Congratulations on your training and good luck with your checkride Figaro ! Quite a bit of the military hardware flying these days is considerably older than the 152 (1978 roll-out I believe). Even the C-150 came out around 1959, younger than many KC-135 and B-52 airframes still flying . . . you’ll be surprised at how recognizable much of the same basic airmanship you use in your 152 translates directly to flying “state-of-the-art” military equipment. They’re still airplanes! I definitely agree about the magic of GA though - the most fun I’ve had in planes in the last few years has been in gliders and a J-3 Cub. I’d take that Champ ride any day . . . good luck with your flying!
A few years ago, a crowd gathered to open a time capsule at the county court house in Gibson County, Tennessee. One of the things inside was a list of questions and among them this:
Did man ever learn how to fly?
It brought tears to the eyes of many who had flown there was the occasion.
Speaking of human lifespans, today is my grandmother’s 99th birthday. She truly has lived to see amazing changes. I’m grateful I still have her. She can’t see or hear all that well, but she still has a sharp mind and pays attention to the news better than I do.
Born just after the advent of flight, she has gone from horse and buggy to the space age.
Did anyone else see that Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites flew a test of their SpaceShipOne yesterday? They hit mach 1.2, the first time that a privately built aircraft broke the sound barrier.
Thanks, Cali! You’re right of course about the B-52 and lots of other older designs that are around. And I have never flown anything high-tech, so I’ll have to wait until my flight in an F-22 to see if it feels like an airplane!. I have to think, though, that, as an experience, cruising at .85 mach at 40,000 feet is a lot farther removed from aviation’s beginnings than counting cows at 85 knots with the windows open.
Johnny, I can’t say for sure. I was quoting from the article. I did google around a bit, though, and found these:
Bede’s website says that the BD10 was designed to be faster than sound, but not to cruise that fast. There’s no mention there that they actually achieved that speed. If he had, I would have expected that to be pointed out.
This Yahoo group has a message said to be by Jim Bede about at least one test program. The speed they’re discussing here is 350-380 knots, give or take. That’s well below mach 1. That doesn’t mean that a different plane did get that fast.
Fair enough. I do know that the BD-10 had flutter problems that resulted in at least one fatality. It might be that even though it was designed to go supersonic, it never achieved that speed because it broke up.
I remember an article in a popular mechanics -type magazine when I was younger that touted the BD-10 as everyman’s supersonic jet. I don’t think it ever got close, this NTSB report deals with the crash of one prototype (read the full narrative for more detail). I read an article by an engineer who did some BD-10 aeroelastic study after the crash (can’t find it though) and concluded that analysis of the empennage structure design was inadequate and/or faulty. I saw one of the other prototypes for sale in Trade-A-Plane a couple years ago.