by Nick Anderson | Apr 11, 2022 | Plane Tales
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Last week we chatted about historic incidents that led to aircraft upsets. This week we talk to a newly qualified airline pilot who is undergoing advanced Upset and Recovery Training at a British training school. We also speak to the school’s chief pilot and one of the instructors, an ex Mig 29 pilot.
Basem undergoing upset training at BAA in a Grob
One of the BAA’s Extras
Basem off to be turned upside down!
Adrian… Basem’s ex Mig 29 instructor
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Capt Nick Anderson
by Nick Anderson | Apr 7, 2022 | Plane Tales
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With the arrival of jet powered airliners, commercial pilots entered a new world of high altitude flying in large swept wing aircraft at velocities approaching the speed of sound. They were often unprepared for the challenge and before long unexpected and unexplained loss of control events began to worry the world of aviation. These events initially occurred when an aircraft was upset from its normal benign straight and level environment and ended up in a high speed dive, something that was rare in the earlier days of straight winged, piston powered airliners. Hence, they became known as Jet Upsets.
Coffin Corner!
Upsets involve extreme attitudes
Less than perfect cockpit design often contributes to upsets
A Pan Am B707
China Airlines A300
The tragic result of the China Airlines upset
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Boeing Company, Geni, the NTSB/CAB, Guido Allieri and the JTSB.
by Nick Anderson | Mar 17, 2022 | Plane Tales
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In the world of Slavic folk tales there are giants in Ukraine but as aviators the ones we are interested are the giants that the fabled aircraft designer Oleg Antonov designed. This is his story.
The OKA1 glider
Antonov at the Leningrad Polytechnic
The OKA38 Stork
The An-2
The An-12 Cub
The An-24 Coke
The vast An-22 Cock
The huge An-124 Condor
The flight deck of the An-124
The mighty Mryia, An-225, carrying a Buran project space shuttle
The destruction of a dream, the Mryia was a victim of the Russian invaders who recently attacked Ukraine
Oleg Antonov
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Antonov Design Bureau, the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, the Central Design Bureau for Gliders, Arpingstone, Igor Dvurekov, Dmitriy Pichugin, Toshi Aoki, Yevgeny Pashnin, Vasiliy Kob and Дизайнер: А.Безменов.
by Nick Anderson | Mar 6, 2022 | Plane Tales
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It’s logbook time again and you may recall that I was as freshly a minted A1 QFI as there could be and I had just left the training world to return to the front line on my old Squadron, the Fighting Cocks. I had been in Wales for
over 4 years and in that time the faces I knew on 43 Sqn had almost all gone… it was like I was joining a unit of strangers.
The Q Shed
Additional armed aircraft ready to go onto QRA
The F4 tank limiting speeds
A Soviet Badger trying to sneak past at low level
An F4 tanking from a converted Victor V Bomber
Decimomannu Air Base
How the ACMI Air Combat Manoeuvering Instrumentation worked
The Men of Harlech near Llanbedr
The Jindavik target drone
A frame from the Jindavik cameras showing a Sidewinder about to impact the towed flare target
My new navigator, Coolhand
A 43(F) Sqn Phantom
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, the USAF, RuthAS and Mike Freer.
by Nick Anderson | Feb 21, 2022 | Plane Tales
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It was a grand sight to see another German aircraft there, a Junkers W33 with its distinctive corrugated metal skin and stylish enclosed cockpit, a far cry from his own flimsy machine. The German pilots greeted each other and marvelled at how, in 1928, they should have met in such a remote place… some 3,300 miles, 5,300 km, from the Fatherland. It is doubtful that the Junkers pilot knew much about the young 22 year old airman with his flimsy little aircraft, but the gaunt and weathered Baron was well known to von Koenig-Warthausen!
The Junkers W33
Ehrenfried Günther Freiherr von Hünefeld
Alcock and Brown preparing for their transatlantic flight
Posing in front of the W33 named Bremen
The Bremen damaged but safely across the Atlantic
The flimsy, lightweight Klemm L20B
The Klemm airborne
Baron Freidrich Carl von König-Warthausen
The Baron renamed his aircraft after his countryman Hünefeld
Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to Monika Hoerath, Tomas Mellies, MIKAN, The Bundesarchiv, Edward N. Jackson, L’Aéronautique magazine, John Underwood plus images in the Public Domain.
by Nick Anderson | Feb 15, 2022 | Plane Tales
Podcast (pt): Download
Instead of a cargo of bored business men and excited holiday makers, this aged DC-10 was carrying 12,000 gallons, thats 45,000 ltrs of bright red liquid in a huge tank attached to the centre of the fuselage. This is the story of the fire fighting water bombers.
A vast DC10 converted to flying tanker operations
A forest fire
Mixing fire retardant
A fire lookout
The Morton Lake hotshots
The dangers of a wildfire are considerable, even during an evacuation
The dangers of manoeuvring a big aircraft at low level are considerable
Other aircraft are converted into water bombers like this PBY-6A Catalina
Helicopters deliver water from buckets
One of the few purpose built water bombers, the Canadair Superscooper
The magnificent Mars water bomber
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, John McColgan, signal mirror, DarrenRD, Tim Peterson, the USN, SSgt Ed Drew, Pierre Bona and Alex Juorio.
