Toryu

Is the Gilchrist book on the Cat similar to his work on the Sader, or does it contain more technical info than war-stories?

Steel, looks like you're hot and high. Try a little slower and less bank - that'll make stuff easier! Fly a constant AoA (fly the indexer!) and try regulyting sinkrate with power.

In der Umrüstung u.a. enthalten waren: - Kielflossen - verbesserte Navigations- und ECM-Ausrüstung - ein verstärkter Flächenholm (evtl. auch eine neue Fläche für einige Flugzeuge, mit längerer Lebensdauer) - multipel nutzbare Kamerabuchten - verschiedene ECM-Buckel an der Seitenflosse (je nach Ausführung) Es gab übrigens bereits 1962 einen kleinen batch aus 5 RF-8A, die Kielflossen und F-8E-Flächen mit Flügelträgern (hauptsächlich zum Tragen von ECM-Pods) hatten und damit über Kuba unterwegs waren. Das von mir oben gepostete Bild zeigt mit größter Wahrscheinlichkeit eine solche Maschine. (Modexnummer 912 passt auch zur 920 eines anderen Bilds einer RF-8A mit Flügelträgern das ich hier habe)

Kleiner Beitrag zur RF-8: Von: http://www.vfp62.com/index.html http://www.vfp62.com/rf8_photo_gallery.html http://www.vfp62.com/RF8_Photos.html Wird es beide RF-8 Versionen geben?

Israel used B or D models in 1985 to bomb PLO headquarters in Tunis, so obviously they at least HAD (propably still have) an A-G capability. Does anybody know which weapons were used in '85? Were those Popeyes, or do (did..) their Eagles actually have a CCIP-capability?

FC, check out the A320's overhead-panel: http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/0/0/6/1025600.jpg 2/3 to the upper top, at the left and right edges of the panel, you'll find the "FLT CTL"-subpanels. (turns out the A320 has 7 FCCs, the structure is slightly different to the A330's) Depending on the combinations of which FCCs are put to sleep, the aircrafts control-laws will degenerate. This document http://www.smartcockpit.com/pdf/plane/airbus/A320/systems/0031/ gives a pretty good description of the Laws, gains and failure modes. Naturally, the combination of which FCCs to switch off isn't exactly given (except for "two ELACs or FACs gone puts you into Pitch-ALT and Roll-DIRECT"). As pilots usually know which computer usually does the flying and which one is backup, they know which FCC-combination to switch off in order to get into which degeneration of the protections. That is strongly unrecommended, though (who would have guessed? ). On the hard limits: Airbus has done thousands of hours of testing to come up with the protections they have. Those tests showed that normal line-pilots, acting under stress, may underperform a great deal. Holding an AoA (i.e. max-performing the wing) isn't all that easy when trying to outclimb a mountain (possibly in a climbing turn, involving turbulence), applying TOGA and retracting the spoilers (I take that scenario as it has tragically been proven real a couple of years ago). Pitch- and trim-changes during rapid application of power during low-energy flight usually leads to non-optimal climbout-performance under stress. The studies have shown that a pilot working in a soft-protection environment will overshoot and oscillate around Alpha_max, wasting prescious performance. The hard Alpha-limit, however, lets the pilot nail the limited alpha-figure and just hold it by applying max aft stick. He also may slam the throttles (sorry: "Thrust Levers" on Airbii) into the TOGA-gate without ever wasting a thought about overreving or overtemping the engines. The latter feature is a normal FADEC-control authority (thus a hard-limit) and pretty common - even on "manual minded" Boeings. In the end, it's all down to preferrance. Most pilots (even those with reservations!) do transition to that philosophy rather well and come to like it after a few minutes. I think the approach to the protections by many pilots is wrong: In the end, they're not designed to put you out of the loop, but to work for you, when you've got a helmet-fire. Whether having the ability for that little ounce of extra G is that desireable in an airliner is questionable in my eyes: Fighters are designed to take an ultimate-load-factor of 1,5 over their limit-load (just as airliners by a matter of fact). Airliners, however do not have the structural reserves of continuous high-g cycles built into them - they're built fo more total cycles, but wthin the low-g realm. Therefore, the fighter usually will take more than 150% limit load, while the airliner will snap at just slightly more. Most airliner-pilots have never attended an upset-recovery training or even flown inverted. The feel for Gs (no G-indicator anyway) is thus very rudimentary. I wouldn't trust a pilot to feel the difference between 2.5g and 3.75g (the ultimate-load acc to CS-25 regulations) in a stressful situation. Also keep in mind that today's airliners are built with less structural reserves and margins (due to a better understanding of fatigue) than those airliners of the 50s (the bulletproof Douglases come to mind!). BTW: Keep in mind that the aircraft was designed for 200h ab-initio First-Officers that think that an afterburner is a liquor

The issue s not so much as to why they never recovered from the 35-60°AoA, but why they'd get in there in the first place. I can at least understand the disorientation of those pilots, with alle the conflicting messages (stick forward - stall warning starts, stick aft - stall warning stops!). Remember, they had a dark night with lots of weather around, operating at the worst time for brain-performance (the early morning hours of their "biological-watch" day) and just a couple of minutes after crew-rotation. What really is hard to understand, why the PF (pilot flying) initiated at 7000fpm climb after the loss of airspeed-data. And this only a couple of minutes after clearly reading-out (before or during the handover-briefing) that the planned step-climb to FL370 would not be availiable due to themperature @alt. What happened then is a zoom-climb to FL380, running out of airspeed and stalling, while the THS (Trimmable Horizintal Stabilizer) slowly went into the (almosst) full nose-up position. That trim-movement was COMMANDED by the crew (continously holding aft stick). It actually is quire remarkable that the plane stayed "upright" in the following descend (L/D of about 1!), despite the tremendous AoA (never less than 35°!). By then, the spedd-data had already become valid again! The problem, however, was that due to the AoA involved, the data of the pitots was inaccurate and giving-out an IAS of below 60KIAS. This in turn made the AoA-data invalid and led to the confusing stall-warnings. This data-invalidation is, however, not a problem asociated to Airbuses exclusively - the B777 and B787 have a similar logic. +x+x+x+ Now concerning the "spilling the wine"-story: Those Normal-Law constraints aren't there for the designers' amusement. The 67° bank- and -15°/+30° pitch-limitations are far beyond anything any pilot would ever do in PAX-service. There are a couple of other protections (high AoA, low energy, "ground-speed mini" for windshear-recovery, etc) that have been designed into the aircraft for specific scenerios (CFIT avoidal is an example), not to take the pilot out of the loop. The aircraft has been designed that way in order to give the pilots a handy tool in case they need to concentrate on a couple of things at once (say an engine-out TOGA go-around with terrain-avoidance). It's the beancounter's fault that those protections have been taken as an aexcuse for less and less crew-training over the last couple of years. Mix that with an ever more simulation-based pilot-training (those good-old 200h First-Officers), and you'll have a nice little situation developing... The "Normal-Law" protections can be killed by switching off two flight-control-computers. Depending on the combination of those (there are 5), you'll either land in "Alternate Law" (basicly the same gains as in Normal, but with less protections) or in "Direct Law", where you're having a linear relation between stick- and control-surface movement (yikes at high speeds!). In Normal-Law, roll is a roll-rate command, whereas Pitch is a g-command (stick neutral = 1g // fully fwd = -1g // full aft = +2.5g => with flaps dn, that changes to 0g fully fwd, and 2.0g fully aft). There is no need for getting sweaty palms when entering a FBW Airbus. The technology has been installed in fighters for almost 40 years now. There haven't been direct links between the yoke/ wheel and the flight-control surfaces since the 757 (it has all been "artificial feel" since then!) either. You should rather be concerned if the people you just paid for a ticked have done everything possible to get those guys in row 0A and B the best training possible. That's indeed a very interesting field of science. The reason why "analogue" round-dials (and to a lesser extent, "tapes") are preferred to "bare numbers" is because they do lots of things: - they give the current value (so does the "digital" numbers-only display) - they give an "at-a-glance" representation of the situation (instead of just reading "80%", I can see that I'm in the high quarter, but not yet at "MAX"), especially when colour-coded - they give a good representation of the current value at high rates of change - they give a rate of change-trend (is my rate of change picking-up, or slowing down?)

Thanks Dragon. I'll stay tuned anyway Yes, but that should also apply to the "stock" Fox.

Looks great dragon! FINALLY a real M/N canopy Two questions on the project: Will there also be a cockpit some time? What about enlarging the intakes for the -408 engine? The Super-Fox and Mongoose should also have enlarged intakes. The difference between the -8 and -408 intakes is subtle, but it's there.

+100! Two-seaters would really be the icing on the cake!

Auch wenn dir die "Stuka-Methode" zuwieder ist: Im Bahnneigungsflug trifft man in der Regel besser als im Horizontalflug (30°-45°; alles darüber benötigt nur unnötig viel Flughöhe (= geringere Genauigkeit!) zum Abfangen!) Am einfachsten sind Streubomben und gebremste Bomben - damit würde ich erstmal auf der "Range" anfangen und mich dann langsam an die normalen, ungebremsten Bomben herantasten.

Wrench, are you currently working on the Super Etendard?

It's not *this* Scooter that scored the MiG - the original MiG-killer A-4 was lost in a flying-accident in the early 70s.

You're right - blinding the other pilot may be a key to success as well

...until you have to shoot somebody down

Are the Mirage III Recce-Birds ground-attack capable?

@ Smelly Farts: Here is some reference by eye-witnesses about the "Screaming Superman": http://sandiegoblog.com/archives/2004/06/16/psa-crash-1978/ Warning, reading some posts from there might disturb some people! (But then again, what do you expect of an aircraft-crash scene?)

Yes, the 727 hit the Cessna 172, while it was supposed to overtake the Cessna. The PSA-crew had reported seeing the Cessna, but lost track of it and didn't pay attention to the small plane until they hit each other... The Cessna-occupants were pretty surely killed rigt away, while the 727-occupants went through the full horror of their plane going out of conrol and going down. A coupe of years later (in 1986 I belive), a similar accident happened between a mexican DC-9 and a Piper 28 - the Piper was not supposed to be in that airspace (they were lost!) and went right into the DC-9's horizontal stab, taking it off. Both planes crashed. Again, the Pa-28 people (a man with his wife an daughter) were 'lucky' to be killed on spot (the DC-9's stab went right through their cabin!), while the DC-9 pax+crew had some rather unpleasant final moments. The later crash finally lead to the devellopment of TCAS. On both crashes, the final moments of the airliner were captured on photo: PSA 182 (pulitzer-prize winning photo!) Aeromexico 498 Both crashes lead to some death-toll on the ground as well! RIP to all the victims

There were no survivors on PSA 182...

SEA-camo on a Mirage III - talk about an abomination

Well, I'd say nothing says "in yo face" batter, than a Genie squeezed off into a furball-dogfight You'd have to make a fictional (though officially proposed) upgrade on your Deuce before, however...

Not gonna happen? Too bad for TK - the 104 would be about the only A/C I'd pay for... He could pull 50 bucks out of my pocket if he made a decent 104-sim, and I think I'm not the only guy by quite a margin!

Any news on the F-114 or does Edwards still have some issues to fix?

I would only opt for a McB-Air if I could absolutely, positively do without a CD/DVD-drive, which I can't, so I'd recommend buying an McBP. I'm a 15''-McBP user myself (old-school Win XP 32).

Praetor, where have you gone? Haven't heard of you for quite while