Just Plane History
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Loose Blimps, Sinking Zeppelins
Okay, much is talked about the loose NORAD aerostat radar system
today, hashtag blimp, and why shouldn't we (officially a Tethered Aerostat Radar System - TARS, but part of the
missile detector program Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense
Elevated Netted Sensor System - JLENS).
When do we ever get the panicky headline, "BLIMP LOOSE, RUN FOR COVER!" Blimps are somewhat of an eccentricity usually found advertising insurance companies or automobile tires in sports events. While the news media tries to eviscerate the military usage of these blimps, the Pentagon seems to be defending its actions over its successful usage over Iraq. It is also important to mention that these balloons float on tethers along the US border with Mexico (which I assume the loose blimp over Pennsylvania was doing similarly with the Canadian border) in order to observe and provide intercept data to airborne smuggling and illegal operations. This is more efficient than sending these P-3AEW aircraft (granted, these aircraft provide coverage to areas where the aerostats and over-horizon radar installations cannot pick up).
When do we ever get the panicky headline, "BLIMP LOOSE, RUN FOR COVER!" Blimps are somewhat of an eccentricity usually found advertising insurance companies or automobile tires in sports events. While the news media tries to eviscerate the military usage of these blimps, the Pentagon seems to be defending its actions over its successful usage over Iraq. It is also important to mention that these balloons float on tethers along the US border with Mexico (which I assume the loose blimp over Pennsylvania was doing similarly with the Canadian border) in order to observe and provide intercept data to airborne smuggling and illegal operations. This is more efficient than sending these P-3AEW aircraft (granted, these aircraft provide coverage to areas where the aerostats and over-horizon radar installations cannot pick up).
The problem is that this came loose from a wild windstorm
brewing in the Northeast coast on the morning of October 28th. And then lots of
people either lost their shit over it, or got a laugh out of it. Especially
with the crippled airship being escorted by F-16s and ripping out power lines (near
Bloomsberg, Pennsylvania) with its tether, leaving thousands without power,
like some enraged Mothra out to seek revenge from its captors.
But this is not a new thing, despite this weird coverage of
a military blimp in the skies above the US. The United States armed forces has been
testing airship capabilities in observation and even as an aircraft carrier
ever since 1923, with the USS Shenandoah being built in New Jersey, and a
sistership zeppelin (USS Los Angeles built in Friedrichshafen, Germany) were
given to the US as reparations from WWI.
Then came the larger USS Akron and USS Macon (785ft/239m,
almost as long as the WWII aircraft carrier sea vessels) which experimented in
carrying and launching 'parasite' fighters (fighter aircraft that cling onto a larger
mothership), the Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk.
Like the aerostat that came down crashing in Pennsylvania
today, these airships suffered catastrophes in similar storms:
In the evening of the April 3, 1933, the USS Akron sailed
into a thunderstorm off the coast of New Jersey with many Naval and civilian
individuals that were pushing for greater airship usage. The airship was caught
in the wind bursts of the storm and rapidly pitched up and down. As the crew
valiantly tried to save the ship but the storm slammed it into the sea, killing
more than 70 people, including the proponents of airship use (such as Admiral
William Moffett, whom the large airship hangar in San Jose, California is named
after).
It's sistership, USS Macon, was hit by wind shear off the
coast of Point Sur, California. Despite losing control and having the airship
slowly ripped apart by the windstorm, the flight crew managed to control the
ballast and climb so that is slowly descended back to Earth. The airship gently
crash landed in the waters of Monterey Bay, California. The airship was lost to
the depths of the sea, but the only casualties were two sailors (one jumped
airship while it was still too high and another swam to the sinking wreckage to
get his personal belongings).
And even the first big airship suffered a similar fate. In
1925, the USS Shenandoah got caught in a similar windstorm as this one in the
skies of the northeast US. Unlike this blimp, made from strong mylar, the
Shenandoah was too rigid to fight off the storm and it shattered. It fell out
of the sky in three pieces, with mechanics falling to their death with the
engines, others falling through the shearing gaps from the disintegrating
airship, or dropping like a bomb inside the control cabin as it fell away from
the Shenandoah. Most of the survivors were within the airship clinging onto the
catwalks and other parts of the ship's interior as it slowly crashed into the
ground.
The US also purchased an airship from Great Britain, the R-28 (or US Navy ZR-2). But on its third flight, on the 23 of August, 1921, the airship was undergoing turning trials when it suffered a catastrophic structural failure, causing parts of it to explode as it disintegrated into the waters off the coast of Hull, Yorkshire
This is the part of the ship were most of the crew survived within |
Storms didn't kill it, but speed and turns did; like a muscle car |
The only rigid airship (meaning it has a fixed interior
structure holding it together, like the bones inside of a whale; and unlike the
non-rigid airships of today, including today's mishap aerostat) that survived
was the USS Los Angeles, despite having a few close calls, including getting
hit by strong gusts while moored.
As of now, media outlets are having talking heads talking
about how much chaos, destruction, and death this airship could've cause and
that we were extremely lucky and asking why did it fly away, etc. In a way, we kind of are lucky since, as of this post,
there are no reported injuries or deaths from this. In contrast to the damage
from previous airships accidents, it also shows that these things are not death
machines out for human blood (similar to how airliners became safer since the
days of the Shenandoah).
These 'blimps' provide ground and air surveillance similar
to the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) system does in having radar aiming downwards to pick up any movement:
And we have safer
materials for these type of vehicles than the rigid flammable zeppelins of a
century ago. This is no different than aircraft crashing into the ground
because of extreme weather patterns. We, as the people of the United States,
should not halt our curiosity and dauntless endeavor to better and more
efficient aeronautical vehicles, even if it is a goofy looking #blimp. So listen to the talking heads, laugh with the trolls and jokers in
social media, but also look upward as the marvels of our imagination coming to
life, whether as civilian or military applications.
The chin that sees things |
Images from Wikimedia Commons & United States Air Force
USS Los Angeles mishap & ZR-2 pictures originally from the US Naval
Historical Center
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Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Russians and the high bypass engine in the Cold War
Russians are great in many parts in the aeronautical
industry. They built the largest aircraft in history (which are still in use),
built some of the best fighter jets and technology related to it. But aircraft
engines aren't exactly top notch. While their first inspirations came from research aircraft and captured German tech,
their first successful engine was a reverse engineered clone of the Rolls-Royce
Nene engine. The latter came from a visit of the engineers to the plant in
England and managed to legally procure a copy for research, creating the Klimov
VK-1.
This engine powered aircraft like the Korean War
famous Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and the ubiquitous bomber Ilyushin Il-28 (NATO reporting
name: Beagle). The Russians went on to make more powerful engines for their
aircraft to properly compete with engines and aircraft from their Cold War
adversary, the United States. But the US was able to develop something that the
Russians took a while to counter, the high bypass turbofan. As stated before,
this engine sucks more air than what goes into the heating chambers in order to
provide a cool jet around the heated air in order to provide more propulsion
without requiring more powerful engines. This allowed the US military to fly
heavier jets while keeping fuel efficiency and great range, like the C-5 Galaxy
with the General Electric TF-39 engine (which was the CF6 family of engines
that powered all the wide-body, multiple aisle, airliners of that time).
Imagine this possibility, one of the strangest and
coolest things that could've happened to aviation in the Cold War.
But the technology in the cockpit and engines was
too great to share to the Soviets. So aircraft engineer Vladimir Lotarev
designed the first high bypass engine for the Soviets, the Lotarev D-36.
It was a small engine, powering medium and small
sized aircraft like the unique looking Ukrainian Antonov An-72 (NATO name:
Coaler, Russian nickname: Cheburashka, a similarly looking large eared animated
character from that region),
Improved version An-74 (Cheburashka/Coaler-A)
the Yakovlev Yak-42 (with the unflattering NATO name: Clobber)
But their advancement to this engineering tech went
exponential when the Ivchenko-Progress design bureau, in Zaporizhia, Ukraine,
designed the Progress D-18T.
This engine was the largest engine, at the time (beaten
by the GEnx, powering the Boeing 787, GE90, powering the 777, and the Engine
Alliance GP7000 or the Rolls-Royce Trent 900, either of them powering the Airbus
A380), powering the largest mass produced aircraft today,Antonov An-124 (NATO
name: Condor)
and the largest aircraft ever, the swansong that is the An-225 Mriya
(Russian for dream/inspiration, NATO name: Cossack).
It would be ten years
before the west surpassed the Russian and Ukrainian designs with the General Electric
GE90 and the others previously mentioned. The Dream/Cossack continues to be the
largest aircraft flying and the Condor is somewhat larger than the largest
airliner, the A380. It is likely that Ukraine pushes manufacturing of the
An-124, assuming things calm down between Ukraine and Russia due to ownership
of designs of that aircraft. One can only Dream, at least we will have the American/Russian collaboration with the GE90 engines (Boeing 777-300ER):
Images provided by Wikimedia Commons.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
The Fathers of Mexican Aviation
So everyone wrote about Father's Day and something respective right now. To follow everyone else off the edge, like lemmings, here is another pebble for cliché mountain! Right now I could write about the Wright brothers or Alberto Santos-Dumont. But I'm not going to as speaking for one and not the other will start another debating clusterfuck on the scale of the Enola Gay debate at the Smithsonian in the mid 1990s (was it right to bomb the Japanese, was it right to protect US soldiers, etc.). If you are too young to understand any of this, think of the Wright Brothers and Santos-Dumont debate as which is the best console, XBOX One or PS4 (whilst Otto Lilienthal sits in idle obscurity, like the Wii U). Instead, here are the fathers of Mexican aviation, Juan Pablo & Eduardo Aldasoro.
Juan Pablo (left) and Eduardo (right), a pair of dapper gentlemen
These two men were the first pioneers of aviation in Mexico when they started constructing and testing gliders near Piedad Cemetery, Mexico City. These guys were also given vehement support from progressive President Francisco I. Madero, whom saw the potential of aviation to be a great military tool. What hampered all of this was, unfortunately, the Mexican Revolution and the quick assassination of President Madero. The brothers had a glider that worked successfully, so they went to a mine their father (Andres Aldasoro, Minister of Promotion of mines under Porfirio Diaz) managed, in Tlalpujahua, Michoacán, called Las Dos Estrellas (The Two Stars).There they used the mine's machinery to perfect a design to make an air cooled engine. They also designed an efficient thick wing (which allows greater lift & steady airflow around it) long before it became the norm.
They later moved to New York to learn at the Moisant Aviation School, where many of the first aviators in the North American continent learned to fly. They were the first Mexicans to graduate as pilots and were allowed to fly above the Statue of Liberty, with Juan Pablo becoming the first pilot to do so. The propeller of that flight is currently at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. along with fellow Mexican graduates from that school, Alberto Salinas Carranza, Gustavo Salinas Camiña and Horacio Ruiz, they became the first to fly and teach pilots in their native country. The Aldasoro brothers also founded the Mexican Air Force (FAM) and most of the industries and government branches related to them. Both would pass away in the 1960s, with Juan Pablo achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and Eduardo reaching the rank of Brigadier General. As a result of this, Military Air Base 4 (in Cozumel, Quintana Roo) is called General Eduardo Aldasoro Suarez, while Military Air Base 11 (in Mexico City) is called Teniente Coronel Juan Pablo Aldasoro Suarez.
Images provided by Wikimedia Commons.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
The Flying Pencil
The Boeing 757 was an impressive aircraft that followed Boeing's endeavor to bring jet power to small airports with the 727-100. This small aircraft needed three engines to fly in and out of regional airports that had small runways or rough geographic hazards around it. This enabled towns & rural regions a fast link to an airline hub or networks to other domestic areas. While smaller than the four engined 707s, the 727 was stretched to the 200 variant to allow medium range and capacity flights from these same airports (while the smaller 737 series could fly routes with less demand).
But more
powerful engines came around by the 1970s and 1980s. The first jumbo jets were
powered by high bypass engines. These engines had larger fans in front to suck
more air. only a portion of this air could go into the heating chambers of the
engine whilst the rest was turbocharged around the same speed. This meant that
the engine produced more power with less thrust than previous engines, making
them more fuel efficient and less noisy. The designers of the Boeing 757 aircraft took advantage of this. They grabbed
two powerful engines (Rolls-Royce RB211, yes THAT Rolls-Royce, and the Pratt & Whitney PW2000). These
engines are pretty noisy by today's standards but have more than 37,000 lbs of
force each (compare to the 727's engine JT8D that started out with 14,000 and
evolved to 20,000 force)!
As a
result, the 757 could carry more (Maximum Take Off Weight [MTOW] of the 757:
255,000 lbs / 115,680 kg while the
727-200 MTOW: 184,800 lbs / 83,800 kg) and travel almost 3,9 00 miles / 7,222 km away. This meant that airports with
small runways and those with noise limits (like John Wayne Airport in Orange
County, California) where aircraft have to climb and descend steeply around the
runway to minimize noise pollution in the area. And it got elongated with the 300
But
decades have passed and the engines consume more fuel than modern competitors,
like the Airbus A321 & the Boeing 737-900ER (despite the fact that it has
more power). As the years add onto the 757 fuselages, many airliners replace
them with other aircraft. But the legacy of the 757 is not over as it follows
the 727 in the freight market. These magnificent airliners, once again, replace
the 727 as cargo haulers for the foreseeable future. So today you could still
fly with many airliners (like American, United, Icelandair, or Delta), but
you'll be seeing more become steady workhorses for freight companies (like UPS,
FedEx Express, TNT Airways, DHL).
Images from Wikimedia Commons.
Images from Wikimedia Commons.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Vuelo del Desmadre
Tuve alguien que me pregunto hace muchos años (y después de un par de
cócteles pesados) por qué había autobuses de fiesta, pero no
aviones de fiesta. Yo
le respondí que era un caso de derecho de daños a punto de ocurrir y
que las leyes federales iban a matar esa idea antes de que despegara. Pero me quede analizando la pregunta. Quiero decir, no pudiera ser el jet Playboy, pero no era un club nocturno en
el cielo tanto como se trataba de un piso de soltero en el aire.
No voy a referirme a las leyes que podrían matar a un avión de fiesta (algunos son sobre la seguridad, la mayoría son con respecto a la seguridad del pasajero, y otros eran demasiado difíciles para simplificar para este post) que la idea en sí misma es ya un accidente esperando a suceder. Autobuses del desmadre no van rápido y por lo general salen a la calle cerca de una zona popular de la ciudad, por lo general a 50 KPH en su más rápido. Como tal, la gente puede bailar, beber, y ser servidos cócteles en comodidad mientras son transportados lentamente por la ciudad. Con una aeronave, es completamente diferente debido a la velocidad del avion y incapacidad de parar a cualquier lugar. Suponiendo que hay un avion de fiesta y que no es un turborreactor (por lo que es demasiado caro volar a los de la fiesta alrededor e innecesariamente rápido como para estar corriendo alrededor de los elementos en lo qué es, esencialmente, una discoteca con alas) y no es situada en un aeropuerto internacional u ocupado (o de lo que los pasajeros tienen que pasar por el aeropuerto con la línea de seguridad como en cualquier otro aeropuerto, y los funcionarios de seguridad no será feliz con los borrachos tropiezan alrededor de sus terminales y un avion de fiestas esta volando en el mismo espacio aereo de aviones que vuelan intercontinental).Así que usted tiene su turbohélice o aeronave de pistón recogiendo gente para la fiesta en una pequeña pista de aterrizaje y logra despegar al aire. Todo es agradable y divertido hasta llegar a la turbulencia y/o nubes. Entonces, todas las bebidas que se sirven, los empleados, y gente de la fiesta serán sacudidos por el interior como los granos dentro de un par de maracas.
Así que ahora usted tiene un avión destrozado fiesta llena de gente magullados y golpeados mientras está cubierto en vómitos y otras cosas interesantes que normalmente salen del cuerpo humano, que sólo se invocará más enfermos se hechan su deshecho por todo . Ahora todo esto podría dañar la estructura de la aeronave o poner en corto los cables electrónica alrededor de la aeronave . Una vez que los asistentes a la fiesta desventurados se arrastran fuera de la aeronave, la reputación de este negocio se destrozaron más rápido que las bebidas que se sirvieron en el vuelo del "cometa del vómito."Ahora, un dirigible parte puede ser funcional, pero no rentables y la última cosa que quiere es un desmadroso que se enfermen al altura de vuelo y su unico recurso es ir hacia abajo y rápido. Y no es como el dirigible se va a subir y bajar de manera rutinaria como una rueda de la fortuna. Y si los vientos en altura golpearon este aeronave, las cosas van a ser también problemas.
No voy a referirme a las leyes que podrían matar a un avión de fiesta (algunos son sobre la seguridad, la mayoría son con respecto a la seguridad del pasajero, y otros eran demasiado difíciles para simplificar para este post) que la idea en sí misma es ya un accidente esperando a suceder. Autobuses del desmadre no van rápido y por lo general salen a la calle cerca de una zona popular de la ciudad, por lo general a 50 KPH en su más rápido. Como tal, la gente puede bailar, beber, y ser servidos cócteles en comodidad mientras son transportados lentamente por la ciudad. Con una aeronave, es completamente diferente debido a la velocidad del avion y incapacidad de parar a cualquier lugar. Suponiendo que hay un avion de fiesta y que no es un turborreactor (por lo que es demasiado caro volar a los de la fiesta alrededor e innecesariamente rápido como para estar corriendo alrededor de los elementos en lo qué es, esencialmente, una discoteca con alas) y no es situada en un aeropuerto internacional u ocupado (o de lo que los pasajeros tienen que pasar por el aeropuerto con la línea de seguridad como en cualquier otro aeropuerto, y los funcionarios de seguridad no será feliz con los borrachos tropiezan alrededor de sus terminales y un avion de fiestas esta volando en el mismo espacio aereo de aviones que vuelan intercontinental).Así que usted tiene su turbohélice o aeronave de pistón recogiendo gente para la fiesta en una pequeña pista de aterrizaje y logra despegar al aire. Todo es agradable y divertido hasta llegar a la turbulencia y/o nubes. Entonces, todas las bebidas que se sirven, los empleados, y gente de la fiesta serán sacudidos por el interior como los granos dentro de un par de maracas.
Excepto los granos en el avion son esponjosos y tienden a expulsar sus líquidos mientras aplastado o por la náusea de la agitación |
Así que ahora usted tiene un avión destrozado fiesta llena de gente magullados y golpeados mientras está cubierto en vómitos y otras cosas interesantes que normalmente salen del cuerpo humano, que sólo se invocará más enfermos se hechan su deshecho por todo . Ahora todo esto podría dañar la estructura de la aeronave o poner en corto los cables electrónica alrededor de la aeronave . Una vez que los asistentes a la fiesta desventurados se arrastran fuera de la aeronave, la reputación de este negocio se destrozaron más rápido que las bebidas que se sirvieron en el vuelo del "cometa del vómito."Ahora, un dirigible parte puede ser funcional, pero no rentables y la última cosa que quiere es un desmadroso que se enfermen al altura de vuelo y su unico recurso es ir hacia abajo y rápido. Y no es como el dirigible se va a subir y bajar de manera rutinaria como una rueda de la fortuna. Y si los vientos en altura golpearon este aeronave, las cosas van a ser también problemas.
Al igual que su bebida , seras sacudido y agitado. |
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