Author Topic: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?  (Read 113121 times)

Offline Frank N. O.

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #120 on: March 22, 2006, 05:01:50 PM »
I was thinking about those planes as well, and wondering how they're controller, control-wise, when in a hover but I agree, I think they are way too complicated for comfort. I can understand complex constructions for the space-shuttle but for a sub-orbital vehicle, aka normal flying machine then I think that's a bit costly.

Frank
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Offline madpilot44

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #121 on: March 30, 2006, 02:50:38 AM »
kind of late, but have any of you guys heard abour the flettner kolibri? the pioneer of the K-max's rotor system. I guess germans were pretty advanced to their time.

if I remember correctly there were some kids in the runway at the time the gimli glider was coming down (it was a closed runway anyway, and there were car races that weekend in that runway). can you imagine going in your bike, watching back and seeing this big plane coming straight at you? talk about nightmare stuff...
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Offline spacer

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #122 on: June 03, 2006, 06:36:29 AM »
Thunder Bird, the B17 based at the Lone Star air museum in Galveston. After the Convair belonging to our school (and the ones flying through my FBO, as well as the DC-6 cargo planes), I was simply amazed at how quiet and smooth the old bomber is. Nobody wore headgear, she just whispered her way to the active, and claimed her chunk o' sky.
I've serviced (allright... verrrry carefully and under eagle eyes) Airforce One, but that wasn't a big deal as I have a problem with authority anyway and just wanted to get back to the line shack until the bigwigs left.
My wife and I did get to go up in a Standard a few weeks ago. That was loads of fun.

Offline Mike

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Marines...
« Reply #123 on: June 14, 2006, 09:46:53 PM »
Check out this helicopter!

Notice anything?
(sneaky, huh?!)
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Offline Mike

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #124 on: June 14, 2006, 09:56:43 PM »





and here the solution to the puzzle:

HA HA. I love it!!!   |:)\   semper fi !!
















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Offline Ted_Stryker

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #125 on: June 14, 2006, 10:00:55 PM »

and here the solution to the puzzle:

HA HA. I love it!!!   |:)\   semper fi !!


Excellent!!  ;D  I'll have to complement the folks there next time I talk to one from that unit!  Great job indeed!

By the way... here's another one of interest... ahem  ;D
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Offline Ted_Stryker

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #126 on: June 14, 2006, 10:22:48 PM »
Ok... I admit the other post was a photoshop job putting the USS Reliant from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan atop the naval shipyards in Philadelphia.... it's been going around here as desktop wallpaper for a while and thought you'd get a kick out of it :)

However... here is a REAL amazing aircraft.  This is known as the "Boeing Bird of Prey", and yes, we do have a lot of Star Trek fans here in Boeing, as you can tell from that name   :)   This plane was a highly classified prototype until 2002 when it was officially unvieled.  This is now one of those you will probably see in the museums one day.  It did indeed fly, as one of the photos shows.

I do apologize in advance for the image quality.  I had to convert them to .GIF images as the upload filters don't allow .JPEG's, only .JPG's.

Enjoy!  |:)\
We're going to have to come in pretty low!  It's just one of those things you have to do... when you land!  -- Ted Striker - Airplane!

Offline Frank N. O.

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #127 on: June 15, 2006, 10:17:15 PM »
B17, not bad indeed! I think that's more interesting than Air Force 1 but that's a personal opinion, and a B17 would probably also be easier to get close to in real life. Interesting knowledge about the engines, thanks :)

How did they ever get that paintjob thrue? Looks nice though, but pardon the dumb question, what kind of bird is it?

Nice Shipyard picture there, although such a interplanetary cruiser would never be able to fly in/out of the atmosphere due to horrible aerodynamics (let alone lack of control, thrust, structural integrity etc.) so it would have to be built in orbit, like they normally are in the series/movies anyway, but a pretty good work on the edit.

Love the Bird of Prey but it's incredible it can fly with the wings so far back, not to mention the lack of conventional stabilisers. Btw, why didn't you just renmae the file from .jpeg to .jpg instead of changing the format? To my knowledge it's the same format so just renaming the file extension would cause no problems.

Btw, I just saw a F-16 flying overhead while driving outside of Roskilde today! RDAF, or at least I hope it was lol.I heard the whine thrue the open window and knew that was neither turboprop or any windnoise from the cars nearby and it was way too close (read: low) to be a airliner and it wasn't, it flew straight over us so I could see it thrue my window, cool!

Frank
« Last Edit: June 15, 2006, 10:23:36 PM by Frank N. O. »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."
— Leonardo da Vinci

Offline Ted_Stryker

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #128 on: June 15, 2006, 11:12:33 PM »
B17, not bad indeed! I think that's more interesting than Air Force 1 but that's a personal opinion, and a B17 would probably also be easier to get close to in real life. Interesting knowledge about the engines, thanks :)

How did they ever get that paintjob thrue? Looks nice though, but pardon the dumb question, what kind of bird is it?

Nice Shipyard picture there, although such a interplanetary cruiser would never be able to fly in/out of the atmosphere due to horrible aerodynamics (let alone lack of control, thrust, structural integrity etc.) so it would have to be built in orbit, like they normally are in the series/movies anyway, but a pretty good work on the edit.

Love the Bird of Prey but it's incredible it can fly with the wings so far back, not to mention the lack of conventional stabilisers. Btw, why didn't you just renmae the file from .jpeg to .jpg instead of changing the format? To my knowledge it's the same format so just renaming the file extension would cause no problems.

Btw, I just saw a F-16 flying overhead while driving outside of Roskilde today! RDAF, or at least I hope it was lol.I heard the whine thrue the open window and knew that was neither turboprop or any windnoise from the cars nearby and it was way too close (read: low) to be a airliner and it wasn't, it flew straight over us so I could see it thrue my window, cool!

Frank

Frank,

Thanks on the shipyard photo.  I can't take credit for it personally, but I think they did a pretty good job.  As for aerodynamics, the way the Starships work, they use gravity field manipulation, rather than aerodynamics, for flight, so they pretty much wouldn't need to worry since they would have shields up in the atmoshpere anyway.  The Starship Voyager was actually designed to make planetfall, and was shown doing so in that series too.  But you are correct in noting that the Constitution Class, and Regula Class (which is the class the USS Reliant belongs to), are constructed in space and not designed for landing on planetary surfaces.  Interestingly enough, the original concept for the Starship Enterprise did have a design plan that would have had the ship able to land, at least with the saucer section (aka Primary Hull), but that idea was dropped for the practical purposes of both lack of special effects budget, and pacing in the series, which actually led Gene Roddenberry to come up with the idea of simply "beaming up/down" as needed for brevity.  Now they are actually working on making such things a reality... though I'll not be the first to try it out! :)

In response to the .jpeg versus .jpg format, I have had some problems on occassion with the two formats being slightly different.  In fact, I did manage to save one .jpeg as a .jpg with no change in quality (using the 100% quality setting), and logically, if the two formats were identical, should have resulted in identical file sizes, just with different file extensions, but the .jpg version was a bigger file even though it was just a "save as" from the .jpeg image. 

As for how the Bird of Prey manages to fly, it's part lifting body, and part steerable exhaust, along with a mechanism that uses technology I'm not really at liberty to go into in any detail.... suffice to say it works ... and quite well!  :))

Oh, fyi, that chopper I believe is a CH-53.  Here's a shot of one above a lake in Afghanistan on patrol with our brave USMC fella's over there!
We're going to have to come in pretty low!  It's just one of those things you have to do... when you land!  -- Ted Striker - Airplane!

Offline happylanding

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #129 on: June 16, 2006, 05:46:31 AM »

and here the solution to the puzzle:

HA HA. I love it!!!   |:)\   semper fi !!


HAHA! that's for sure an artistical camouflage!!  :D

BTW, isn't it a Chinook, the helicopter?

I do not know if it could be useful, but it made me remember (let's say it's the kind of connections you could find solely in women's brain) of a book that has nothing to do with airplanes/heli but it's really worth a try if you ever are interested in special op for military ....the author is Mc Nab Andy, and the book is Bravo Two Zero. If it ever happens that you're looking for something interesting to read....he's a great writer.....
« Last Edit: June 16, 2006, 05:56:58 AM by happylanding »
I give that landing a 9 . . . on the Richter scale.

Offline Stef

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #130 on: June 16, 2006, 09:23:48 AM »
Hahaha! Now we're talking about Constitution and Regula Class starships here as well! That's funny! :D Personally, my favourite Star Trek series is "Enterprise".

Anyway, Ted, I added *.jpeg" to the allowed file extensions. There was no real reason for it not to be in there... If anything of such a sort happens, tell me. It's usualsy easy to fix.

@ happy: No, I'm pretty sure it's not a Chinook!

@ Roland and/or Mike: That's funny, why's the tail fin of the helicopter (on the last image Ted posted) bent towards the left? What's the reason behind that?

Offline Ted_Stryker

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #131 on: June 16, 2006, 01:44:45 PM »

and here the solution to the puzzle:

HA HA. I love it!!!   |:)\   semper fi !!


HAHA! that's for sure an artistical camouflage!!  :D

BTW, isn't it a Chinook, the helicopter?

I do not know if it could be useful, but it made me remember (let's say it's the kind of connections you could find solely in women's brain) of a book that has nothing to do with airplanes/heli but it's really worth a try if you ever are interested in special op for military ....the author is Mc Nab Andy, and the book is Bravo Two Zero. If it ever happens that you're looking for something interesting to read....he's a great writer.....

:)  I guarantee it's a Sikorski CH-53, happylanding :)  The Chinook is the chopper that has two large rotors and is the descendant of the "banana" chopper.  I am not yet at work, but can post a picture of a Chinook for you later today when I get to my office.  Primarily, the USMC flies the CH-53, and the CH-47 for most heavy lift.  I work with the USMC through Boeing... so I'm pretty familiar with what they are using :)

We're going to have to come in pretty low!  It's just one of those things you have to do... when you land!  -- Ted Striker - Airplane!

Offline Ted_Stryker

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #132 on: June 16, 2006, 02:03:27 PM »
Hahaha! Now we're talking about Constitution and Regula Class starships here as well! That's funny! :D Personally, my favourite Star Trek series is "Enterprise".

Anyway, Ted, I added *.jpeg" to the allowed file extensions. There was no real reason for it not to be in there... If anything of such a sort happens, tell me. It's usualsy easy to fix.

@ happy: No, I'm pretty sure it's not a Chinook!

@ Roland and/or Mike: That's funny, why's the tail fin of the helicopter (on the last image Ted posted) bent towards the left? What's the reason behind that?

I like all the Star Trek series, but the original, and the newest one, Enterprise, are my favorites too :)

Thanks for adding the .jpeg extension.  I'll see about putting up some higher quality versions of the images later today :)
We're going to have to come in pretty low!  It's just one of those things you have to do... when you land!  -- Ted Striker - Airplane!

Offline Mike

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #133 on: June 16, 2006, 04:40:05 PM »
@ Roland and/or Mike: That's funny, why's the tail fin of the helicopter (on the last image Ted posted) bent towards the left? What's the reason behind that?

Yeah, it's a CH-53.
The tail is "bent" to offer somewhat of a vertical lift component in a hover (remember the graphs with the arrows of lift pointing in all kinds of directions?) on the tailrotor to help hold that big heavy tail up (which also gives you a wider CG range). Pretty smart, huh?!?
The T/R is now not only keeping the aircraft from spinning but also helping out with the lift....
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Offline Gulfstream Driver

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Re: What's the most amazing flying machine you've seen in person?
« Reply #134 on: June 16, 2006, 10:09:19 PM »
This is the Chinook. 
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