish'.