While poking around airplane sites and posting to the Coolest fighter aircraft thread, I came across this unusual story:
There are a couple of interesting photos in the article.
Whoops.
This should have gone into MPSIMS. Can a mod please move?
Thanks.
That plane is at the USAF museum at Wright-Patterson AFB. I saw it last year, and it was one of the more memorable items.
Wright-Pat is on my US Space and Aviation Tour agenda.
A lot of the interesting stuff is in the annex and unfortunately you can only spend 30 or 45 minutes there due to security issues. It’s separate from the museum and requires bus transportation to/from the main museum. I would recommend that you ignore the presidential planes and look at the other stuff in the annex first.
The Museum is in the early stages of planning a new hangar. The new building would house all the stuff currently in the annex (the presidential planes and R&D aircraft). And, if the USAF’s bid is accepted by NASA, the new hangar will also house a Space Shuttle!
So if you don’t make it out here for a few more years, Johnny, all those cool R&D aircraft may be moved outside the secure part of the base and placed alongside the rest of the exhibits. Then you can spend all day checking out planes like the XB-70.
(Not surprisingly, I never visit the museum even though I work on base. It’s hard to make time to do it when it’s so accessible…it’ll always be there another day.)
Yep. I ate lunch at the NASA-Dryden cafeteria frequently. Bought lots of stuff at the gift shop. My badge allowed me into the NASA facilities. But I never actually took the tour until after I moved away.
You’re missing alot if you don’t go regularly. They rotate stuff through such as the Avro aero car. or ram jet helicopters. I was there a couple of months ago and stumbled across a Mig-29 and a nice restoration of a Mosquito. The WWII section has grown considerably.
Moving at request of OP.
I was there a few years ago. Had a brief chat with a guy standing there, turned out he was a former crew chief for that plane.
Johnny L.A., if you can possibly manage it, go to that museum. The XB-70 alone is practically worth the trip. (Make sure you’re early enough that you can get on one of the annex buses. And don’t miss the silver goblets and cognac in the display on Doolittle’s Raiders.) They’ve got connections. My dad used to fly C-141s, and one of his friends was commander of the reserves at Wright-Pat as those planes were being retired. Not only did they want to preserve one, but they knew which one they wanted. They got it and had it repainted in the colors that it had when it picked up the POWs in Hanoi.
If you ever find yourself in a spin and you think you’ve tried everything and still can’t recover, take your hands and feet of the controls and sit there for a few seconds before you give up. Sometimes the aeroplane will recover all by itself if it doesn’t have a hamfisted pilot interfering.
After carefully consulting your altimeter.
The Beggs/Mueller technique basically says throttle to idle, let go of the controls, then give opposite rudder.
My experience is that many planes will stop spinning if you do even less than that. Just letting go will indeed make the plane stop it’s bad behavior much of the time, assuming a normal loading condition.
Trouble is, jets often need different spin recovery techniques because of wing sweep, and because their mass is more distributed along the long axis of the plane. According to one textbook, you often need aileron deflection to escape a spin in a swept-wing aircraft. That’s contrary to anything you would do in a straight-wing airplane.
So I don’t know if the “sit and wait” technique would have helped the guy in the 106.
Yeah. The “get out of the aeroplane now” technique worked out ok though (I wonder if it was the act of ejecting that helped initiate the recovery?) The reality is that most pilots will want to be doing something up until the moment they have to get out.
When I was a kid living in Darwin (Northern Territory, Australia), an Air Force Mirage jet had a flame-out and the pilot ejected. The jet landed short of the airport on mud-flats and sustained very little visible damage (although it was never returned to service).
It was later restored and now resides in Darwin’s Aviation Heritage Museum. Photo and short description of the accident here.
Thanks Lord Mondegreen, I knew I’d read a similar story with an Australian connection somewhere but didn’t remember enough to be able to search for it. As it happens, I am in a hotel in Darwin right now :).
I recall a story regarding one of Burt Rutan’s canard style aircraft. Those are the ones with the tiny wing (canard) up front, with the big wing towards the back, as well as a propellor pushing in the back rather than pulling in the front.
Anyhow, even tho it is nearly impossible to stall the back wing before the front, the guy did it or got into a spin or something uncontrollable. Nothing was working, but fortunately he was up high when he did it so he had some time to think things through.
After nothing else worked, he popped the canopy, and CRAWLED out towards/on the front of the plane. That redistribution of weight brought the plane back under control, saving the day, the pilot, and the plane.