by captjeff | Jan 6, 2019 | Plane Tales
Podcast (pt): Download
There are some sleek and elegant aircraft out there and some pretty ugly ones too! Despite gaining nicknames such as the Flying Bathtub and the Flying Potato, many of these amazing flying machines did a great job in furthering our understanding of spaceflight. This is the story of the Lifting Body aircraft.
Three of the NASA experimental lifting body aircraft.
The Mig105 Spiral, nicknamed the Flying Shoe.
Images shown under creative commons licence with thanks to NASA and Bernhard Gröhl.
by captjeff | Dec 31, 2018 | Plane Tales
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Not every Plane Tale recording goes according to plan…oops!
by captjeff | Dec 23, 2018 | Plane Tales
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Aeronauts, ducks, aviatrices, anhedral, terminals, slips and skids all have their place in aviation but where do these strange terms come from… particularly that old phrase, “He’s flown West.”
by captjeff | Dec 16, 2018 | Plane Tales
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Luke Howard, the man who changed castles into Cumulus and mares tails into Cirrus. No weather forecast would be complete without his system.
Cumulus cloud.
Cirrus cloud.
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Acabashi and PiccoloNamek.
by captjeff | Dec 10, 2018 | Plane Tales
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An attempt to distill the crash of Air France 447 down to the the simple causes and dispel some of the fanciful and unhelpful theories that surround this accident.
The accident aircraft, an A330-200.
The location of the wreckage of Flight 447.
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Pawel Kierzkowski, Valter Campanato/ABr and Roberto Maltchik Repórter da TV Brasil.
by captjeff | Dec 3, 2018 | Plane Tales
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My first Plane Tale when they weren’t really a thing… the story of Joe Gilmore remastered, re-recorded and revisited. This was the vital British addition to the Apollo mission to put men on the Moon!
Otherwise known as the Four Score and Ten… created for Sir Winston Churchill on his 90th Birthday.
The drink that the first Moon walking Apollo astronauts tasted after their mission quarantine ended.
Created to celebrate the Apollo-Souyz joint project to join up in space.
Joe Gilmore’s supposed hangover cure!
Images under Creative Commons licence.
