MetaFilter posts tagged with aviation

Kalinin K-7: the giant plane that might have been

Joe in Australia — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:58:54 -0800

The Kalinin K-7 was a giant flying fortress that might have redefined aerial combat in the 1930s. The hugely expensive and trouble-prone prototype was scrapped by Stalin and its designer was later executed. Here are some renderings of the planes that might have been, with spacious lounges, battleship-sized cannons, and the ability to defend us from UFOs.

Pilots overshoot MSP. Whoops!

COBRA! — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:50:50 -0800

Were they arguing? Were they asleep? It's not clear yet why two pilots overflew the Minneapolis airport by 150 miles before turning around in Wisconsin. What is known is that they dropped radio contact over Kansas, that Air Force fighters were put on alert, and that, according to MN Public radio, passengers saw cops and stern-looking men in suits waiting on the jetway when they were finally allowed off the plane. MSP alt-weekly City Pages aggregates info about the flight as it comes in, and discussion on local sites is spirited.

"The world's most famous missing person."

kirkaracha — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:11:32 -0800

"The unburied come back to haunt us." On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan took off from Lae, Papua New Guinea (map) in their Lockheed Electra en route to Howland Island (map). They were never seen again. Earhart and Noonan's flight was one of the last legs of an attempted around-the-world flight at the Equator. (A previous attempt, flying east to west, failed when Earhart's plane was damaged in Hawaii and had to be sent to California for repairs.) The most common explanation is that they ran out of fuel, ditched in the ocean, and drowned, but the disappearance is an enduring mystery. In Search of...Amelia Earhart (part 2, part 3). Where's Amelia Earhart? The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR; previously) is a leading supporter of a theory that the Earhart and Noonan crash-landed at Nikumaroro (then called Gardner Island; map) TIGHAR's map of Nikumaroro shows the locations of possible evidence to support their theory. TIGHAR recently obtained a reference sample of mitochondrial DNA from a direct female relative of Earhart's, and is making a new expedition to Nikumaroro in May 2010 to look for DNA evidence. Crash Reconstruction by the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University.

It's not too early in history to be exterminated by a Dalek

XMLicious — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:00:35 -0800

The ring wing or annular airfoil is an aircraft design which has been experimented with throughout the history of aviation with some interesting variations. It has served as the inspiration for several paper airplane designs, model airplanes of course, and a variety of children's toys. The capabilities imagined by the French coléoptère engineers of the 1950's and 1960's and the U.S. "flying tank" designers are available today at least in the form of unmanned vehicles (large PDF brochure, 6 minute video download, 1½ minute YT news clip). The technology has also been adapted to become the surfboard tunnel fin and there are underwater UAVs as well.

Smoke me a kipper...

mattoxic — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:02:03 -0800

Need to build an FE2b, or perhaps an SE5a? Need to keep the Hun at bay with an RE8 ? Haven’t a clue? Don't worry Vintage Aviator’s got your back. You’ll need to source the correct linen be able to splice cable, and learn how to make the The site has an excellent section on posters, and galleries - Album 1, 2 and 3

fear of flying

lalex — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:41:19 -0800

Ask the Pilot. Columnist Patrick Smith explains why you shouldn't be afraid of flying. For the past several years, the invaluable Patrick Stewart has been answering common passenger questions, including: Is turbulence dangerous? What are the safest airlines? No really, what are the safest airlines? How dangerous is in-flight decompression? Too hot to fly? A plane crossed in front of us? WHAT?? What does a runway near-miss mean? Will using an electronic device really down a plane?

Return from orbit is simply the reverse of takeoff.

1f2frfbf — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:12:09 -0800

The Haynes Workshop Manuals are a series of practical instructional repair manuals aimed at both the DIY enthusiast or shade-tree mechanic and the professional garage repairman. In that spirit, they offer the following guides to repair and service the following: The Spitfire Fighter (no, not that one), The Lancaster Bomber and the Apollo modules.

God is my copilot...but He's not type-rated

Skeptic — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:30:44 -0800

We all admired Capt. Sullenberger's cold blood on the Hudson. His fellow pilot Chafik Garbi, however, placed in similar circumstances, performed rather less well.

Grass Roots. Blue Sky.

netbros — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:40:11 -0800

Stories that Fly is a citizen media project that features a growing collection of digital stories about general aviation. The stories are contributed by student journalists, aviators, and interested community members and cover regional airports, events, and people in the Ohio aviation community.

Brother can you spare a jet?

up in the old hotel — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:44:07 -0800

With orders for new aircraft down, the private jet industry is launching a PR onslaught and a website to counter all the bad press surrounding greedy executives flying private jets. Lo and behold, two financial columnists expressed strikingly similar views on the subject. Members of Congress, who love to catch a ride home on a contributor's private plane, are helping out too.

Air traffic control simulator

nthdegx — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:19:15 -0800

Push tin with ATC-SIM, an air traffic control simulator.

The god of Airplane pr0n

pjern — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:16:33 -0800

Almost everyone is familiar with Airliners.net, but there's one fellow in particular who seems to manage to be in the right place at the right time an awful lot. He's been referenced (with his 17 million page views) as the Ansel Adams or Alfred Eisenstadt of airplane photography. Meet Sam Chui.

Eclipse Aviation, start to finish.

backseatpilot — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:58:51 -0800

Eclipse Aviation yesterday told all of its employees to go home and that they would not be paid for their past two weeks of work. Eclipse has been seen since its inception as a revolutionary company, pioneering the development of the world's first very light jets - defined as a jet aircraft weighing less than 10,000 pounds gross and costing less than $4 million. Philip Greenspun (of photo.net fame) has reviewed many of these VLJs, including the Eclipse 500. The concept was simple: build a fast, cheap twin-engine aircraft for the growing market of private owners and air taxi services. The company won the prestigious Collier Trophy in 2005 (a list of all winners up to 2006 here) before the Eclipse 500 had even been certified. Controversy quickly set in about the company's practices. A blog was established to criticize just about every aspect of the company, from its business model to the design of the aircraft. After Eclipse Aviation Critic shut down, Eclipse Critic NG (named after the airplane's second avionics suite, the Avio NG - the original Avio was replaced after Eclipse dropped Avidyne as a contractor) stepped up to continue the discussion. Eclipse subpoenaed Google to obtain the IP addresses of several of the contributors to that site. After replacing virtually all of their contractors, increasing the base price of the airplane from $800,000 to $1.5 million, and delaying deliveries, Dayjet - an air taxi service and Eclipse's biggest customer - shuttered its doors in September. Last month, Eclipse halted production of its aircraft, leading to yesterday's announcement that its employees would not be paid. Unfortunately, Eclipse's business model is predicated on a rather "optimistic" assumption - 1,000 aircraft sales per year at an original cost of $800,000 per unit. The Teal Group (pdf) has rather a lot to say about the company, most of it negative: The Eclipse program was designed from the outset to be revolutionary and unique. In Teal Group’s estimation, the people behind Eclipse have attained this objective. This program is the single worst aviation program Teal Group has ever covered. It isn’t the aircraft itself. Rather, it was a business plan that makes no sense, except to attract investors who don’t know much about the aviation business. The plan called for 1,000 deliveries per year. As a reference point, in 2007 the world’s manufacturers delivered a total of about 4,000 turbine-powered aircraft of all types and models. This one company, an unknown start-up, proposed to grow that global figure by 25%, admitting that it couldn’t survive if it merely built 450 planes per year (100 aircraft more than any other turbine-powered aircraft model).

Bits of aviation goodness

Burhanistan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:52:01 -0800

Point Niner - "Satisfying an unnatural infatuation with airplanes and rockets." A regularly updated blog with nice bits of aviation goodness.

plus, there's food. And bars.

oneirodynia — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:13:31 -0800

With over 35,000,000 visitors a year, it could be argued that it is the busiest museum in the world. Yet most people are there to catch a plane. The San Francisco International Airport is the first airport accredited by the American Association of Museums. It houses a permanent aviation exhibit, as well as dozens of rotating exhibits in various terminals, some of which are only available to screened passengers ( and for some reason, one has to dig through press releases to see photographs: Catalinaware, Victorian Majolica, Eight Centuries of Buddhist Imagery.) More pictures of the aviation museum from the Flickr site of the completely awesome Telstar Logistics. Another blog post on a past exhibit, The Engineering of Sound.

If you squint your eyes it could pass for a private jet

MrMerlot — Sun, 11 May 2008 08:03:14 -0800

Is solar-powered flight getting any nearer? As noted previously on Metafilter, solar powered aviation has travelled a long way since the heady days of the Gossamer Penguin. But could it actually one day power commerical flight? Trouble is, a quick look at the prototypes reveals that most solar-powered planes remain a world away from passenger aviation. But that could be subject to change. Although we are not quite at the stage of the easyJet ecojet just yet, what might be just over the horizon is something like the Hy-Bird, a hybrid of hydrogen, solar-power and lithium-polymer batteries. The Hy-bird still looks like a bit like a prototype, but it is beginning to look more like a proper plane. If you squint your eyes, it could pass for a private jet. Lisa Airplanes, the Hy-bird's manufacturer, is planning to take the plane on a voyage that will circumnavigate the planet later this summer. According to Inhabitat, the Hy-bird gets just 10% of its power from solar, but that's still a significant contribution. Yes, we should all fly less if we want to reduce CO2. But the prospect of a truly green-powered aeroplane is enough to spark the imagination. Could we both save the planet and still be able to fly?

Is that a laser pointer in your pocket?

telstar — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:59:30 -0800

Laser pointer import ban in Oz Seems there's been a rash of people aiming laser pointers at planes in Oz. With an incident of a pilot being "temporarily blinded", this action may be a little less...well, as Oz politicians put it, "amusing". Previously. All the laser pointers I've seen were red. These in the latest "coordinated attack" in the Sydney incident were green. Apparently prices have really come down on these new green babies.

We shot an Arrow into the air

Mike D — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:06:59 -0800

50 years ago today (March 25), the first flight of the AVRO Arrow took place. At the time, the aircraft was considered to be one of the most advanced aircraft then flying, with a flexible airfame design that allowed for a wide variety of missions. To this day, rumours persist that the abrupt cancellation of the AVRO Arrow was due to pressure from US military aircraft contractors who feared losing several of their own lucrative contracts to the new jet. Rumours also recur from time to time that a “missing Arrow” was squirrelled away somewhere, a future treasure find for Canadian Arrow buffs. One thing almost everyone agrees on: cancelling the Arrow in favour of a ballistic missile was the worst disaster ever to befall aviation in Canada. But it probably helped put men on the moon a lot sooner than would otherwise have been the case.

Concorde on steroids

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:47:57 -0800

Whooosh! London to Sydney in 5 hours on the A2 Hypersonic from Reaction Engines. Green too. If they can pull it off.

Selected aviation safety incidents

Godbert — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:44:40 -0800

Check out NASA's "CALLBACK" publication online. Drawing from the "Aviation Safety Reporting System", a way for pilots to voluntarily report aviation safety incidents while providing some protection from the FAA, CALLBACK recounts some of the most common, and some of the most esoteric, incidents that pilots run in to. It's geared more toward pilots, but others may find it interesting (or terrifying) to read about what can go wrong. Just to be clear, this is separate from the NASA-run pilot survey that's been in the news lately. That survey actively contacted pilots, while ASRS relies on pilots coming forward. [Previously, though the links in that post are dead and there's been another two and a half years of incidents to report.]

Biplanes and triplanes and Zeppelins-- Oh My!

dersins — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:16:14 -0800

WWI-era aviation photos (page 2): Biplanes and triplanes and Zeppelins-- oh my!

Nightmare at 20,000 feet

fearfulsymmetry — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:20:06 -0800

Whether it's the Shatner or Lithgow version of the story, it's not something you would want to try and re-enact in real life. Well, may be if you are this lady. Or this guy.

Steve Fossett gone missing.

backseatpilot — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:07:25 -0800

Steve Fossett has gone missing in Nevada. Fossett has broken many aviation records, including being the first person to fly solo around the world in a balloon and the first nonstop, solo airplane flight around the world. A list of all of his aviation records. He went missing during a recreational flight.

just plane furniture

madamjujujive — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:56:38 -0800

Ever had a yen for a table made from jet engine turbine blades or a desk fashioned from a wing or a cowling? Giancarlo de Astis and Moto Art are two high-end design firms that are creating eye catching furniture and functional art from scavenged airplane parts. You can see their work and the work of others in the aviation art community at InterFlight Studio. Or do-it-yourself-ers in the crowd might just prefer a Field Guide to Aircraft Boneyards.

Infrastructure Report Card

homunculus — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:15:25 -0800

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) published their latest Infrastructure Report Card in 2005. America's infrastructure got a D. The ASCE estimate that it will cost $1.6 trillion over a five-year period to bring the nation's infrastructure to good condition. They also have a Critical Infrastructure blog. [Via Gristmill.]