Now There's Something You Don't See Every Day... by Kwicko

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Now There's Something You Don't See Every Day...

POSTED BY: KWICKO
UPDATED: Monday, April 2, 2012 14:53
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 6989
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Thursday, November 18, 2010 2:09 PM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Was out walking the dogs this morning, and heard an odd airplane sound - sounded like a zuzuvela, those annoying little plastic trumpets that were so prevalent at the World Cup this year in South Africa.

Anyway, it got my attention, as unusual aircraft engine sounds usually do (a side effect of growing up on air bases and under near-daily air-raid alerts and flyovers in Taiwan as a child), so I looked up. And kept looking, trying to put together what I was looking at. Big swept-back wing in the back, small canards up front... pusher turboprop engines... moving fast...

Oh, the fabled, mythical Beech Starship! Beautiful unicorn of a plane. Only 53 ever built, only 9 known to still be flying - the company bought the remainder back and sent 'em to the crusher, apparently. It was supposed to compete with the Cessna Citation, Mitsubishi MU-2, and some of the smaller Lear and Gulfstream biz-jets.

It's weird - they've been around nearly a generation, but I'd never actually seen on with my own eyes. Pretty plane. They used one as a chase plane when Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne made its inaugural space flight. Rutan's involvement with the design of the Starship probably played a role in that choice, too. :)

Just one of those odd little happenstances that brings a smile to my face...

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Thursday, November 18, 2010 2:14 PM

CANTTAKESKY

Hmmm?

Where is it?

----
Arrogant and proud of it.

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Thursday, November 18, 2010 2:15 PM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:

The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.

AURaptor's Greatest Hits:

Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.

Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.

...and?

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Thursday, November 18, 2010 2:20 PM

KWICKO

Sorry 'bout that, all - I inadvertently hit "Enter" while typing the title (and before I even FINISHED typing the title, to make things worse!).

Much better now, though.

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Thursday, November 18, 2010 5:11 PM

CANTTAKESKY

How very very cool! Thanks for sharing that.

----
Arrogant and proud of it.

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Thursday, November 18, 2010 5:37 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Fun to see strange planes.

I saw one of these last year doing hover tests at high altitude in Gunnison, Colorado.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, November 18, 2010 9:24 PM

DREAMTROVE

Everyone's posting about airplanes just when TSA is making it a pain for everyone to fly. I just wonder if those things are connected. Maybe it's time for a new era of private flight.

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Friday, November 19, 2010 5:33 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

The Osspreys are deathtraps.

(The cone-cushion of air that a helicopter "floats on is cancelled out by the other spinning blade... basically these monsters are trying land on stilts...)

Whoever designed them watched too much GI Joe as a kid.

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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Friday, November 19, 2010 5:56 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

My research reveals...

"From 1991 to 2000 there were four significant crashes, and a total of 30 fatalities, during testing. Since becoming operational in 2007, the V-22 has had one loss due to accident, and seven other notable, but minor, aviation incidents."

The Osprey is a new kind of airplane, doing something a new kind of way. I don't know if it's the best kind of way to do that thing, but I don't think the plane is a death-trap.

The Osprey is used an awful lot. If it was inherently deadly to operate, there'd be a lot more dead people.

That having been said, I'm sure if a new tilt-rotor was designed today, it would benefit a great deal from the data collected during the Osprey's run. It was much the same with other innovative aviation technologies. The path to Engineering success is often paved with blood, especially when the R&D road runs through the department of defense.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

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Friday, November 19, 2010 6:33 AM

DREAMTROVE

The Osprey just isn't there yet, but the idea is sound. Underlying the whole VTOL concept is the statistical reality that 90% of all accidents are during take off and landing. If planes could move vertically and then start and stop flying while still in the air, the risk would be greatly diminished. Ideally, a plane failure should leave the plane floating in the air, the way a boat failure would leave you stranded in the water.

Also, re: crashes: what people are missing is not that the chance of crash is high, it's that the chance of death during a crash is exceedingly high. This is unacceptable in small craft as large ones, and it's also unacceptable in cars, and I don't know why people accept it. If a race car driver were to crash at 90 mph instead of 190, he would most likely be find. If a Pontiac Fiero driver were to crash at 90 mph, he would be dead.

Airplanes hit the ground going several hundred miles an hour, which is always a bad idea, and generally the source of trouble. I remember some small south african craft that had a curious landing style like a bird, but it was dependent on being very low weight. Maybe that's something to aim for.

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Friday, November 19, 2010 9:06 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

My research reveals...

"From 1991 to 2000 there were four significant crashes, and a total of 30 fatalities, during testing. Since becoming operational in 2007, the V-22 has had one loss due to accident, and seven other notable, but minor, aviation incidents."

The Osprey is a new kind of airplane, doing something a new kind of way. I don't know if it's the best kind of way to do that thing, but I don't think the plane is a death-trap.

The Osprey is used an awful lot. If it was inherently deadly to operate, there'd be a lot more dead people.

That having been said, I'm sure if a new tilt-rotor was designed today, it would benefit a great deal from the data collected during the Osprey's run. It was much the same with other innovative aviation technologies. The path to Engineering success is often paved with blood, especially when the R&D road runs through the department of defense.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

Yup, the vast majority of Osprey crashes came in the development process, and most of those occurred in the plane's weakest moments: the "transitional" state between hovering and forward movement, as the rotors tilted downward to act as the forward propulsion units.

A big key seems to be getting enough altitude first, so you can afford to lose some as you transition to forward flight.

And Wulf? Helicopters kill a whole helluva lot more folks than the Osprey ever will. Hell, just look at the CH-47 Chinook's "safety" record for confirmation of that!

Lots of aircraft have a bad reputation. An old friend of mine, George Renker, flew Martin Marauders during D-Day. They called the plane "The Widowmaker" - not for what it did to the enemy, but for what it did to its own crews! But he described it as the sweetest-flying plane he ever touched. Problem was, it had shorter wings than most medium bombers, and more powerful engines - as such, it was faster than most, but also needed more speed at take-off and landing, too. And crews had a tendency to stall the things and auger them in at such times. It wasn't a bad plane, but it sure got a bad rep.

This Space For Rent!

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Monday, March 26, 2012 12:13 AM

USBG

The C.I.A. front company Intermountain Airlines maintains a fleet of Starships owned by Raytheon group in coordination with several other spooky groups connected to the International Stability Operations Association (ISOA) at Marana Airbase, Pinal County, Arizona in order to courier cartel bosses to meetings with high level officials who seek open borders and the large-scale flow of drugs to saturate the streets of the United States.

Halt or we will drop you!

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Monday, March 26, 2012 3:28 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Science flies people to the Moon; religion flies people into buildings.

And speaking of flying...at least you admit religion was behind 9-11. May not be much, but it's a start.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

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Monday, March 26, 2012 8:25 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Out of curiosity I took ground school for helicopter flying. As the instructor said - what's another word for auto-rotate? crashing.

The problem with helicopters is that they have no wings, therefore no gliding ability should you lose power.

It's neat that you saw that, Kwicko. This AM a trio of military jets flew overhead. Aside from the noise it got my curiosity up since this is definitely not a normal flight path for them.

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Monday, March 26, 2012 1:15 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

Quote:
Science flies people to the Moon; religion flies people into buildings.

And speaking of flying...at least you admit religion was behind 9-11. May not be much, but it's a start.

Have I denied that religion was behind it? I argue that it's not the ONLY religion that's behind mass killings, a point you can't seem to fathom.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Monday, March 26, 2012 1:26 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Out of curiosity I took ground school for helicopter flying. As the instructor said - what's another word for auto-rotate? crashing.

The problem with helicopters is that they have no wings, therefore no gliding ability should you lose power.

It's neat that you saw that, Kwicko. This AM a trio of military jets flew overhead. Aside from the noise it got my curiosity up since this is definitely not a normal flight path for them.

Yup, I was raised on air bases and around airports; my dad worked at the local Cessna dealership part-time to pay for flight school, and then worked at the Mitsubishi plant for a time, and the old "Confederate Air Force" warbirds were regularly flying in for paint and custom work at Charlie Day's shop at the local airfield, so I got to spend a lot of time in and around classic warbirds and odd aircraft. I've been aboard what was at the time the world's only flying B-29 Superfortress, I cadged rides in just about anything I could, so I tend to geek out when I see the really oddball stuff. I pulled off the side of the highway here in Austin on the way home one day to snap a few pix of an enormous Soviet Antonov transport - this thing dwarfed the biggest hangars at our airport.

That's not one of my pix - I was too far away, and they looked like hell. No idea what such a beast was doing here, but it definitely stood out!

Of course, being raised around military birds and spending time in Taiwan growing up, dealing with regular air-raid drills complete with military flyovers, I developed a bit of an ear for military aircraft. I'll jump off the couch and run outside while my wife yells "What? What is it?" behind me. "Oh, nothing much - just a B1 bomber. I knew it wasn't commercial by the sound, so had to check..."

And the Starship sounded different. Different from military aircraft, and different from other commercial birds.

Loved seeing it, but would rather have been on board for the flight! :)

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Monday, March 26, 2012 3:16 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Oops.

I assume you're my pal until you let me know otherwise

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Monday, March 26, 2012 3:39 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Two or three times a year military jets will fly over, and maybe four times a year a cluster of military helicopters will fly overhead. Every time I hear either, well of course I have to run outside to look. :)

I USED to be able to identify motorcycles by sound - I knew people who were very much into motorcycles and since they could do that, well, I wanted to too. I've since stopped paying attention and those times are long gone, but I remember them fondly.

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Monday, March 26, 2012 6:06 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by RionaEire:
Haven't seen you in a while CTS and DT, glad to see you back, the more voices the better.

I assume you're my pal until you let me know otherwise

Sorry, but this is a bit of a necropost, dug up from more than a year ago. Not sure why, but I'll have some fun with it.

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Monday, April 2, 2012 2:53 PM

OONJERAH

The Flying Cars Are Coming … To the New York Auto Show =>
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/04/the-flying-cars-are-coming-to-the
-new-york-auto-show/

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