Aviation Megathread

I was lucky enough to see his Shrike Aero Commander routine a couple of times at Oshkosh. Ironically, it was relatively quiet for most of the routine.

That said, it was amazing to hear how much noise the airframe alone makes as it rips through the air.

 

The last time I saw Bob Hoover fly was after he got his pilot license back (FAA...) at the Reno Air Races.

 

I suspect this was done purely for shits and giggles? Unless the increased G necessary to hold that bank angle increases the rate of fuel flow during the refuel?

Pretty cool, but yah, it’s understandable that isn’t allowed anymore lol.

 

The B-52G pictured had turbojet engines. Normal rated thrust for each engine was around ten thousand pounds each. The airplane is heavy and does not have ailerons, but rather spoilers on top of the wings were used for control in the roll axis. The airplane does not respond quickly to control inputs. Excessive bank angles such as the angle in the picture were very dangerous as the airplane wants to fall out of the sky. Google the B-52 crash at Fairchild Air Force Base while practicing for an air show demonstration. The airplane has little forgiveness for mistakes.

 

I may be going this route soon with a program at Mt San Antonio College.

 

BV-107 on the North Slope of Alaska.

 

Glad I was not onboard for that... What could go wrong???

 

We always go to 11 mile state park. This summer we had 2 apaches fly over & turn around over the lake

 

For sure! If I recall correctly, I think the cause of the Fairchild AFB crash boiled down to a pilot that was basically hot dogging.

With airplanes, many things are possible, but not always advisable lol.

A good pilot would have no problem holding a stable, coordinated turn at a high bank angle, even in a B-52. There’s also the story of that 707 that was barrel rolled by a boeinf test pilot during a demonstration flight. The plane didn’t care since the pilot was precise enough to maintain it near +1g all the way around. Totally safe when done perfectly. But that’s the catch, everything has to be perfect lol. With airplanes that big, things can get real spicy real quick with any tiny bit of mishandling or misjudgment. Once you throw in other variables like tanking at the same time, or low altitude maneuvering flight, you essentially create a situation where only one tiny mistake or unexpected variable is enough to end it all.

Bob Hoover himself, showed it’s possible to do apparently crazy things with airplanes that aren’t aerobatic by design. What wasn’t apparent to the casual spectator is how scripted and planned all of his maneuvers were to ensure the airplane itself experienced nothing but normal forces during flight, even when looping and barrel rolling. My favorite demonstration of this is the in-cockpit video of him pouring a cup of coffee while he did a barrel roll lol. One thing he never did in a routine was to improvise. All of it was planned down to the second and down to the inch.

One of my interests is accident investigations. A lesson that is often repeated is that
in aviation, the risks of a flight increase anytime you do something that was not planned for. Professional pilots don’t go “off-script”. Instead, the flight is planned and proceduralized as much as possible to ensure uneventful flight. That gives them the margins necessary to deal with unanticipated problems that come up along the way. But whenever off-script” and aerobatic flight are combined, the risks become immense and very often those planes end up at the bottom of a smoking crater!

 

Military Operating Area NW of Death Valley. They fly low for the boobies at the hot springs.

Oh, and note my awning, lol, cost me $25, and I can move it around to any side of the truck.

 

Very cool shot of the Zulu! I have a photo of me sitting in the gunner seat of a Zulu and my daughter behind me in the pilot's seat. Unfortunately, we never left the hangar.

 

Off the ground in 3 seconds.

 

Yes recaps. New tires need replacement after ~300 landings or so. For short haul aircraft that's like a month and half of service. As the commercial aviation world is cutthroat, there's great economic incentive to use cheaper recap tires. At least in the US, there is no regulation prohibiting their use.

 

Some jets come with radial tires - such as the Michelin X. The A320 uses Michelin X, as well as the Boeing 777. Our Falcon and Citation use Michelin radials. None of these are recappable. A number of these airplanes do not list an alternate tire, so the Michelin must be used.

 

A320 with ~5000 in service worldwide has at least three approved tires from Bridgestone, Goodyear, and Michelin available for it. FAA AC145-4A has guidance material on retreading station approval. As per the FAA AC, there's no prohibition on retreading radial tires. SAE ARP4834 covers both bias and radial tire retreading recommended practices. Do you mean just Michelin Air X can't be retreaded? Wonder how this is enforced as the carcass mfr's approval isn't required for a third-party facility to retread a tire...

 

That’s pretty surprising. I would have thought at least that retread tires would need to be tested as its own product. Just to make sure it doesn’t come apart after extended taxiing, or after rejected takeoffs, and to guarantee the process of retreading results in consistent product.

 

Thank you for the education, I learned something today.

I have been away from the airline world for 13 years now. Been corporate ever since. On the two jets I maintain, I wouldn't dream of using a recap.

 

^Yes the economic incentive isn't as great for long-haul and corporate aircraft.

Usually the airlines learn their lesson after the first retreaded tire failure, where the collateral damage defeats all the savings they achieved all year from using retreads. So it's self-limiting in a way.

 

Thinking about what you said here. If the Illustrated Parts Catalog does not list an approved part number by one of the other manufacturers, that does not mean that they can be used. As you probably know, that would be a configuration deviation for a Part 135 or 121 air carrier. I have run into this recently with the Falcon. I learned of a tire from a different manufacturer that would fit, and some were using. But my Falcon Technical Representative told me I could not legally use it when I asked him.

Edit: Post Covid we had a really hard time getting replacement tires. The longest I waited with tires on order was 14 months.

 

While working B-52s in the military in the early 80s, retreads were commonplace. They almost never stayed together while showing good tread - seemed to show signs of delamination early. We did lose an entire B-52 over a retread tire failure.

 

I had my private pilot's license many years ago. I learned in a Piper Cherokee 140. Once I had my license, I would typically rent a Cessna 172, or a 150 if the 172 wasn't available, for recreation and to accumulate hours. Having learned in the Cherokee, I always preferred the Cherokee (low wing) to the Cessnas (high wing). But they are all great planes and easy to fly for a young inexperienced pilot. And it was cheap to rent a plane for a few hours back then.

Then I bought a Piper TriPacer, affectionately known as the Flying Milkstool. I usually described flying it as: "It's not exciting, but it's slow." Eventually, I met a woman and got married and sold the TriPacer to raise a family.

All of that experience was back in the day when we used paper charts and the old E6B "flight computer." Cockpit technology has advanced just a tiny bit since those days.

 

I flew for a short time in the 90s. I could rent a C150 Aerobat for $25/hour, wet! I remember thinking it was cheap even back then. By that time the plane was about 30 years old but was in really good shape. Aside from the door tending to pop open on takeoff lol. It was always fun to hear a giant bang right as the plane was getting airborne .

They could never figure out that door thing, many opinions of “they all do that”, or just part of the nature of an old barely aerobatic airplane being used by ham-fisted students for three decades.

 

My one and only flight at 51,000 feet. Very memorable.

 

What type aircraft, if you can say?

 

Lear 45 XR. I also flew a Citation XL, but it tops out at 45,000. Still makes ya thankful everything is working 100%.

 

B-1's are a nightmare. For every one that is scheduled to fly, they have an additional 1 or 2 spare aircraft with engines running. We had to listen to them for hours when we were deployed.

 

No.....we had plenty of them separate on our KC's.

 

.72 Mach is only 167 knots indicated airspeed…. Gotta love that!

 

One of the pilots needs to wear an oxygen mask at that altitude, if I remember correctly?

 

Thank god for the true airspeed. That fricken air is mighty thin up there. It was very very quiet too. Yup...O2 masks on.