Aircraft Vs Thread 3

[KingNor]

one winged f-15 landing, it's a dramatization but its a real story. pretty amazing. http://www.crapshot.com/f15-flies-on-one-wing.html

[Mislovrit]

Carriers are named after presidents only recently, because before that it was missile subs that were named for presidents. Roosevelt, Washington, Lincoln, Madison--all were missile subs in the 60's.

And yes--you should certainly wait until someone's dead. And I still really don't like the idea of the next carriers being Ford class. Still a chance it won't be, but it's getting close. http://www.ussamerica.org

The compaign should be reserved to if and when Lyndon B. Johnson name is selected for a carrier.

[buddhafabio]

I think an apt name for a class of carrier is a Theodore Rosevelt class

exp. the carriers embody his speak softly and carry a BIG stick

[Lynx7725]

As interesting as this is, can we move back to aviation?

What's the latest on the F-35? Haven't heard anything negative in the last 3 months or so, which is rather strange.

[David Hingtgen]

Can't be a Theodore Roosevelt class, seeing as how the Theodoore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is currently Nimitz class. Wait 40 years or so, then it'll probably be decommissioned.

Anyways---nothing new from the F-35 that I've heard. Nothing new for any plane really. Typhoon, Rafale, Gripen, F-22, Flankers---not a word lately that I can think of.

[David Hingtgen]

Which means of course, there's a new article today:

http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=13907

First flight's coming soon. And feel free to point and laugh at any ridiculous comments/comparisons in the story.

[F-ZeroOne]

Gee, I guess all the other Air Forces had best just give up now, huh?

[Lightning]

so they still don't know if the stupid thing can even get off the ground yet?

[Warmaker]

so they still don't know if the stupid thing can even get off the ground yet?

Getting "off the ground" is such a relative term.

Getting off as in, "flying in the sky under its own power" or "off the ground via maintenance jacks?"

[Sumdumgai]

Wow, the F-35 is going to be the state of the badass art huh?

Is there an internal weapons bay for sharp sticks?

[Lightning]

Getting "off the ground" is such a relative term.

Getting off as in, "flying in the sky under its own power" or "off the ground via maintenance jacks?"

hmm....you got me there. I'd have to say the former.

[buddhafabio]

hmm....you got me there. I'd have to say the former.

well my dad said the f-111 was only good enough to fly to the target, eject and let the plane crash on the enemy. may be the government is trying to replace that aspect in the f-111 with the f-35

last week my dad also said that he was facing layoffs because of beoing getting lack of c-17 orders so i looked and compared aircraft stats with the A400M ability to lift troops on target goes to the A300m but c-17 has cheaper price tag, more lifting compacity, more range ,and speed. the c-130j-30 seems to be 1/3 the performance of the a400m in stats but is a better value at 1/4 the costs

price for a400m is 200m euros roughly 400million dollars

c-130j-30 48 million

c-17 US$330.8M

i understand europes airbus loyalty but it seems to me that the c-17 is a better buy with the c-130 as a good econo transport

Edited September 22, 2006 by buddhafabio

[RFT]

your exchange rate is way off there- 200m euros is about 260m USD.

[buddhafabio]

opps mixed up pounds for euros still is an expensive bird for what it is designed for.

[Warmaker]

Money for the USAF is going into 2 things that you can easily guess, and not into airlift.

Airlift is not "sexy" I guess. But tell that to the Army.

[Maxtype]

Which means of course, there's a new article today:

http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=13907

First flight's coming soon. And feel free to point and laugh at any ridiculous comments/comparisons in the story.

Is it true-have you guys heard-that even the Air Force doesn't want this abortion with wings,but HAS to take it to get the F-22s they do want?

Also,my brother heard that the USAF is keeping the F-35's source code classified-and in that case the Brits will cancel 'cuz they don't want a plane that the US could just shut down on them!

Edited September 28, 2006 by Maxtype

[F-ZeroOne]

Is it true-have you guys heard-that even the Air Force doesn't want this abortion with wings,but HAS to take it to get the F-22s thet do want?

Also,my brother heard that the USAF is keeping the F-35's source code classified-and in that case the Brits will cancel 'cuz they don't want a plane that the US could just shut down on them!

Oh, thats fine with us. They do that, and we'll just revoke all the jet engine privileges we gave you guys about sixty years back.

You did read the small print on that contract, right?

[David Hingtgen]

Remember the "airliners as firefighters" discussion? Well the first one (a DC-10) is working on the ones in California, and doing well. Seems the firefighters are impressed to the point of mentioning it by name and practically crediting it with saving Ojai.

[Mislovrit]

Is it true-have you guys heard-that even the Air Force doesn't want this abortion with wings,but HAS to take it to get the F-22s they do want?

Also,my brother heard that the USAF is keeping the F-35's source code classified-and in that case the Brits will cancel 'cuz they don't want a plane that the US could just shut down on them!

The source code have been available to the Brits for a couple of months now. Especially to avoid the tit-for-tat hijinks, and the keep them on board the program.

[kalvasflam]

Remember the "airliners as firefighters" discussion? Well the first one (a DC-10) is working on the ones in California, and doing well. Seems the firefighters are impressed to the point of mentioning it by name and practically crediting it with saving Ojai.

May be they could use the A380... if it ever gets off the production line. Seriously though, wasn't there a company named Evergreen that set up a 747 to do firefighting as well? It would be interesting to see one making a low pass over a fire area.

[Retracting Head Ter Ter]

Here is a link for some 3-view posters of fighters if u are interested.

http://combatsim.cpgl.net/paint/3d/now.htm

[Noyhauser]

Stuff on the future of the USAF.

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123028140

[Maxtype]

Stuff on the future of the USAF.

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123028140

Another bomber?How much are these going to cost?

[David Hingtgen]

I think they're scrambling to get the 747 certified too. Anyone see the news (NBC) like 2 days ago? They're basically begging for the DC-10 to come back, but there's some red tape involving federal vs state firefighting regulations, so the DC-10 is barred from fighting the current fire and is grounded, just sitting there waiting for federal certification---I think partly because it involves national park lands.

Pure bureacracy and red tape. Let the state burn rather than allow a DC-10 to do what it's been doing amazingly well... Who knew there were different levels for state vs federal firefighting aircraft conversion certification?

A380--A380 flies fine, it's purely the aspects of making it a passenger-carrying plane with inflight entertainment. If I was UPS or FedEx I'd be ticked, because pure freighters could be being delivered NOW. (the certification is basically halted because they won't finish any more until the problems are fixed for pax ones--otherwise it'd already have the certification flights done, which cover both pax and cargo) 90% of the problems involve (indirectly) all those little TV's in the seats...

[David Hingtgen]

A bit OT for this thread, but really bugging me:

Though it's getting surprisingly little coverage on the news (here at least) a Brazillian 737-800 collided with a corporate version of the ERJ-135 and crashed in the Amazon.

We've got pics of the ERJ:

It's missing most of the left winglet, and the very tip of the port elevator. How the hell does that happen? A 737 collides with a regional jetliner, yet the RJ only loses the winglet, but causes enough damage to bring down a 737? Gotta wonder if it's a perverse version of the "golden BB" theory.

Also, pics of the crash site appear to show the 737 impacted utterly vertically, yet inverted, with the gear down. That's unprecedented AFAIK.

[Lynx7725]

It's missing most of the left winglet, and the very tip of the port elevator. How the hell does that happen? A 737 collides with a regional jetliner, yet the RJ only loses the winglet, but causes enough damage to bring down a 737? Gotta wonder if it's a perverse version of the "golden BB" theory.

FODded? Well, technically a collision would be by default a FOD, but I was thinking more engine injestion of the parts.

If memory serves, didn't the 737 have a problem with uncommanded rudder deflection, which is probable cause for no less than three 737 crashes?

As for it flipping over, might it be similar to American Airlines Flight 191? Hard to say this early, of course.

[David Hingtgen]

Rudder problem is supposed to be utterly fixed for the NG 737's. (-6/7/8/900)

AA191 flipped due to asymmetrical slats/single-wing stall, when it all comes down to it.

I was just thinking today (well I've thought about it before but anyways) there really should be a system to allow pilots to retract specific sections of flaps/slats etc to restore balance. Way too many airliners have crashed from what is relatively minor damage/loss of lift due to the IMBALANCE between the wings. AA191 is the best example (had plenty of thrust, plenty of lift--but it was so unbalanced it could't take it---if the pilots could have retracted the outboard starboard slats independently, the plane would have been quite balanced lift-wise, and would have been controllable--though it would have had a higher stall speed, which was a big factor in the port wing stalling in the first place--it was a combination of too slow and too unbalanced---ironically going faster alone would have saved it, but the flight manual specified a lower speed, so they reduced it and that stalled the port wing).

The PSA 727 that hit a Cessna was similar. It only lost like 1.5 slat segments on the starboard wing, and the aft-most section of one flap section, but it was enough at the configuration it was in that it started rolling and couldn't recover.

And there's been several incidents of 727's having slat asymmetry causing problems, including the rather famous TWA supersonic 727 incident.

From reading many airline crash books, one of the biggest things I get out of it is that lift imbalances have doomed many otherwise flyable planes. It's not a loss of lift or a loss of thrust or even a loss of large chunks of the flight controls, it's a loss of balance.

[Lynx7725]

Rudder problem is supposed to be utterly fixed for the NG 737's. (-6/7/8/900)

Can't tell till NTSB get its investigation done. From what CNN is reporting though, the 737 impacted the ground at around 300 mph, in a concentrated area. This looks like a nose-dive to me.

Hmm. From another report, this is a practically a brand new 737, so maintenance defects shouldn't be a problem..

I think most like what happened is that it clipped the smaller plane and the debri either FODded the engine or some control surface, sending it into an uncontrolled dive. Probably rolled it around if it landed belly up (which is fairly fatal), or the plane compressed and flipped on landing.

Google Earth community reports the crash site as 10º 29' south and 53º 15' west, which is literally in the middle of nowhere.

I was just thinking today there really should be a system to allow pilots to retract specific sections of flaps/slats etc to restore balance. Way too many airliners have crashed from what is relatively minor damage/loss of lift due to the IMBALANCE between the wings.

Being only an armchair pilot, the only comment I can say is that even with such controls -- and I think there might be -- it might not have been possible to save many of those aircraft.

In AA191's case, the pilots may not have known they lost an engine, much less the condition of the slats. All they really had time to realise was that their aircraft was rolling in a way that's waaaaay out of specs. Had they had the time to troubleshoot, they might have been able to bring the aircraft back, but they didn't -- they just acted according to their training, but the training didn't (and indeed couldn't) address what to do in such an odd situation.

According to the wiki, only pilots who knew exactly the extent of damage could recover the aircraft in simulators. I take it that this meant every other pilot augered to various degrees..

Thing is, airliners ain't fighters; can't throw them around the sky the way fighters can. 10,000 feet might be enough for a fighter to recover from some oddball situation, but the airliner's likely to pancake at that altitude, and even if you do figure out what to do, you might end up compromising the structural integrity of the aircraft doing it.

While having some way of "setting to neutral" the control surfaces might be a good idea, I can't help but feel it might not be that useful -- even if you set it back, you might be way out of the airliner's performance envelope to recover anyway, and you still auger.

[David Hingtgen]

Airliner nose-dives always lead to vaporisation AFAIK. Not the entire wing structure being intact, with the gear down and locked.

Current theories at Air-Disaster (always the best forum):

1. Broke up prior to to the collision, and the ERJ actually hit falling debris. (Based on how impossible it seems for a missing winglet to bring down a 737)

2. ERJ impact somehow ripped off the entire #1 engine of the 737, causing such a sudden change in thrust vector that it overloaded the structure, combined with the LE damage. Yet without the 737's wing ripping off the ERJ's entire tail. Though that seems hard to believe, as the only similar incident I can think of was the Lauda 767, and that required both engines in climb power, with one in reverse, to cause a structural overload. The 737 had both engined (presumably) at cruise power, and the one would have simply disappeared, not actually cause a reversal in the thrust vector on that side.

(while the NTSB etc always says "no speculation" etc, I have found that the right answer can be guessed 99% of the time in the first day after getting decent info--it's rare that something totally unexpected turns out to be the cause----the thing is figuring out which amatuer guess was right)

The crash scene most resembles the BOAC 707 in Japan, which was destroyed from turbulence and basically just had the wings flutter down mostly intact. (never let someone tell you turbulence is always harmless---99.999999% of the time it is, but it has ripped large jetliners apart)

[Lynx7725]

Airliner nose-dives always lead to vaporisation AFAIK. Not the entire wing structure being intact, with the gear down and locked.

News reports are pretty consistent with saying a nose-first impact at 300 mph. Not necessarily a nose dive, of course, but can't rule out a low-altitude loss of control and subsequent nose-first impact at 300+ mph.

Thing is, there's a lot of things I can't confirm for this incident. First, at what altitude did the collision occured? From here, it seems that the airliner was at FL 360 (36000 ft?). Silkair 185 took a nosedive (uncommanded rudder deflection was a possibility, but so was pilot suicide) from FL 350 (35000 ft?), and it disintegrated -- into tiny tiny bits, IIRC. So a direct decent from FL 360 is unlikely to leave much. Yet we have pictorial evidence that sufficiently large structures survive the impact.

Reading between the lines on Internet reports (which is always dubious), it seems like the 737 was still up for a while after the collision, with it was spotted making strange maneuvering and losing altitude by people. I don't think you can see an airliner perform strange maneuvers at 36000 ft... So it's probable that the airliner made it down to somewhat low altitudes.

I think we can rule out turbulence (though it's always a possibility).. I think the collision impact did some damage, the crew tried to bring the plane around (no reports of radio exchanges though, at this time), nursed it somewhat, but something broke (again) and sent the plane down.

Crew assessed impact, decided not flyable, locked the gear down to lower airspeed, decended for emergency landing but somehow got out of control and augered? Or an act of desperation, locked down the gear to drop speed, but (obviously) didn't succeed.

What it doesn't sound like is the wee little jet got clip by the big bad Boeing and the Boeing immediately nosed over and dived into the jungle. I think that simply can't happen, not with the wee little jet surviving.

[kalvasflam]

I think they're scrambling to get the 747 certified too. Anyone see the news (NBC) like 2 days ago? They're basically begging for the DC-10 to come back, but there's some red tape involving federal vs state firefighting regulations, so the DC-10 is barred from fighting the current fire and is grounded, just sitting there waiting for federal certification---I think partly because it involves national park lands.

Pure bureacracy and red tape. Let the state burn rather than allow a DC-10 to do what it's been doing amazingly well... Who knew there were different levels for state vs federal firefighting aircraft conversion certification?

A380--A380 flies fine, it's purely the aspects of making it a passenger-carrying plane with inflight entertainment. If I was UPS or FedEx I'd be ticked, because pure freighters could be being delivered NOW. (the certification is basically halted because they won't finish any more until the problems are fixed for pax ones--otherwise it'd already have the certification flights done, which cover both pax and cargo) 90% of the problems involve (indirectly) all those little TV's in the seats...

I just read something off of Aviation today that had a test pilot fly the A380. It's a good plane, handles very nicely. All of the bad press is a big fat self inflicted wound that EADS/Airbus management is giving to themselves. The problem is always in terms of expectations. EADS set the bar too high for themselves, part of it is the market, but I think when they figured out that Boeing wasn't going that route, they should've managed their customer expectations properly, now it's just bad news everytime they announce a delay.

They better deliver the first plane to Singapore at end of the year, or they're going to have problems. If for some reason their lead customer cancels on them, then they're screwed. I doubt if it'll happen, but I'm sure Singapore Airline is going to make Airbus pay for late delivery.

The same is true for Boeing, I think having helped to define the market, the 787 production better run without a hitch, because I can imagine if there are production problems, there really will be hell to pay with Boeing. They have something like 400 planes on order I think. A hitch is going to kill them, and give Airbus a lot of leeway going forward. Because unlike the A380, the 787/777 combination will have a lot of competition if and when Airbus get their act together on the A350 widebodies.

[Retracting Head Ter Ter]

A380--A380 flies fine, it's purely the aspects of making it a passenger-carrying plane with inflight entertainment. If I was UPS or FedEx I'd be ticked, because pure freighters could be being delivered NOW. (the certification is basically halted because they won't finish any more until the problems are fixed for pax ones--otherwise it'd already have the certification flights done, which cover both pax and cargo) 90% of the problems involve (indirectly) all those little TV's in the seats...

SIA has been using the tagline "First to fly the A380" in its marketing materials for a long time now. I think its somewhere in the contract with Airbus that SIA _must_ be the first to fly it. So the airfreight companies might not be getting the A380 before SIA in any scenario.

[Mislovrit]

The same is true for Boeing, I think having helped to define the market, the 787 production better run without a hitch, because I can imagine if there are production problems, there really will be hell to pay with Boeing. They have something like 400 planes on order I think. A hitch is going to kill them, and give Airbus a lot of leeway going forward. Because unlike the A380, the 787/777 combination will have a lot of competition if and when Airbus get their act together on the A350 widebodies.

Production problem(s) won't effect Boeing much, as long it stays honest with the customers about it. Lying to the customers like EADS did will turn a minor gitch to the a problem of nightmarish proportions. Sometinh which won't help Airbus at all, as there is other manufacters to turn to besides Boeing and Airbus should the situation become dire enough.

[Lynx7725]

Heard a news report this morning. Seems like the Airbus would be delayed and SIA won't be able to take deliveries this year.

[David Hingtgen]

EADS officially announced delays for LH and Emirates too today. Not like they really need too--if the FIRST plane is delayed, every one after it is too.

Relevant quotes:

"Airbus SAS's parent company delayed deliveries of the superjumbo A380 jet for the third time in 16 months as the planemaker struggles to install wiring, slicing 4.8 billion euros ($6.12 billion) in earnings through 2010.

Airbus, controlled by European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., said in a statement sent to the German stock exchange that production is two years behind its original forecast. It expects to deliver the first plane in the second half of 2007."

"Airbus blames the A380 delays on the complexity of installing 300 miles of wiring, in each of the double-decker planes. The wires are bundled in harnesses that are strung through the aircraft, controlling in-flight entertainment, lights, air conditioning and the plane's operating systems. Airbus allowed each customer to customize the entertainment systems, adding to the challenge of getting the correct wire in the right place."