Some of the article content is old news. Like 2022 news. Some is fresh new news.
Your point about peak efficiency is well taken. At some point they will (or have) overshot and it’ll be time to put more margin back into the operation. Which Wall Street will decry as “useless fat”.
[Ongoing Whine]
The file photo leading the article is 10 years old. At least they both said so and got the airline right. I suppose I should be mollified, but I’m not much.
[/OW]
I think the T-33 was called the Converter. It converts fuel into noise.
I’d go for a Beech T-34B painted in 1990s NASA livery. (And I’d request the registration be N612NA. My call sign could be 6-1-Tuna.) Sure, I’d rather have a T-34C, but there aren’t many of those for sale and I’m not sure they can be registered in the Normal category. Anyway, that’s my ‘decent-but-not-insane’ lottery money toy. Plus maybe an SNJ.
Any of those would be fun.
I want an OV-10. I like to see where I’ve been.
(my bolding)
Are we still talking planes or have we moved on to Harleys?
I have just a couple rides in those, always in the back seat. The noise level is insanely bad, especially in the back seat that’s just about exactly in the prop arc. But you’re right the visibility is fantastic. And it’s decently aerobatic.
Although things like the PC-21, etc. have half the fuel burn, weigh less, and are far less draggy, so more performant. But damn the OV-10 just looks like fun. And unlike those other planes, is totally at home on dirt, grass, or mud airfields.
That reminds me of what people say about the Cessna 337: That it’s a very noisy plane, but damn it looks nice! I used to drool over them when I was a kid and my mom worked at Gibbs Flying Service at MYF and I could wander amongst the aircraft.
We had a OV-10 Bronco thread awhile back.
@Johnny_L.A : Agree there’s just something sexy about the twin-boom tail design. Almost regardless of which airplane it’s used on. The 337 was pretty.
The 337 (in O-2A form) that I actually flew as my assigned aircraft type for 3+ years in Latin America, was mostly a POS as a military platform. Too small, not real rugged, OK but not great at the soft/unprepared fields we often used, and hideously underpowered on two engines. The fact the O-2’s empty weight exceeded the civilian 337’s max gross weight didn’t help. The grossly restricted view out the right side vs the left was unhelpful as well in an observation / FAC machine.
Its chief virtue was that it was disposably cheap, and had very low fuel burn and maintenance costs per flight hour. Which mattered when they bought them for Viet Nam but mattered not at all when we were using them up in LatAm. Compared to USAF’s then active fleet there was a functionally infinite supply of Ducks in the Boneyard to resurrect or cannibalize as needed for parts.
Once in a great while an actual O-2 “warbird” appears on the used plane market. Or at least did 20-ish years ago when I last paid attention to such things. I would be very leery of buying such a thing. We used them very, very hard.
Far better to buy a 337 and paint it matte green. Yes, you’d lack the slightly enlarged windows and weapons pylons, but otherwise it’s the same aircraft. With far fewer over-Gs in its lifetime.
@Elendil_s_Heir : Thanks for the cite; I think that thread came out during my last sabbatical and I’d never seen it before.
I’ve only heard ‘Duck’ being the Grumman seaplane. Can you clarify?
Was there a Duck? I know Grumman made the Goose, Mallard, and Albatross.
The USAF’s proper name for the O-2A & O-2B was “Duck”. Just like the OV-10 was “Bronco”. Supposedly the name came from the distinctive look of Cessna’s fuselage mounted gear retraction. While the gear are in transit they sorta resemble the webbed feet of a duck being retracted into its feathers.
Cessna of course called the short-lived 336 and later 337 the Skymaster and Super Skymaster.
I just noticed that this wiki article Cessna Skymaster - Wikipedia not only has a great pic of the duck-like gear retraction, but also has a nice picture partway down of an O-2 from my old unit! Who knew?
I’ve flown that very airplane many times in many places. The name of the pilot painted under the window is not me, but that guy was an almost-exact contemporary of mine. So that pic was almost certainly snapped while he and I were both in that unit. I can’t see the face well enough to recognize the pilot, but he was a Major at the time, and we only had about 3 Majors qualified on the airplane, so I’ve got a guess who that is. Definitely not the guy whose name is painted on it; he didn’t make Major until after he left the unit.
Just ahead of the front prop is a small inlet of water and larger water above/beyond that. The larger water is the very southern tip of Gatun lake where it empties into the start of the Gaillard cut leading to the Pacific Ocean. Haven’t seen that sight in nearly 40 years. Made me smile. And wince a little; not everything was fun and games in that job.
Thanks.
That mystified me for a while, because in my observations the high-wing Cessna main gear first ‘drops’, and then folds backwards. I started a GQ thread about it. It turns out it’s just a 45º hinge, and the ‘dropping’ part of the cycle was the gear unlocking. It’s the dropping part that messed me up.
Glad to!
It’s an odd sort of hydraulic system with a very small weak pump.
IIRC from eons ago … so when the downlocks release (also hydraulically), the gear freefalls until it’s back-pressurized the extension-side cylinders enough to offset gravity. About then the pump starts making progress on raising pressure in the retract lines, so the retract-side cylinders start winning against the extend-side back pressure. Eventually the gear is up, the uplocks finally get some pressure and lock, then pressure is diverted to close the doors.
More or less the same thing happens in reverse on extension. The wimpy pressure first pushes the doors open, then once they hit the stops, the pressure builds in the uplock release circuit and they release, the gear falls until the weight puts enough back pressure on the retract side, then the pump pumps up the extend side enough to drive the gear downwards, forwards against the slipstream, then back up into the extended-position downlocks.
Dirt simple in design and construction, but filled with monkey motion in the execution as lots of passive forces are harnessed to make stuff happen. Almost too ingenious.
But it was pretty reliable.
I’d have to go for an A4 Skyhawk. I remember the Blue Angels flying them when I was a kid. The only one I’ve seen as an adult was on a stick somewhere. The small size impressed me They just look fun and agile. From what I’ve read, they are a favorite of those that were fortunate enough to fly them.
Here’s a 1992 TA-4J for 3.2 megabucks.
EDIT: The website seems to be a little flaky. Got a DNS error the first time I tried to get there. Worked the second time so that I could search Turbine Military Aircraft => McDonnell Douglas. If you click the link, try reloading a few times.
EDIT 2: Here’s a 1961 A-4L for $650,000. The listing says they have others.
And a 1960 A-4C, price not listed.
Right after I posted I saw those via a Google search. 1960 to 1992 models. That’s an impressive run. I’d make an offer but then I’d have to upgrade a bit from my current glider rating.
The fuel burn on an A-4 isn’t bad by jet standards, but whoo-boy, does it suck by glider standards.
Perhaps it will become an AirBnB?