December 2008 Archives

2008 has seen another bumper year for remarkable images;with this year's most popular images ranging from new nose designs to crash pictures, with some unusual shower designs mixed in too:

1. Virgin Galactic unveils Dyna-Soar style SpaceShipTwo design and twin-fuselage White Knight II configuration 

The first images of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (SS2) proved extremely popular this year, showing the continued interest in this pioneering idea. Created by Scaled Composites, the design harks back to the NASA/USAF Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar glider of the 1960s.

Everybody on the Flight blog wishes you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. We are hoping that Santa brings us this C-17 replica for Christmas...

What's the first thing you do after surviving a life-threatening incident, like the Continental Airlines 737 incident at Denver Airport? Call your family?Kiss the floor as you get out? Maybe even kiss the person next to you?

If you are Mike Wilson you do none of the three, you get your phone and start to micro-blog your status on Twitter.

The first response is understandable (if a little rude so beware):

The rest of his postings (or tweets as they are called) are interesting in giving a perspective of the relief involved in surviving such a scare and the way the news catches up with him.

Here is a link to page three of his profile, click back on pages to see the story evolve.

Here's a video showing 24 hours of air traffic over the globe.

You can either just sit back and marvel at the hypnotic mass of air traffic, moving in patterns like organised colonies of ants, or you can examine some of the characteristics of the activity. 

What you see, like all of human life, is ordered by the passage of sunlight across the globe. You are looking at 24 hours of activity. It's clearly northern summer (the Arctic retains its light, the Antarctic doesn't get any).

As you click to start, North America is teeming with activity, and evening is beginning to cast its shadow over the east coast.

Just as darkness begins its push westward over North America, that continent discharges what looks like a salvo of long-range artillery shells toward a Europe that is fast asleep.

Asia and the Pacific, meanwhile, is alive and kicking. Then domestic North America goes to bed.

Just as America's projectiles start to land on Europe, it wakes up and becomes a molten mass of domestic activity but, as if taken by surprise, it takes a while to fire off a return salvo toward North America, which it finally does approaching midday European time.

Meanwhile there is a fairly constant stream of traffic between South America - mostly Brazil and Argentina - and the Iberian Peninsula.

Finally, there are the few lonely flights across the far southern oceans between Australia, South Africa, and South America, plus a one or two flights over the North Pole between North America and Asia.

(Words by Flight's safety and operations editor David Learmount. If you want more from David check out his blog Learmount.... )

 

An interesting video here of two Messerschmitts battling with Spitfires. The mystery is whether this is real footage that has been re-coloured or whether it is an enthusiastic fan creating magic using the latest animation tools.



What do you think?

Hat Tip: aviation.multiply.com

For the second year running, our community site AirSpace has offered you the chance to get your favourite image on to the front cover of the end-of-year special issue of Flight International.

Competition for this year's prize has been fierce, with nearly 1,500 images uploaded, more than four times last year's total. we have been really impressed with the outstanding quality of images, for once picking a separate overall winner from all the entries submitted.

OVERALL WINNER AND COVER SHOT (Taken from Menace - Fighters in Flight)

Winner  - Begemont
Russian Air Force Su-27 releasing flares at MAKS 2007
Camera - Nikon D200

See original image

A framed copy of the cover and a cash prize of £100 ($150) is on its way to AirSpace user Begemont, who captured a Russian air force Sukhoi Su-27 launching countermeasures flares during the 2007 Moscow air show.

Go here to watch the test flight video of this product's prototype

Watch this video, care of the Chicago Tribune newspaper website, about the US Air Force Research Laboratory's computer generated vision of bird and insect-like Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) of the future including a suicide MAV that explodes on making contact with its human target

An interesting rare set of original designs for a German Third Reich aircraft featuring a bomb are to be auctioned tomorrow in the UK. 

The detailed pencil drawings, with ink annotations by an unknown engineer, are on two sidesof graph paper and depict a last ditch glider bomber designed to be mass produced for one-off missions against Naval targets.

Richard Davie of International Autograph Auctions sent this information to me by email:

"Also included is a further drawing showing the proposed course of flight by the glider. The drawings show that the mother ship, based on a late variant of the Ju 88, released the piloted glider, equipped with a 1000 kilo bomb, which, using the tungsten cored flying principle of a pub dart dived on its target at speeds in excess of 700 mph.

"The aircraft is also equipped with a balloon which would have been released simultaneously with the bomb and, taking some time to inflate, would produce a slowly enlarging drag inducer to keep the glider under some form of control whilst the pilot attempted to escape.

 "These drawings were removed from the Reichs Chancellery in Berlin in July 1945 by Richard Rex who had been sent to Germany to help establish a medical dispensary for use during The Potsdam Conference.

 

"Accompanied by a detailed letter of authenticity signed by Rex and witnessed by a Notary Public. Also included is a letter from Terry Gander, an expert in German aviation of World War II, explaining that he has never seen anything like the glider previously and continuing to offer his interpretation of how the aircraft would have flown and been manufactured.

"A unique set of drawings illustrating one of Hitler's secret air weapons that may have changed the course of history and helped him win World War II.

"File holes to left edges, causing small areas of paper loss although not affecting the drawings and annotations. Otherwise VG, 2."

The plans are going for £2000 - £3000. International Autograph Auctions more information...

Take a look at Flight's archive coverage of the Machines of the Lufftwaffe... 

It has been over 30 years since Flight International operated its own editorial aircraft and despite the scores of pilots employed with the magazine, no serving member of the editorial team has ever fully owned or operated their own aircraft. These two deficiencies have been corrected in a timely fashion, to coincide with the 100th year of the magazine.

Flight's Senior Technical Artist Joe Picarella is proud to introduce you to his Piper L-4B "Grasshopper" - G-FINT.

The aircraft in full profile:

G-FINT (Piper serial number 9444) was the 92nd of 980 L4Bs built specifically for the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and received into service on the 18th August 1942 as serial number 43-583. While aircraft from either side of 9444 on the production line would find themselves in combat zones around he world, 9444 would serve with several US Army ground force units in the United States until 1946.

Postwar she went through the 4168th Air Material Command (AMC) - South Plains Field TX, 3136th AMC - Tinker Field Dallas TX, 32nd Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Base Unit and Air Defence Command - Hensley Field Dallas TX, 3565th Basic Training Wing (Air Training Command) and 3565th Aircraft Observer Training Wing - James Connally AFB TX and finally to the CAP at Love Field TX.

Four cuddly teddy bears have been blasted to the edge of space by Cambridge University, in an effort to attract youngsters to the subjects of science and engineering.

 

The bears were attached to a helium balloon and launched 30,000-metres into the atmosphere from Churchill College, Cambridge University.

They wore space suits (designed by schoolchildren from the city) and were fitted with GPS system and a camera to track their progress as the teddies withstood freezing temperatures.

Aiyana Stead, 12, helped make the space suits, said: "This was a really fun thing to do. The best bit was when we set the balloon off with the bears."

Kane Robbins, 12, added: "I really enjoyed launching the teddy bear into space."

The project was overseen by the Cambridge University spaceflight team - a student-run society set up two years ago.

Ed Moore, one of its 10 members, said: "There can be few more worthwhile things for us to do than to try and provide that spark for the current generation of school kids."

 

 

For the worried readers among you that were concerned about the safety of the cow that was hit by a Tiger Moth recently, fear not, as the official report has come out today informing us that the cow is thankfully okay, but the Tiger Moth definitely isn't, incurring "substantial damage" to the aircraft.

Still... it means that we can laugh at the video once again, so in all it's glory here it is:



Biplane Clips Cow - Watch more free videos

Flight's Defence editor Craig Hoyle recently visited a Royal Air Force base at Ram Ram near the Moroccan city of Marrakesh to take part in a major training exercise aimed at maintaining the important RAF mantra of "train like you fight".

While at the camp Craig was able to take some video while flying around in a Chinook and Merlin:

Chinook


See Merlin video beneath the fold

The Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, London has gone all web 2.0 with a new look website, graphics, easier navigation, RSS feeds and more interactivity.

Events will soon be live streamed and a blog is also about to be launched along with a mobile version of the site. 

From Monday 15th the Museum will present the first in a series of 'celebrity podcasts' available on iTunes. Operation Chastise, popularly known as The Dambusters Raid, is narrated by the actor Richard Todd, who played Wing Commander Guy Gibson in the classic film The Dambusters (1955).

He tells the story of the design of the 'bouncing bomb' and the raid itself.

The Museum launches a YouTube Channel and the first short film shows how the aircraft in the Milestones of Flight hangar are suspended.  

See this video of how the Eurofighter Typhoon was suspended:

 

• Flightglobal.com visited the RAF Musuem summer 2007 and created a galllery of images on AirSpace

 

A cold Monday morning in deepest darkest December is not often something to savour, but this morning's train ride in was brightened up considerably by reading a story of bravery and determination from the Metro Newspaper.

The story was about the 25 year old Jessica Cox, who is the first pilot to fly with just her feet after a genetic defect meant that she was born with no arms. Not only did she have that to deal with, she also had a fear of flying.

According to the Metro article, Jessica said that "I've been terrified and fascinated of flying for as long as I can remember.'

Her story has certainly lightened up my day

This image appealed to my puerile sense of humour. I found this image in the Majesty - Airliners in Action category of our end of year front cover competition. 

And today is the final day to enter. The best image will be on the front cover of Flight International's 16th December issue. The winner will also receive a framed copy of that front cover and £100 (GBP). 

 

Arik Air has received its first of three new Airbus A340-500s that will be used on services from its Lagos base to London, Houston and New York. Read on...

AirSpace: See a gallery of images of the Arik A340-500