C-130s are built by Lockheed, not Boeing. And in Marrietta GA, not Seattle WA. So probably not a brand new one.
Setting aside @Dr.Strangelove’s totally true, totally cool, but also not real relevant cite the wiki on C-130s says the current H model can lift off in 1500 feet at light loads and 3500 feet at max gross weight. That’d be at sea level on a cool (AKA “standard”) day which approximates conditions in/around Seattle.
C-130s also fly very slowly compared to jets of comparable sizes, and makes relatively little noise of a more genteel nature. All of which give their departures a strangely artificial, steep, and stately appearance.
If it had 4 engines and was a turboprop, it was very likely a C-130. Without JATO bottles, a 1500 ft takeoff roll is possible.
They did the occasiona practice JATO takeoff at my home field, which was a military base. Lots of fun seeing those. Also the LAPES drops (Low Altitude Parachute Extraction). The C-130 comes in low with the rear cargo door open. A palette with anything from food to a vehicle on it is attached to a parachute. When the parachute opens, the cargo is pulled from the plane and dropped on the ground.
It’s also dangerous. The pilot has to deal with major changes in weight and balance right close to the ground:
To clarify, I did not mean to suggest you didn’t see a C-130. That was 99.99% certainly what it was. What I meant to suggest was simply that it wasn’t a brand new one just leaving the factory. C-130s having legit business at Boeing Field makes complete sense.
I’m sorry if I was unclear or sounded like I was a jerk pooh-poohing your story.
I was never a trash-hauler but I know a lot of folks who drove C-130s, C-141s, and now C-17s. Any of the cargo drops get rapidly fatal if the cargo hangs up on the way out. Maybe it tears out a bunch of your airplane then keeps going, maybe it just dangles out in the breeze until you lose control of the airplane or the load crew cuts it loose, etc., etc.
As you rightly say, LAPES adds the risk of being very close to the ground. OTOH, if a LAPES hangs up with that big old drag chute behind it/you, you can chop power and land. And yes, maybe overrun the DZ, but at least the ensuing crash has nil vertical speed and less-than-flying horizontal speed. For the high(-er) altitude drops that [land and hit something kinda soft kinda slowly] option is just not on offer.
They need a plan B and maybe plan C for a drop. Even cutting the chute doesn’t fix it if a tank is halfway out the door. The plane needs enough room to land if it hangs up.
I’ve seen a Concorde land at Boeing Field. A C-130 would have no problem.
My dad flew C-141s. He told me about taking one to an airshow at Paine Field (where 747s are built). The controllers told them to land and exit the runway at the third taxiway. They probably weren’t counting the very first taxiway right at the threshold, where planes come on to the runway to takeoff. My dad decided to show off a bit, so they did full braking, and sure enough, they made it on the third taxiway. It took the ground controller a little by surprise when they reported clear of the runway.
Military cargo planes can pull off some pretty impressive performance; because someday they’ll have to.
I’d suggest that “needs” is really “would prefer”.
In a hot war you do lots of things that either work right or prove fatal. IOW, plan B is crash & burn. Part of the point of LAPES is not only that it’s a faster way to deliver cargo than landing & offloading, but that it can be delivered into spots not big enough to land in.
For sure in peacetime you’d rather not be doing stuff without a safe-ish plan B, but there is always a tension in peacetime training between safety and realism. You don’t want to train in too much conservatism while still expecting wartime “edge of envelope” skill & attitude. “Train like you’ll fight because you’ll fight like you’ve trained” is an adage for a reason.
I’m sure by now, everyone is familiar with the Height-Velocity Diagram, otherwise known as ‘The Dead Man’s Curve’. Operating outside of the envelope could get you dead. In training, we had an introduction to operating into and out of confined spaces. By ‘introduction’, I mean the instructor demonstrated it, and then I did it. Having accomplished it, it was not done again. It was like, ‘You should never do this [as a Private Pilot]; but if you have to, this is how it’s done.’ Getting out of a small clearing requires climbing straight up until you can clear the obstacles. If you lose power, you will not have enough speed for an autorotation and you’ll come down. It was explained that this is a calculated risk. The helicopter can climb straight up from the ground to out-of-ground effect, and aircraft are reliable and well-maintained. You should be able to climb to clear the obstacles and go on your merry way. But there’s always a chance of a power failure (or even a tail rotor strike). The chance of disaster is small, but there’s still a chance. Calculations say you can do it; but every time you do it increases the chance for Something Bad happening.
Hmm–that’s pretty standard in heli-skiing. Nothing bad has happened to me yet, but we have had to settle and a couple pax get out because we couldn’t climb out of ground effect.
Yeah, helicopters often operate outside of the envelope. Heli-ski operators and other commercial operators do it all the time. Private pilots, not so much. In any case, the point was that operating outside of the envelope is a calculated risk – both by the pilots and the passengers. (Of course, if you’re being dropped off at the top of a mountain, you’re probably not risk-averse.)
CNN article on the state of the airline industry. Of particular note, they’re expecting a very busy summer, and their problems will be aggravated by the ongoing chronic shortage of pilots. It brings to mind @LSLGuy’s comment in the “nearing retirement” thread about the opportunity to enter retirement with a bang by having a very busy (and very lucrative) summer!
Hmm, Great Ongoing Aviation Thread or Great Ongoing Space Thread? I’ll go with aviation.
The FAA is changing the airspace rules surrounding Cape Canaveral:
Before is on the left, after on the right:
Can you imagine a Falcon Heavy blasting past you, just a few miles away? There are occasionally some nice shots of Cape Canaveral launches from airliners, but they’re all from pretty far away. This gets much closer. Would be a heck of a view.
What’s missing from this is context. That change is nice and all, but is a tiny fraction of the actual airspace problem the industry has with Canaveral launches.
There are a bunch of north/south routes 50 or 100 miles offshore that are also closed during launch windows. That closure affects a heck of a lot more than 30 flights. It affects flights between the US northeast and the south Florida airline airports of PBI, FLL, and MIA, plus the several bizjet ports nearby. It also affects flights between the US northeast and the northwestern Caribbean and northern central South America.
A launch to orbit is done in under 10 minutes–including the landing, if any. But that depends on the launch being done on time.
SpaceX pretty much only does instantaneous launch windows now–that is, they fly at a specific time (with a few seconds) or not at all that day–but that wasn’t always the case. They, and really any new provider, will have launches where they spend hours in their launch window trying to resolve any last-minute technical issues.
Seems like the FAA could cut down on the disruption if they could count on a launch occurring within a specific 10-minute window.
I also wonder if they could trim the physical bounds of the exclusion zone based on better modeling. I.e., being able to fly under the zone if the chance of debris impact is negligible based on the physics.
Historically launch windows are multiple hours long. And because flight plans have to be filed 1 to 2 hours before departure and all flights’ actual departure times have some statistical spread towards being late 0 to 90 minutes, the effective length of the launch window for flight planning purposes is often an hour or more longer for the airline than is published by FAA.
What does not work is to plan to fly the efficient route through the launch airspace, then get airborne, fly 3 (or 9) hours, then have the airspace close in your face, and now you need a 20 or 30 minute detour you didn’t plan the fuel for. So for operational reliability you plan around it and drag the extra fuel and probably burn it too. For sure you burn some of it lugging the deadweight around. Extra bad luck if you had to leave payload off to accommodate that fuel.
the wiki on C-130s says the current H model can lift off in 1500 feet at light loads and 3500 feet at max gross weight. That’d be at sea level on a cool (AKA “standard”) day which approximates conditions in/around Seattle.
