What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?

[Ted_Stryker]

Some better quality images of the Boeing Bird of Prey... enjoy!

[Ted_Stryker]

And some more BBOP 

[happylanding]

This is the Chinook. 

Ohhh, I was pretty sure, but it seems I have to take an aircraft and helicopter recognition course! 
Or maybe it was because of the camouflage!?!  
thanks for the pic, I'm quite sure I won't get mistaken another time!!

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Many of the Starfleet ships were designed with detachable saucer sections, and the impulse (sublight) engines were mounted on these. In early years, they were a 'lifeboat' solution which could provide station keeping and short range propulsion as well as life support power far longer than the little lifepods. In later years (when SFX technology could handle it, as well as the producers) the saucer gained the ability to detach and re-join the rest of the ship (sometimes called the 'warp section' because that's where the big engines are).
The blueprints I used to have from the original series detail the huge landing gear, which can be seen as regularly spaced rectangles on the lower surface of the saucer. I believe the ability of this section to enter atmo was limited, and a one-time-only gig, but there were times, in novels, where the whole ship was piloted into the atmosphere.
It's been a while, but I used to design ships for the role playing game.
Geeks-R-Us, yep.

[Turbomallard]

The blueprints I used to have from the original series detail the huge landing gear, which can be seen as regularly spaced rectangles on the lower surface of the saucer.
Geeks-R-Us, yep.

Aha!  A geek imposter! You have been caught!

Nice try, my firend, but the landing gear you referred to were on the refit Enterprise seen in STTMP and beyond, not the original series and not in the Franz Joseph Booklet of General Plans, circa 1975 or the original drawings done for the original series by (pilot and vintage/antique plane buff) Matt Jeffries. Though emergency sepraration of the saucer was discussed in the original series and mentioned in the writer's guide, it was beyond the effects budget of the original series, the gear didn't appear until the 1979 version of the Enterprise.

Sooooo.... [SPOTLIGHT IN FACE ON] Who sent you? Why are you here? Who is trying to infiltrate the chicken coup? You're working for Klyde Morris, aren't you...?

TM
(Genuine Geek who still has his original copy of the Booklet of General Plans, Star Fleet Technical Notebook... and unofficial blueprints of the original Enterprise bridge, Klingon D-7 Battlecruiser, Romulan Bird of Prey, a host of ofther Trek blueprints and... the Space 1999 Moonbase Alpha Technical Notebook...  )

[Frank N. O.]

Well if I'm a geek or not I don't know but the saucer-section was actually used for an emergency-landing once, but it can easily be debated wether it was the intention or not, it was the Enterprise-D (my favourite) in the first NG movie, the one where Kirk dies that alegedly gave real-life death-threats to the writers, something I don't think is nice for a movie, and certainly not ST and Kirk that were about keeping peace.
The landing of the saucer-section was forced by the explosion of the main-ship that changed the course into the atmosphere and it made a belly-landing in the ground.

But there can be a lot of fun in Sci-fi series and some can be used in real life as well. Uhura's ear-piece was the inspiration for some of the people that made the first ear-piece for mobile-phones and the comunicator for the phone itself with the flip-lid. I even read that the needle-less injector had been made! I wonder how the heck that works though?

Pop-quiz, that does kind-of fit under the thread topic: Who was the only person to ever appear in any any ST series/movie playing themselves?

Frank

[Turbomallard]

Pop-quiz, that does kind-of fit under the thread topic: Who was the only person to ever appear in any any ST series/movie playing themselves?

Frank

Stephen Hawking... I should read his book some day. Incredible man.

TM

[SteepTurn]

I cheer for the B17!!!!!!

I saw it at an airshow.  Thanks my ppl licence I could travel around the planes. So I was close to the B17 when he started the engines... ok, it took him about five minutes to make them work all four "smoothly".... with lots of smoke, "boom and bang" 
It was really amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[spacer]

Well if I'm a geek or not I don't know but the saucer-section was actually used for an emergency-landing once, but it can easily be debated wether it was the intention or not, it was the Enterprise-D (my favourite) in the first NG movie, the one where Kirk dies that alegedly gave real-life death-threats to the writers, something I don't think is nice for a movie, and certainly not ST and Kirk that were about keeping peace.
The landing of the saucer-section was forced by the explosion of the main-ship that changed the course into the atmosphere and it made a belly-landing in the ground.

But there can be a lot of fun in Sci-fi series and some can be used in real life as well. Uhura's ear-piece was the inspiration for some of the people that made the first ear-piece for mobile-phones and the comunicator for the phone itself with the flip-lid. I even read that the needle-less injector had been made! I wonder how the heck that works though?

Pop-quiz, that does kind-of fit under the thread topic: Who was the only person to ever appear in any any ST series/movie playing themselves?

Frank

The saucer section was detached during the pilot episode, flown about a bit, then reattached in flight.

While the original series didn't mention it, I specifically remember a book I had detailing the one-time-only ability for the saucer section to detach as a liferaft. This was perhaps enhanced by the time the movies came out.
It's been many moons, and maybe the book was part of the role-playing game (which had a few minor differences from some of the other material), but I thought it was a splendid idea.
Wannabe geek, pshaw. We used to take over a whole table in the cafeteria (Jr. High) to pore over BASIC code, though we never finished our version of Death Race 2000, we modified a few other games to suit us. Remember the old Star Trek game for the TRS-80? hehehe. Our dear school administration would have had a cow over some of the stuff we did. Nothing we did was really high-zoot, but we still had fun.
I mostly gave up the geek biz when I lost out to a rich kid with a C-64 at the science fair. My self-written statistics program couldn't hold a candle to the retail-box program he simply loaded with his *gasp* 5.25" floppy drive.
While I dabbled a bit here and there (I've been installing Linux on every computer I've owned since the mid '90s), I've pretty much stayed with aviation since then.

[fireflyr]

I cheer for the B17!!!!!!

I saw it at an airshow.  Thanks my ppl licence I could travel around the planes. So I was close to the B17 when he started the engines... ok, it took him about five minutes to make them work all four "smoothly".... with lots of smoke, "boom and bang" 
It was really amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It must have been amazing on a cold English morning, watching hundreds of them pharting and bellowing to life before they took off to join hundreds more bound for Nazi occupied Europe 

[Frank N. O.]

Correct answer to the quiz, have a free complimentary virtual tribble
The on-topic part was that he was given a tour of the Enterprise sets and upon reaching the enigne-room with the warp-core he alegedly said: "I'm working on that" referring to making a real warp-drive Cool guy.

Velo: You lost in a science fair to a guy that just showed a store-bought program? How is that fair or have I misunderstood the idea/rules of the american school science fair, besides explaining it aren't you supposed to make it yourself? And my brother only had the normal tape-deck for his C64, and I'm not even sure how he loaded programs on the old ZX81 he had with tape to hold the plastic-keyboard cover in one piece.

Steep, sounds awesome hearing such a plane start up 

Frank

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Frank: In the '80s (kinda like the Golden Age of computing for some of us), many of our teachers were completely clueless
as to the workings of those machines, including the judges at the science fair. They just went for the bling.
Ah well, I like airplanes better anyway, though I still dabble in bits.

[madpilot44]

hey Ted, don't the wings on the bird of prey tilt up? or was it another design I saw do that?... Seeing the pics, I remembered something I saw on the TV (I know, not too much of a trustworthy source of info, but still...) about a plane like that one and an animation in which the wings tilted upwards, but I don't really remember if it was that plane or something like that...

anyway, the other pic was of a MH-53 Pavelow III if I'm right. a special-ops version of the CH-53 and has the telltale refueling probe.

I'm not such a great fan of ST tough... I like Star Wars more 

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The Bird-Of-Prey classes had positionable wings, which could be raised to allow for landings (otherwise they'd have had to make the gear legs longer).
I don't remember all the details, but that was part of it. The BOP ships were constructed by the Klingons, on license from the Romulans, who designed it, and the design was modified and up-sized to a frigate, which was built alongside the smaller ships.
The cloaking device was standard equipment, though I'd be perfectly happy with being able to cloak my tail number on occasion. 

[Ted_Stryker]

The Bird-Of-Prey classes had positionable wings, which could be raised to allow for landings (otherwise they'd have had to make the gear legs longer).
I don't remember all the details, but that was part of it. The BOP ships were constructed by the Klingons, on license from the Romulans, who designed it, and the design was modified and up-sized to a frigate, which was built alongside the smaller ships.
The cloaking device was standard equipment, though I'd be perfectly happy with being able to cloak my tail number on occasion. 

You are correct, velojym.  Though the Romulans had originally created a Bird of Prey, first seen in the original Star Trek series in the episode "Balance of Terror".  Mark Lenard, who later played Spock's father Sarek, played the Romulan Commander.  Later in the Star Trek original series, we come to learn that Romulans started using Klingon ship designs.  The episode "The Enterprise Incident" has Romulans using the Katanga D-7 Class Battlecruiser design of the Klingons.  One must presume that it was likely at this point that the Klingons also took from the Romulans the Bird of Prey design, and made their own modifications to come up with the Klingon Bird of Prey that we came to know well in the Star Trek movies.  The Klingon design for the Bird of Prey is the one with the movable wings.

Of course, the ship in the photos of the Boeing Bird of Prey was not akin to either of the ships above, as this was an aircraft, not a warp speed capable starship of any sort.