I get the first link but what is humorous about the second?
It’s the article that the first link is drawn from.
OK, that makes sense.
The US Navy just successfully tested a laser weapon that can destroy aircraft mid-flight: The US successfully tested a laser weapon that can destroy aircraft mid-flight | CNN
For your favorite gutsy pilot: Bad Attitude Light T-Shirt > Bad Attitude! > The AeroSavvy Store
Did you get that from the post I put in the Awesome T-shirts thread a couple days ago? 
Bonus question for real pilots: Take a closer look at the picture on that T-shirt. I mean, take a really close look. What is that airplane really doing? Is it even possible?
It’s inverted, with its nose elevated above the horizon. Standard for aerobatics. Poor in most GA applications.
Yes, it seems. It took me several thinks to parse what I’m seeing there.
At first glance, I saw an airplane in a steeply banked “death spiral”.
On taking a closer look, I saw the airplane is inverted. So an inverted death spiral.
It took me a bit longer to sink in that the nose is pointed up toward the sky.
So, an inverted death spiral except diving upward toward the sky instead of down toward the ground. :dubious:
I thought it could be an aerobatic maneuver, maybe.
But if an airplane got into that attitude, would the attitude indicator (“artificial horizon”) even display it correctly? I asked a couple of pilot friends, and they said they doubted it. They thought the instrument would probably “tumble” before that happens.
What aerobatic maneuver would have you flying inverted, steeply banked, with nose up toward the sky?
Bad attitude indeed!
It depends on the instrument. A lot of dedicated aerobatic airplanes don’t even bother with an artificial horizon (A/H) because the flying is always done in visual conditions. I used to fly a Pitts Special, it didn’t have an A/H. Other aerobatic airplanes may have an A/H that doesn’t have full freedom of movement and will “topple” in extreme manoeuvres, these can often be locked for aerobatics and then unlocked for normal flying. More sophisticated instruments, e.g, as installed on airliners, have full movement and will always work regardless of what the plane is doing.
Lots. There are two ways to become inverted, you can either roll or pitch (e.g., a loop). If you do a full roll you will be inverted halfway through and “steeply banked” for most of it. If you do a full loop, you will be inverted halfway through but never steeply banked. That said, there are a lot of manoeuvres that are a combination of looping and rolling and will involve banking steeply, being inverted, and having the nose above the horizon at some point.
The attitude in the picture does not have the nose very far above the horizon and is a typical picture if you were nearly halfway through a roll, or if you were rolling to inverted then doing a half loop, or if you were just rolling to inverted to fly level for a while.
Although I have flown many hundreds of hours of aerobatics in aerobatic planes, they have rarely had an A/H and so I have most often seen that kind of attitude displayed on an A/H in an airliner, in the simulator, practicing recovery from unusual attitudes.
So, would we conclude that the attitude shown isn’t all that bad an attitude really? Rather, it appears to show an aircraft doing a (probably well-controlled) aerobatic maneuver?
Perhaps a better “Bad Attitude” T-shirt would show an even badder attitude – an airplane in a true spiral dive or “death spiral”, or in a full spin attitude?
Any attitude you can think of could be part of an intentional aerobatic manoeuvre, so you couldn’t really make it obviously “badder”.
Well that would be opinion based. I’ve been in that attitude once before after hitting some kind of vortex. When the wind exceeds aileron input it has a tendency to refocus your attention.
Last week I saw a B-52 come in for a Landing at Offutt AFB…
Actually, no - quite a coincidence!
Here’s a YouTube video about a extraordinary collision between 2 B-17’s and how they continued to fly…joined together! I read quite a bit about the WW2 experiences of the B-17 when I was younger but never heard about this incident:
I got thinking about this from yesterday’s GQ thread about units of measure:
What are the most typical units of measure for horizontal and vertical distance, and speeds, in the United States? and elsewhere?
Nearly all (in fact, I think ALL) the European-built aircraft (all gliders) I’ve flown have air speed indicated in knots, and the vertical speed indicator (which, in gliders, is more commonly called a variometer; it works a bit differently) is also marked in knots, which conveniently is very nearly equal to 100’s of feet per minute. All the V-speeds given in the POH are in knots.
The one American-built glider I’ve flown (a Schweizer 2-33), and all the GA aircraft I’ve flown or observed, as far as I’ve noticed, have these units given in (statute) miles per hour.
Some may have an ASI with both scales shown.
I don’t recall that I’ve seen one with speeds given in metric.
Are the above observations pretty much typical of all fixed-wing aircraft the the United States? How about in Europe? What about Canada. Or elsewhere?
I remarked in that GQ thread that nautical miles and knots are MUCH easier to work with than statute miles and (statute)-miles-per-hour.
Knots for airspeed is common, but I have seen statute MPH (all had both, but one measurement is more prominent/easier to read)
VSI is in 100’s of ft/minute.
Brian
So with VSI being in 100’s of ft/minute, that’s really a knots-compatible unit of measure. One knot is very nearly = 100 ft/minute.
Also, 60 knots = 100 ft/second (relevant for gliders on tow, as the typical tow speed is in the neighborhood of 60 knots and the standard tow rope is 200 feet long, so the glider is 2 seconds behind the tow plane).
My dad’s Cessnas, a 1970 Skyhawk and a 1968 Skylane, had airspeed in MPH. In newer planes (and in the helicopters), airspeed was in knots.
A little local excitement: A Cessna 177RG Cardinal RG went off the runway about 10 miles from here.
So i mislaid this thread for a while. I live and work not far from Offutt AFB. A few weeks ago, a B-52 came in pretty low over my job site and landed. We haven’t seen one of those for quite some time.