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The Dole Air Race of August 16, 1927 was from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, for a prize of $35,000. Fifteen planes were registered. Eleven qualified to start. Two crashed on the way to the starting point, and another crashed during a test flight before the race. Things only got worse once the race began.
On the morning of August 16, the eight remaining planes queued up for their opportunity. They drew lots for flight order and took off one by one. As people cheered, things went bad in a hurry.
One plane, the El Encanto, simply shot off the edge of the runway, and tumbled over her wing. Another the Pabco Flyer got into the air… until she didn’t, landing some 7000 feet away in a marsh. Three more planes took off only to promptly return with technical difficulties.
Of the fifteen planes that had entered the race, only four planes, the Golden Eagle, Aloha, Woolaroc, and Miss Doran, were actually able to attempt the journey. The results of the ill fated race would soon be known.
The carnage didn’t stop there. Nor did it stop once the race was over. Read more about the deadly Dole Air Race at Atlas Obscura blog. This story is part of a regular feature they call Morbid Monday. Link
The British government has opened a new airport in Wales that will provide services only to unmanned aircraft. Among them is the Royal Air Force’s Watchkeeper drone, which is pictured above. Before this airport opened, there were few places where the Royal Air Force could test its drones. Now the RAF will have 500 square miles of airspace accessible from this airport.
Other nations, including the US, restrict the flight of private unmanned aircraft. The Welsh government hopes to lure them to this new facility devoted to their needs.
Link -via Popular Science | Photo of RAF drone by Flickr user P.A. King used under Creative Commons license
The Samarai Monocopter, developed by Lockheed Martin, is only ten inches long. But the designers don’t plan to scale it up, but down. Their goal is to make one the size of a fingernail with a camera attached. Soldiers would be able to use such a device to scout nearby areas without exposing themselves to hostile fire.
At the link, you can watch a video of the Monocopter in flight. Link -via Geekosystem | Photo: Lockheed Martin
3d printing is such a new process that we are still discovering all the ways in which we can use it to enhance our lives. Well, the wait for the next big thing to print is over, because engineers from the UK have used the 3d printer to create an aircraft capable of flight. Made up of printed plates which are snapped together, this impressive little flying machine is capable of speeds up to 100 mph and cruises almost silently through the air. It might just be the coolest snap together model kit ever!
Link Image via University of Southampton
Bush pilots in Alaska need to be able to land and take off in short distances. Many of them recently attended a competition focusing on this skill in the town of Knik River. Bobby Breeden, a student pilot, can do it in ten feet using a modified Piper Super Cub. Here’s how:
The massive 35-inch tires are inflated to less than 3 psi to absorb the impact of landing on rocks and other debris. They also give the wing a high angle of attack to aid in decreasing the takeoff and landing distances. The engine has been stroked out an additional 15 cubic inches (375 total) and puts out around 210 horsepower. To help balance the heavier engine, the composite propeller weighs just 14 pounds. The result is helicopter-like performance.
“It’s just full power with the brakes locked and you get the tail up,” Breeden says, “you just rotate immediately as you release the brakes and it just lifts off the ground.”
Link | Photo: Jason Paur/Wired.com
Previously: Fighter Lands, Turns Around, and Takes Off in Under a Minute
Have you ever seen the movie Airport 1975? It was a disaster movie set on a 747 that had suffered a midair collision. The pilots were dead, leaving only a flight attendant to try to keep the plane in the air. Could an untrained person fly a jetliner? Popular Science asked Dale Wright of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association:
Assuming you remain composed, the biggest factor in a successful landing is whether or not the plane is equipped with an auto-land system to control the throttles and, as its name suggests, land the plane. Not all large commercial aircraft have auto-land, however, and without it, you would be forced to disconnect autopilot to land. At that point, says Chris Dancy, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the most likely mistake an amateur would make would be to fly too low, or too slow, which could lead to an aerodynamic stall, in which the airflow around the wing is no longer smooth enough to keep the plane in the air.
Even if the plane has autoland, setting down a 400-ton jet is still an enormous task. After activating the system, you’d have to engage the wing flaps and the landing gear and continually input new speed settings as the plane descended. But if you can dial in all the right numbers (aided by your pal in the control tower), once the plane is about three miles from touching down, the auto-land system kicks in and does the rest of the work, letting you sit back and enjoy the view.
Without auto-land, on touching down you would have to hit the brakes, which are controlled by way of a complicated foot pedal system, and reverse the thrust of the engines (if the runway is short) to stop the plane, Wright says. He guesses that a novice has a “less than 1 percent chance of landing and keeping [the plane] on the runway and not hurting anybody. And that’s on a good day.”
Link | Image: Universal Pictures
DVICE has a slideshow of 26 strange aircraft that, although oddly designed, actually flew. Among them is the Inflatoplane developed by Goodyear in 1956. This plane had an inflatable rubber body. It was small and light enough to be moved in a wheelbarrow. The engineers hoped that this plane could be dropped behind enemy lines for downed pilots to use to escape:
The Inflatoplane’s performance was comparable to that of a a J3 Cub. The airplane was wheeled out like a wheelbarrow and inflated in about 5 minutes using less air pressure than a car tire. The two-cycle 40-hp Nelson engine had to be hand-started and held 20 gallons of fuel.
The Inflatoplane carried a maximum weight of 240 lb., had a range of 390 mi., and an endurance of 6.5 hr.s. Its cruise speed was 60 mph. Take off distance on sod was 250 ft with 575 ft needed to clear a 50-foot obstacle. It landed in 350 ft on sod. Rate of climb was 550 ft per min. Its service ceiling was estimated at 10,000 ft.
Link via DVICE | Video of Inflatoplane
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This video from 2009 shows an emergency landing of a single-engine plane on a street in Winter Haven, Florida. Kyle Davis, the pilot, and Joe Surowiec, his passenger, were recorded on camera during this frightening experience:
The landing of the dual-seat SkyRanger airplane shortly after 10 a.m. was caught on video by Surowiec, a professional videographer, and was posted on YouTube.[...]
Deputies were called to the scene, but there wasn’t much for them to do. Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board cleared the incident, Wood said.
Two cameras on the plane captured the drama. One focused on the cockpit, taping their conversation, and the other was facing the plane’s engine.
Gabriel Nderitu, an IT professional in Kenya, is almost finished making his homemade airplane. He researched the design online and built it out of spare parts:
In the end, Nderitu mounted a Toyota engine to his modular airframe. The strutted wing and ailerons are skinned with aluminum sheet. The engine itself turns up to 4,000 rpm, driving a 74-inch wooden propeller through a simple reduction belt drive.
Nderitu plans to make his first flight soon.
Link via Geekosystem
Boeing’s new Phantom Eye UAV is powered by hydrogen, making it a very fuel efficient vehicle capable of flying at more than 12 miles of altitude for 4 days at a time. From the company’s press release:
“The program is moving quickly, and it’s exciting to be part of such a unique aircraft,” said Drew Mallow, Phantom Eye program manager for Boeing. “The hydrogen propulsion system will be the key to Phantom Eye’s success. It is very efficient and offers great fuel economy, and its only byproduct is water, so it’s also a ‘green’ aircraft.”
Phantom Eye is powered by two 2.3-liter, four-cylinder engines that provide 150 horsepower each. It has a 150-foot wingspan, will cruise at approximately 150 knots and can carry up to a 450-pound payload.
Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Boeing
If a bank needs to repossess a car, a repo agent will tow it away. But what does the owner of a leased jetliner do if the renter is behind in payments, won’t return the plane, and is based in a country that refuses to enforce the repossession? It calls Sage-Popovich, a company that specializes in extracting large airplanes from defaulting renters. The Smithsonian magazine has article about how the job is done:
His team ran through the checklists and lit engines. Immediately, a jeep-load of gendarmes appeared and Popovich was hauled before a magistrate. “In my infinite wisdom, I admitted that there was something posted on the aircraft’s door,” he recalls. “But I informed the judge that if it was really so important, it should have been in English, since that’s the official language of aviation.” The next day he was escorted, in handcuffs, to the first U.S.-bound flight and sent home.
Popovich and team flew to Madrid and reentered France via rail. At de Gaulle they found the MD-80 still grounded, with tanks drained and more French fine print attached. An Air Afrique Airbus next to it was being refueled. Popovich talked to the captain and got him to sell enough fuel to get as far as Iceland. “Everyone was going to be looking for us,” he says, “so I wanted to get out from under Eurocontrol ASAP.” He had already exercised power of attorney to de-register the aircraft from its Luxembourg flag and had obtained a U.S. registration number. The de Gaulle tower cleared the now-American plane for taxi and takeoff. Popovich landed in Iceland with less than 30 minutes’ worth of fuel remaining.
Link via Instapundit | Photo: NASA
The Soviet-designed An-225 — the world’s largest operational aircraft — was originally designed to transport the USSR’s space shuttle. That program is long gone, but one An-225 just broke the world record for the heaviest airlift of a single object. It transported a 53 foot long, 187.6 ton generator from Germany to Armenia on August 11. Because the An-225 can (hypoethetically) transport any object up to 33 feet wide, 230 feet long, and under 275 tons, the generator’s size and weight didn’t cause any problems.
The Grant Building, one of the downtown skyscrapers in Pittsburgh has an aviation beacon that instead of flashing at regular intervals, was set up to flash in Morse code the letters that spell "Pittsburgh".
This year, Tom Stepleton, a recreational pilot familiar with Morse code noticed that the letters transmitted by the beacon spelled… "PITETSBKRRH."
The one-minute video clip above shows the sequence. The city has tried to fix the problem, but after the first attempt, the beacon is now flashing … "TPEBTSAURGH."
More on the story at the Pitetsbkrrh … oops, sorry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Link
– via gadling
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
On Feb 2nd, 1970, a Convair F-106 Delta Dagger was found in a snow-covered Montana field, pilot-less, landing gear up, and with the engine still running – the melting snow causing the aircraft to slowly move forward…
The pilot – Captain Gary Faust – had earlier ejected from the aircraft at 15,000 feet when it entered a flat spin. Amazingly, the un-piloted aircraft then recovered, to make a gentle “belly-up” landing…
Link via Instapundit
