Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

Got this wonderful e-mail today, made my fracking day:

Actual exchanges between pilots and control towers

Tower: "Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o'clock, 6 miles!"

Delta 351: "Give us another hint! We have digital watches!"

Tower: "TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 Degrees."

TWA 2341: "Center, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?"

Tower: "Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?"

From an unknown aircraft waiting in a very long takeoff queue: "I'm f.....ing bored!"

Ground Traffic Control: "Last aircraft transmitting, identify yourself immediately!"

Unknown aircraft: "I said I was f...ing bored, not f....ing stupid!"

O'Hare Approach Control to a 747: "United 329 heavy, your traffic is a Fokker, one o'clock, three miles, Eastbound."

United 329: "Approach, I've always wanted to say this...I've got the little Fokker in sight."

A student became lost during a solo cross-country flight. While attempting to locate the aircraft on radar, ATC asked, "What was your last known position?"

Student: "When I was number one for takeoff."

A DC-10 had come in a little hot and thus had an exceedingly long roll out after touching down. San Jose, Ca, Tower Noted:

"American 751, make a hard right turn at the end of the runway, if you are able. If you are not able, take the Guadeloupe exit off Highway 101, make a right at the lights and return to the airport."

A Pan Am 727 flight, waiting for start clearance in Munich , overheard the following:

Lufthansa (in German): "Ground, what is our start clearance time?"

Ground (in English): "If you want an answer you must speak in English."

Lufthansa (in English): "I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany . Why must I speak English?"

Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): "Because you lost the bloody war!"

Tower: "Eastern 702, cleared for takeoff, contact Departure on frequency 124.7"

Eastern 702: "Tower, Eastern 702 switching to Departure. By the way, after we lifted off we saw some kind of dead animal on the far end of the runway."

Tower: "Continental 635, cleared for takeoff behind Eastern 702, contact Departure on frequency 124.7. Did you copy that report from Eastern 702?"

Continental 635: "Continental 635, cleared for takeoff, roger; and yes, we copied Eastern.... we've already notified our caterers."

One day the pilot of a Cherokee 180 was told by the tower to hold short of the active runway while a DC-8 landed. The DC-8 landed, rolled out, turned around, and taxied back past the Cherokee. Some quick-witted comedian in the DC-8 crew got on the radio and said,"What a cute little plane. Did you make it all by yourself?"

The Cherokee pilot, not about to let the insult go by, came back with a real zinger: "I made it out of DC-8 parts. Another landing like yours and I'll have enough parts for another one."

The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know one's gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground controland a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206.

Speedbird 206: " Frankfurt , Speedbird 206! clear of active runway."

Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven."

The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.

Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"

Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."

Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"

Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, -- And I didn't land."

While taxiing at London 's Airport, the crew of a US Air flight departing for Ft. Lauderdale made a wrong turn and came nose to nose with a United 727..

An irate female ground controller lashed out at the US Air crew, screaming: "US Air 2771, where the hell are you going? I told you to turn right onto Charlie taxiway! You turned right on Delta! Stop right there. I know it's difficult for you to tell the difference between C and D, but get it right!"

Continuing her rage to the embarrassed crew, she was now shouting hysterically: "God! Now you've screwed everything up! It'll take forever to sort this out! You stay right there and don't move till I tell you to! You can expect progressive taxi instructions in about half an hour, and I want you to go exactly where I tell you, when I tell you, and how I tell you! You got that, US Air 2771?"

"Yes, ma'am," the humbled crew responded.

Naturally, the ground control communications frequency fell terribly silent after the verbal bashing of US Air 2771. Nobody wanted to chance engaging the irate ground controller in her current state of mind.. Tension in every cockpit out around Gatwick was definitely running high. Just then an unknown pilot broke the silence and keyed his microphone, asking:

"Wasn't I married to you once?"

Posted
A Pan Am 727 flight, waiting for start clearance in Munich , overheard the following:

Lufthansa (in German): "Ground, what is our start clearance time?"

Ground (in English): "If you want an answer you must speak in English."

Lufthansa (in English): "I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany . Why must I speak English?"

Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): "Because you lost the bloody war!"

I love this one.

Posted

I always feel a little bit ashamed about liking the Speedbird 206 story, but it makes me smile every time. :)

I'm not sure if this exchange, by a SR-71 crew listening in to radio chatter, was posted here before; possibly I read it on another forum:

"Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios. Just moments after the Cessna's inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed in Beech. “I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed.”

Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. “Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check.” Before Center could reply, I'm thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a read-out? Then I got it, ol' Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He's the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: “Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground.”

And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done - in mere seconds we'll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn. Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it - the click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: “Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?” There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. “Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground.”

I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: “Ah, Center, much thanks, we're showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money.” For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when L.A. came back with, “Roger that Aspen. Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one.”

It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed... "

Full version here:

http://www.fromtheinside.us/thinking/Groundspeed_Check.htm

Posted

It only got as far as the photo.

RP2N5211big.JPG

Now, the 777 did get airborne on one of its test runs immediately before "first flight", but Boeing denies it. Which is strange, as it used to be that Boeing would purposely get them just barely off the ground prior to the "official" first flight. The 727 was airborne for quite a while the day before its "first flight".

Posted

Ehh, it happened a few times on purpose too in Vietnam at least---a steam locomotive boiler is a GREAT heat source, and they were targets at times.

Posted

Every weapon (excepting the obvious fantasies) in AC games is real and appropriate. The "basic" missile on an F-14/15/16/18 is an AIM-9. A MiG-29 has an AA-8. F-2 has AAM-3.

The "XMAA" will be an AMRAAM, Meteor, or AA-12, depending on what plane it's on.

XLAA can be AIM-54, AA-9, etc.

I don't know if the game actually tweaks the specs for each weapon, or simply makes them all the same. (as in, will the game actually make a Meteor slightly different than an AMRAAM, or simply gives all XMAA-type the same specs)

Posted
Every weapon (excepting the obvious fantasies) in AC games is real and appropriate. The "basic" missile on an F-14/15/16/18 is an AIM-9. A MiG-29 has an AA-8. F-2 has AAM-3.

The "XMAA" will be an AMRAAM, Meteor, or AA-12, depending on what plane it's on.

XLAA can be AIM-54, AA-9, etc.

I don't know if the game actually tweaks the specs for each weapon, or simply makes them all the same. (as in, will the game actually make a Meteor slightly different than an AMRAAM, or simply gives all XMAA-type the same specs)

actually the Meteor is an XLAA. and all missiles of a given type were functionally the same.

odd thing to note, the base missile on US and European planes are AIM-9M's; the US QAAM (which is air-to-air only) is the AIM-9X

Posted

The QAAM choices in the game make perfect sense to me. AIM-9X and AA-11.

Meteor is XLAA? Didn't remember that. Then what do the Eurocanards use for XMAA? (I think I'm going to go play AC5 again soon)

Posted

Interrupting the Ace Combat talk again. Having watched this video of the first flight, I have to say with it's big oversized engines, gently curved wings, and weirdly shaped tail: the 787 is one odd looking duck.

I still maintain it must be some kind of forgery though

Posted

The 787 is awesome when it comes to appearance, because it's the most distinctive looking large jetliner in many years.

Too bad it lost the sharkfin tail late in the design phase... (actually, the last thing I read was that that was the better design aerodynamically, but they basically "clipped" it to a smaller, more normal shape to reduce weight)

Posted

It's been reported a Predator drone was hacked by insurgents in Iraq. I can't really say this wasn't inevitable at some point. Interesting story though.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America's enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.

The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas. They also point to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington's growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Obama administration has come to rely heavily on the unmanned drones because they allow the U.S. to safely monitor and stalk insurgent targets in areas where sending American troops would be either politically untenable or too risky.

The stolen video feeds also indicate that U.S. adversaries continue to find simple ways of counteracting sophisticated American military technologies.

Posted

First the 707, then the DC-9, and now the C-17.

<<<<<<<<<<<<Back in 2005 two Flight colleagues -- Brendan Sobie and Andrew Doyle -- broke the story that China's Xian Aircraft Corp was developing a four-jet freighter sized between a C-130 and a C-17, and based upon some IL-76MD technology. Its max payload was expected to be around 50t and max TO weight >200t. The prototypes and the initial batch may be powered by Russian D-30KP-2/WS-18 turbofans, later by the modified WS-10.

Well, four years later, the always fantastic China Military Aviation site has posted the first images of the Y-20. Does anything about this model strike you as, you know, familiar? It's perhaps worth noting that a California jury in July convicted Dongfan Chung, a former Boeing employee, of selling secrets about the C-17, among other things, to ... guess who?

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Y-X3-thumb-560x357-57229.jpg

Posted
Falcons + CFT definitely is "different" for me. I'm just used to the sleeker non-CFT versions.

Kinda makes 'em look a bit cartoony I think. If it were anime, I could see cannons to sticking out from the "back packs" :)

I wonder how those CFTs affect performance.

Posted
“The CFTs have very little adverse effect on the F-16’s renowned performance,” said Maj. Timothy S. McDonald, U.S. Air Force project pilot for CFT testing at Eglin. “A set of CFTs carries 50 percent more fuel than the centerline external fuel tank, but has only 12 percent of the drag.” The CFTs are designed for the full F-16 flight envelope – up to 9 g’s, maximum angle of attack and sideslip and maximum roll rate.
http://defense-update.com/products/c/F-16-CFT.htm

here's what i found regarding its performance impact.

Posted

Well that makes perfect sense imo. The word "conforming" as popularized by Victoria's secret should be a good hint on the aerodynamic impact of the new tanks.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...