Plane&Pilot

I have a bit of a bone to pick with Plane&Pilot magazine today because of this months issue, September 2007. They did an article about the 10 sexiest airplanes and I am really not pleased by it.

First of all it should have been the 10 sexiest airplanes plus 2 and then 15 more. Lets be definitive here folks its honestly not that hard. My first bone to pick is with their choice of the Avro B.1 Vulcan. The thing is absolutely hideous with its stingray shaped wing that looks so under designed. I won't even give it the gratification of more of an explaination, I think what happened in the James Bond movie Thunderball is enough, and thats when they were new. I can't stand any of the V bombers and I was very surprised seeing the Vulcan on the list.

My next is with the indecisiveness they had to put two aircraft for 7th place the Cirrus and Columbia, and they didn't specify which models for either. I think as I have said in a previous blog that the Cirrus SR-2o/SR-22 are better looking, with my decisiveness being placed specifically on the SR-22 because of its exhaust stacks. Besides they already put a better looking Lancair/Columbia earlier on the Lancair 320.

They did the same thing with the 4th place aircraft picking two once again the Lear 24D, which is really a Gates Learjet 24D Learjet a successor to the original, and the Dassault 10 Falcon. I do think a Learjet should have made the list, but I think it should have been the 31 the most capable of the Learjets with body strakes, and winglets. I couldn't disagree more with the choice to put the Falcon 10 on, for me it is the ugliest and least sexy of all the Falcons and the one that doesn't fit in with the rest of the line. I think that the Falcon 20 is the aircraft that represents the quintessential Falcon design, you can see it in all the other Falcons. They then go on to say that the 10 and 20 are still aircraft to swear by for corporate flight departments, the 10 no, the 20 and 200 yest definitely, I see them all the time. The only time I see Falcon 10s are when NASCAR goes anywhere.

That's the end of my rant for now.

The Space Shuttle Endeavor blasted off just minutes ago and is probably just now reaching space as I write this. I'll hopefully get to see it landed in two weeks time when I'm down in Florida to start school.

The 787 and Spirit/Opportunity

Boeing one week ago rolled out their newest aircraft the 787 Dreamliner. Basically it looks a lot like a 757 with a smaller tail, different unconventional cockpit windows, and the advanced raked winglets. Overall it is a pretty good looking aircraft and looks to be extremely powerful. If you were following this at all you might have seen some photos Boeing wasn't to happy about. An Airliners.net photographer had parked himself on the highway that passes by the Boeing final assembly facility in Everett, Washington and was able to snag some shots even before it was painted. After it passed out of the assembly building and was being towed to the paint building is when he was able to get the pictures. I'm really looking forward to seeing it fly in about a month.

The big news with NASA is that they may finally lose one of the Mars rovers. They plan on sending it into a valley that it may not be able to get out of because of the lack of sunlight. Spirit and Opportunity have now been on Mars for more than 3.5 years. That is an incredible feat since they were only meant to last just 3 months, they have now passed 13 times their life expectancy. Hopefully they'll be able to gain a significant amount of information for future missions to Mars.

Another update I forgot about until I was writing this. Cirrus has released a full scale mock up of their entry into the VLJ market. To me it looks like Cirrus has lost touch with their other aircraft. Their VLJ looks like a hydro jet boat nearly exactly, they just removed the forward section and added wings. The interior looks nothing like an aircraft at all. There are no backup steam gauges just a straight panel with absolutely nothing their. I'm sure it will be different when they actually start building a real one, but for now it just does not look very good.

Stupid Aircraft

I was watching ABC news tonight and a story came on regarding an aircraft that has been under development for 21 years. As my previous posts have been regarding the beauty of aircraft this post is in regards to how ugly this aircraft is, just look at the thing. If you read Popular Science Magazine you will have seen an article regarding a hypersonic aircraft for the Marines several months ago. The following month the letters to the editor regarding this issue pretty much destroyed the possibility of this aircraft ever making off the proposal sheet because there is no need for it. The same is true for this aircraft that $63 million have been poured into, its just not needed. I think the news was trying to show what a waste of money it was, but in the governments eyes this $63 million is nothing. Anyway there is really no need for an aircraft that can take of vertically fly at 700mph anywhere in the world and drop off 50 combat troops. We can pretty much do that already with more troops, almost 6 times as many troops in a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, granted the troops will get dirty from parachuting in, but whats a little dirt. Anyway this aircraft will probably never progress beyond its hovering several feet off the ground tethered to a flat bed. As much as I support aviation when you build something this ugly it is no wonder it never makes it past the prototype stage, ie Boeing X-32, don't even get me started.

The Best Looking Fighters

This is a good sign that I keep coming back. As promised I'm going to continue my best looking aircraft trend today with the fighter aircraft, some production and at least one that never made it that far. I'm going to skip WWI because I'm not a big fan of that era and go straight to WWII.

To me probably the best looking as well as the best raw performance numbers of WWII came from a single aircraft that never made it to production. The Martin Baker MB.5. It has earned itself the name the British Mustang from its obvious similarities to the North American P-51 Mustang. I think however that it has better lines that the P-51 and it certainly has better performance numbers. I've read that only two of these aircraft were ever built the first having been lost in a crash during the initial testing. The second was destroyed later in the 1960's I believe an a British artillery range. Today there is a group in the Western United States working to build a replica of this aircraft, but it is not an exact replica and is somewhat shorter than the original. It has parts that have been borrowed from several other aircraft including its lookalike the P-51. My goal is to someday have the time and the money to build an exact replica of it, the problem is that I don't believe that there a plans for this aircraft out there, although I have a feeling Martin Baker probably has the somewhere in an archive. If I really have a lot of time I'd like to go to the artillery range that the second was destroyed on and try and see if there is anything left. I think that is a bit ambitious though.

Another aircraft that I have a bit of an affinity towards from the WWII era is the Goodyear F2G sometimes referred to as the Super Corsair. From a basic glance it looks just like a normal Chance Vought F4U Corsair, until you notice the bubble canopy and noticeably longer cowling. There is something about that bubble canopy that makes me like the Super Corsair better than the standard Corsair. It also has under that cowling a considerable increase in power, I believe it is something on the order of nearly 1,000hp but I don't really feel like getting up to get the book I know it's in. Other than the canopy and the cowling it shares the same awesome inverted gull wing as the original Corsair.

Now on to the Korean War Era, from which I think only one aircraft emerges, the North American F-86 Sabre. This plane is always a stunner except when it is a D model and has the radar in the nose which just wrecks the aesthetics of the aircraft. When ever you see a nice one with the polished aluminum, swept wings, bubble canopy, and crucible tail you know you've seen something special. This I would argue is the first REAL jet that the United States produced. Sure there was the P-53, P-80, F-84, etc., but the Sabre was the first that actually looked fast, and it was. I just cannot say enough about how cool it looks when it is in the air, whether it has the speed brakes deployed, gear down, or totally clean, it just looks awesome.

From the Vietnam era came possibly the best looking series of jet aircraft. The Northrop T-38 Talon, F-5E Tiger II, and the F-5 Freedom Fighter. Of these I have a particular interest in the T-38, and the two seat models of the F-5E and F-5. Something about that extra bit of canopy makes them look just a bit better. When it comes down to it there cannot be a simpler aircraft out there. Okay there probably is, but from first glance you can tell it was meant for one thing, going fast! I think the stubby wings that look razor thin, the long pointy nose, and the contours on the engines make this jet look positively brilliant. When they are kept up well and shiny and in the all black schemes of Holloman or Beale Air Force Bases are when I like them the best, but I won't make a fuss over any of the others.

Now we are into the modern stuff and I can get back to possibly my favorite company Dassault. With the next several aircraft I mention I am going to be extremely specific as to the model of the aircraft that I like best, because in most cases it makes a world of difference. The Dassault fighter aircraft that I think has the best lines is the Dassault 2000D Mirage. The D is the two seat model and like with the T-38 something just looks better with that longer canopy. This aircraft again has an extremely pointy nose, intake spikes, a beautiful delta wing, and an F-16 style afterburner ring. If you've seen the videos on Youtube and Google video of these aircraft you know what I'm talking about when I say how impressive they are airborne. I've yet to see one in real life but I'm really looking forward to that day. If you've not checked it out the movie Les Chevaliers du Ciel, Skyfighters in English, is a great movie to see this aircraft in, in a variety of forms. It is a pretty cheesy movie, but it does have some of the best flying scenes I've ever seen.

The next aircraft that is up is the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle. This is the plane that I grew up wanting to fly, although that will never happen since the Air Force does not like nut allergies, but I really don't want to get into that whole story right now, maybe some other time. The Strike Eagle in its dark grey paint scheme just looks better than the normal Eagle. I think it also helps that it is a two seater, again with my liking the longer canopy, I also liked the fact that you worked as a team in this aircraft with your WSO. The other major plus for this aircraft are the conformal fuel tanks that seemed to round out the aircraft and give it a somewhat cleaner look than the normal Eagle. Outside pure aesthetics the another factor that drew me so much to this aircraft was the dual role that it can play. While maintaining the same capability as the typical air to air arena that has the slogan, "Not a pound for air to ground", it can also slug it out in the attack role. The biggest draw though came from what I had read, and later saw what it can do near the ground. With its terrain following radar, FLIR pod and other accessories they fly the Strike Eagle at a hundred feet off the deck in all weather, day or night, that is cool! I heard somewhere that pilots describe that type of flying as being 1/2 second from the ground, WOW!

Next we have an aircraft that I do have the possibility of actually flying in the future the Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet. Let me just get this out there for anyone who actually cares the Navy is considerably more lenient when it comes to your medical and they won't disqualify you for stupid things that don't really affect anything. Back on topic, again the F/A-18F Super Hornet is the two seat model of the Super Hornet and more closely fills the role previously occupied by the Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Again that longer canopy just does it for me. There are a couple of things that I like about the Super Hornet better than the Hornet. The first of these and the most obvious is the change in intakes from the round to the square. I think the square just look a lot better. The next less obvious is the fact that the aircraft in general is cleaner than the original Hornet. If you look at the normal Hornet you'll see that just aft of the cockpit mounted on the leading edge wing root section there is a large metal plate, that looks almost like a strike. It is secured there by only two bolts and is actually there because of the slip stream that the Hornet was producing was putting to much stress on the vertical stabilizers. These are noticeably absent on the Super Hornet as well as the the fact that the leading edge wing roots are much larger and on the Hornet. In general the Super Hornet is a much larger aircraft, nearly three feet longer than its predecessor and with more than 100 square feet more wing area that allows the ability to carry two more weapons pylons for a total of 11.

Anyway I have a bit of a bone to pick with some pilots and mechanics, if your going to be a pilot or mechanic you should know exactly what you are talking about when you speak. On both occasions two military guys have come across to me as being somewhat ignorant of their respective branches of the military. The first was an ex A-10 pilot who interviewed me for admission to the Air Force Academy and when he asked what I wanted to fly I told him the F-15E Strike Eagle, he thought it was a pure air to air aircraft and that's the whole reason they put the seat in for the guy to operate the radar. I kind of explained to him how it was a multi role aircraft but I don't think he believed me and I did not really want to push during an interview. First of all Strike is right in its name, second it has earned the nickname Beagle, for Bomb Eagle, and third Mudhen for its low level flying, what would a fighter be doing down low? Anyway the second guy was a young Marine Corps F/A-18 mechanic that I bumped into in a store wearing a WMU flight team shirt and I got talking to for a while. I explained how I had just received an NROTC scholarship and one day might be flying the very aircraft he works on. Then he proceeded to tell me how the Navy and Marines were going to be getting a new aircraft right about the time I graduated from college and would be entering the pipeline. He told me about the wonders of the F-35 Raptor. I just sat there and played dumb like I had no idea what he was talking about and how cool of a new aircraft it would be, all the while thinking to myself how incredibly ignorant this guy was sounding. It was only a couple of weeks earlier that I had been at the United States Air Force Museum and overheard a grandfather telling his grandson about the F-11 Raptor, hmm another aircraft I don't know about apparently. Anyway I hate it when people talk like they know a lot about something, especially aircraft, and then end up coming off like they know nothing at all. I feel sorry for that little boy who now has no idea what the F-22 RAPTOR actually is. By the way if any of you are thinking why didn't he write F/A-22 I'm still ahead of you, because from what I've heard the Air Force is not actually going to use the F-22 for the attack role, which I think is a good idea since they cost so much. I may have to come back and change this bit here in the future as I just read in Air Forces Monthly I believe it was that the first production F/A-22 just rolled of the assembly line. If the Air Force is producing two versions of the Raptor as a pure air to air, and a dual role aircraft this is the first I've heard of it. That's the end of my rant I guess.

Round Two

Well I'm glad I have committed myself somewhat to this, I think it will be fun. Anyway on the topic of space it is good that the shuttle Atlantis safely made it to orbit yesterday, unfortunately I was unable to watch the launch as I was playing in a soccer game. The game was the first I had played in 19 months and it was definitely good to get out there again.

Now I need to get back on topic and describe to you some of the aircraft that I think are aesthetically pleasing. These aircraft will not include some of my favorite aircraft that aren't so pleasing to the eye, namely my favorite aircraft the Dassault F-1 Mirage.

I'm going to do this in order of size most likely so I'll start from the smaller aircraft first and work up to the big ones.

So here it goes the first aircraft being the Cirrus SR-20 and SR-22. I can't say enough about the nice lines that these aircraft have. Everything is swept back and almost elegant in nature and I would only change several things to make them even more pleasing to the eye. On the SR-22 I would change up the wingtip extension that they added, it just does not look good from up close or when you see it in wing shots. The other thing that I would change are the exhaust stacks on the SR-20 they are way to long, I understand that this is for functional purposes, but they just don't look right.

The next aircraft up in class that I think has good lines is the Beechcraft 60 Duke. Everything about this aircraft has been swept back and looks like it was built solely for speed. There really isn't anything about this aircraft that I would want to change. Although the modernized versions with winglets I don't think look as good as those with clean wings. Some of the modernized variants have picked up aft body strakes which I think are a real plus aesthetically. The only thing I would really like to change about the duke is its reputation. It seems that they are maintenance hogs and so have gained the reputation as hangar queens, although to date I have seen several flying so I don't know if this is actually the case. AT least one has been granted the privilege of wearing Pratt & Whitney PT-6s and I think it looks fantastic.

Stepping up once again we move to the Dornier Do-328. This regional turboprop airliner is definitely the best looking regional airliner out there. With speeds nearing that of jets, clean lines, a high performance wing, and an awesome flight deck its no wonder I don't hear anything bad about this aircraft. I must advise you that it does have an extremely ugly sibling, the Do-328JET model which has the six bladed turboprops replaced by turbofans. This aircraft sounds as good as it looks, ten years ago I had the privilege of flying in one and it was one of the quietest aircraft I have ever been on, and I was in a wing seat very near those monstrous Pratt & Whitney PW119 engines.

The next aircraft on this list is the Dassault 900 Falcon. For me nearly all the Dassault aircraft should been on this best looking list with the exception of only a few. Marcel Dassault formerly Bloch must have really been inspired when he began creating his aircraft because they all look superb. For me the 900 exemplifies this beauty it has flowing lines, a nice wide fuselage, the ducted third engine, and the typical Dassault business jet tail. It seems everything on this aircraft is faired in and just perfect. My uncle had the privilege of flying this aircraft and he said he absolutely loved it.

In the next class up lies the Boeing 757. To some this aircraft is some what unattractive because its fuselage is so slender and long, and its engines are so big and powerful, but to me these are the things that make it such a good looking aircraft. Pilots consider this aircraft to be the sports car of the airliners because of how overpowered it is. I have heard a story through one of my friends about some pilot he had talked about how one day with no passengers on board and a light fuel load they did a performance takeoff in the aircraft and pitched the nose back to other worldly attitude. If you have not yet seen it I suggest searching the New Zealand Air Force 757 flyby on Youtube, that's what I'm talking about. As with the Dornier Do-328 the 757 has an ugly sibling known as the 757-300 which has been stretched to a length that just looks unsafe. The 757 features aft leaning twin bogey landing gear that look like claws off a falcon when in their down and locked position and this further adds to its aura as a bird of prey.

Finally there is the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar. This is the best looking of all the three holers, although I am somewhat partial to the MD-11 as well. This aircraft like many of the others on this list has everything tucked away and faired in. Something about the sheer size of this aircraft makes it impressive. Although this aircraft did not sell very well in comparison to its opponents the DC-10 and 747 it was probably the best of these aircraft. Lockheed spent a year extra working everything out on this aircraft so that it was absolutely a dream to fly. I've heard stories about pilots of this aircraft waking up in the middle of the night and going to sit with this aircraft it meant so much to them.

Those are my favorites for the civilian side of things, I'll be back at some point to give my military aircraft, and I may even give my helicopter favorites, if I'm in a good mood.

The Beginning

Okay I'm pretty new to this whole blogging thing both as a reader and as a writer but here it goes anyway. For the most part my blogs will be in regards to something aviation or space related.

To start things off I've had the privilege of being at the controls of four different types of aircraft, two of which are reflected in my log book. The others I was flying from the right seat and thus could not actually log.

The first of these aircraft being the Cessna 172 Skyhawk. The first time I flew a Skyhawk was when I was 16 at a summer camp at Western Michigan University. The actually aircraft's tail number was N993WW which is now owned by the International Airline Training Academy in Tuscon, Arizona. The first Skyhawk I ever soloed had the tail number N981BT and this is the aircraft the majority of my logbook times is reflected in. I've also flown N721AA and N996WW. To me the Cessna 172 Skyhawk is a perfect Private Pilot training aircraft. With relatively moderate performance, good visibility, and ease to fly it has been a pure joy to do my training in. It does however have a number of draw backs, mainly being its lack of power, and inability to carry any sort of useful load with the fuel to actual make a long cross country. Cessna has remedied this somewhat with the newer models giving them an extra 20 HP so that they now have 180 horses. When I have flown four people in the Skyhawk I've had to carry roughly half tanks, although the performance does not really seem to be affected to much, in cruise it will still do 110 knots.

The other type of aircraft that I have in my logbook is the Cessna 150. This is the Skyhawks smaller cousin. It is only a two seat aircraft and is probably about a foot abreast smaller than the Skyhawk. The other major difference is the seating position for the pilot. In the Skyhawk your seating up just over a foot off the floor in the seat with you legs extended down to the pedals. The 150 is another story, you're sitting on the floor kind of paddle boat style with your legs straight out in front of you. My experience with the 150 has lead me to believe that the aircraft has a mind of its own, possibly solely a result of it being so light weight. We pulled the power out and we continued to climb, then we'd put power in to climb and we'd descend it must have just been riding thermals. It is an extremely fun aircraft to fly although even more under powered than the Skyhawk it turns like nothing else out there. It has relatively big control surfaces for how big it is so it rolls into and out of turns very nicely. It also has 40 degrees of flaps which is somewhat uncommon for aircraft this small which means it will fly really slow. With power in and full flaps you can fly it well beyond its published stall speed to less than 10 knots. For this very reason many people have had the privilege of flying backwards in this aircraft with stiff headwinds.

I've also flown right seat in a homebuilt experimental category Vans RV-6A. If you have ever looked at homebuilt aircraft you'll know how successful Vans is with over 5,000 of there aircraft in the air. Before I flew in it I had figured it would be a bit of a step up from what I had previously flown in but I really had no idea. The RV-6A I flew in had a 180HP normally aspirated Lycoming engine driving a fixed pitch prop. I should have knew what I was in for by doing a little math before hand. The aircraft weighs less than 1,500, so about the same as a Cessna 150, and has 80 more HP plus a more streamlined design. When we rotated at takeoff we were doing a 100 knots in the climb and maintaining nearly 2,000 fpm climb rate. In cruise we were at around 180 knots true air speed. The other major difference to this aircraft than the others I had flown was that it had a low wing instead of a high wing. It also had no doors, instead it had a sliding canopy which I thought was neat, until we closed it and I had absolutely no head room. Another cool feature was that it had a fighter pilot like stick instead of a yoke that was pretty neat to turn with. Although I'm supposed to have a second flight with the guy that owns it I've yet to do that, he said I could ring it out a bit and head show me what it could really do. I think he meant rolling it and thinks which I'd love to be along for the ride and do.

Finally the coolest aircraft I've ever flown, the Cirrus SR-20. From first looking at it you can sense how cool it is. It has some of the best lines on any light single engine aircraft out there. For those none aviation enthusiasts I'll compare it to a car, and the only car in its class the Lamborghini. To start the Cirrus has Lamborghini doors so you know it is cool when you can taxi in after a flight with both doors popped open like that. It also features a full glass cockpit, meaning all the typical steam gauges have been replaced by LCD monitors, with the exception of the attitude indicator, airspeed indicator, and altimeter which are all still in place as back ups to their digital counterparts. The Cirrus is easily 30 knots faster than every other aircraft in its class and it will also carry a bit more than the others. Some of the coolest features of the Cirrus are found on the wings. The Cirrus features a dog tooth leading edge, which I'll get into at some point when I talk about modern fighters. It also features stall strips, which on the Cirrus are quite small, but I'm told that on the new Cirrus SR-22 G3 they are significantly larger. The basic principle behind a stall strip is to guarantee that the wing root area stalls before the wing tip, this makes the aircraft safer. This makes an aircraft safer because whenever a wing stalls, if a tip stalls before the other portion of the wing it will drop and you have the potential to enter a spin, which in the Cirrus has no recovery technique but to pull the chute. The biggest advantage to the Cirrus probably is its safety. The aircraft is virtually impossible to get your self into a mess that you can't get yourself out of as long as it had nothing to do with your decision making skills regarding weather, your ability, etc. One of its most known feature is mostly its CAPS (Cirrus Airframe Parachute System) which deploys a large canopy via a solid rocket that will bring the whole aircraft down in one piece. It also has many other safety features but I'm not going to get into them. The only draw backs I see with the Cirrus are that it has somewhat poor visibility outside, which is why I personally feel that it is probably not the right choice for a primary training platform. I do however feel that it is probably one of the best secondary training platforms on the market if not the best, it is a great Instrument aircraft as I had the privilege of experiencing 3 days ago as a back seat passenger. We took off into a cloud deck that was reported to be at 900 feet AGL, but was at more like 400 AGL, climbed through a 3,000 foot cloud deck, flew 100 nautical miles, descended through that same cloud, and made an uneventful precision approach. If you are someone that has $300,000 burning a hole in your pocket this is definitely the right plane for you, I cannot speak more highly of this aircraft.

Anyway I guess that it is a somewhat lengthy first blog, hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with my favorite aircraft.