The damndest thing flew overhead yesterday......

[airnutz]

Gary

Ahhh...Thank you Gary, the perfect Art Deco hood ornament for my 1906 RR Silver Ghost...compleate with whirleys..

[PantherJKH]

That looks pretty low

Jack the instigator

Nah... wasn't so low, just overly zoomed in as it flew over and was in the process of clicking like crazy. That one was just mystical looking enough to throw out as a teaser.

[The Inspector]

COOL!! I know I'm in good company when people worry about getting ribblet sauce on their door handles (after couple of rusty nails, you don't really care about the BBQ sauce) and to hear from a SOHC guy, I bleed blue too and always hoped Santa would leave a THUNDERBOLT (the 64 FORD FAIRLANE) under the tree so I could show punks in Z 28's what performance really is........

[Canso42]

In the last year or two, A & S had a feature on the Red Bulls flying circus. It was pretty informative and interesting. It also helped me identify an April 1988 photo of the Red Bulls Corsair from an airshow in Texas.
I don't care for drinks of that type but they seem to do first class work on their stuff.
Doug

[Lynn Allen]

In the last year or two, A & S had a feature on the Red Bulls flying circus. It was pretty informative and interesting. It also helped me identify an April 1988 photo of the Red Bulls Corsair from an airshow in Texas.
I don't care for drinks of that type but they seem to do first class work on their stuff.
Doug

One can always use a little Vodka with it..

Lynn

[warbird1]

In the last year or two, A & S had a feature on the Red Bulls flying circus. It was pretty informative and interesting. It also helped me identify an April 1988 photo of the Red Bulls Corsair from an airshow in Texas.
I don't care for drinks of that type but they seem to do first class work on their stuff.
Doug

One can always use a little Vodka with it..

Lynn

I can vouch for that! A little Red Bull with Vodka when youre having a night out on the town does wonders for a hangover the next day!

[Canso42]

Or a good whiff of 100LL in the early a.m.

[JohnH]

I finally get to see this...can't see pics at work, photo bucket is banned. The most beautiful airplane I've ever seen. Just fabulous. Thanks for the pic!

John

[Pim Pouw]

The Inspector wrote :

Boeing purposely leaves their exteriors a bit dimpled from fasteners and tear stoppers to promote boundry layer separation which makes the aircraft more efficient

I would like to see the callout on drawing or the riveters worksheet from Boeing.

I can imagine the following note : Do not rivet every fifth one untill you are very tired , drunk or it's friday afternoon or monday morning. Only one situation applies at a time, any combination of these factors may result in overkill.......

Promoting boundary layer seperation ???????

So Laminair airflow wings are bad ??????? Then something must really have gone bad in the 70's when every new designed jetliner from then on got these wings.

Tear strap/stoppers on the outside of an aircraft ????

The only reason to put tear-straps on the outside would be that the stress department was too late realizing that one was necessary and it was too late for the engineering department to put them under the skin. Probably because the aircraft was already in production or even worse already in service.

I think that this story goes around on the workfloor to feel better about something which has gone wrong

[The Inspector]

Pim-
I looked over my last entry and donot see anywhere on it that I said tear stoppers were riveted TO the outside of the aircraft!! Rivets through the tear stoppers also go through the skin to hold the tear stoppers on the skin on the INSIDE OF THE SKIN.

And where do you come up with the dumb a$$ed idea that people who work at Boeing are drunk!?! Since everyone working on aircraft at Boeing is directly answerable to the USDOT because they are involved in public transportation, anyone suspected of either being on drugs or drunk is removed from the factory by security and Human Resources immediately.
And unless you know whereof you speak, please donot stoop so low as to denegrade the engineering staff at Boeing, I believe that after the Douglas DC-3 the 737 is the best selling commercial airplane in history, a claim that cannot be made by Airbus in spite of them almost giving away airplanes to keep the parking lot cleared, and in the time the 37 has been in production there have been any number of 'replacements for the 737' that have come and gone.

And, yes, in spite of what you may think, a slightly uneven surface will promote boundry layer separation along the fuselage. If you can find a computer generated plat for air pressure dispersion along any airplane fuselage, you would see that the area encompassed by the wing chord at the fuselage join area is pretty much non contacting, dead air.

Inspite of what you may think about 'feeling better on the work floor', please tell everyone in this forum exactly how many decades of working on heavy jets do you have under your belt? I've been at it on big iron for 44 years so I'm pretty sure about my facts on this.

Based on your above statements, I believe there may be an opening in the Bush Whitehouse as a spin doctor, or god help us, the McCain Whitehouse.

I presume the next place you would logically head to will be the 'terrible mess the 787 is in', agreed, the '87 is in some difficulties partially due to everything being brand new technology never done to this scale before, and to the company outsourcing major assemblies to companies that cannot do the job! The 46/47 section for line #Z4 just arrived yesterday from Vought. This piece was made and outfitted AFTER Boeing bought out Vought who admitted they'd bitten off more than they could chew and didn't posess the engineering talent necessary to do the work they had bid for, and Boeing sent large numbers of their people to Vought to show those folks how to do things 'the Boeing way". That section came in the door over 90% complete, not 60% complete like Z2 was.
Boeing bought out Vought and pretty much took over the manufacturing of those sections and in ONE shipset, the issues are diminished by nearly 90% from the problems with Z2. And I've seen first hand the 'fine technical work' done by some of the italian subcontractors, E racks with 5 pounds of cherry max stems sealed inside (just what you'd want to have sucked through your avionics as part of the cooling airflow) things that don't fit, have holes drilled by the subcontractor way oversized instead of piloted as shown on the drawings, (hey, if .128 is good on the drawing, .198 should be better, except the final hole size is .190/.193 so now we're already into 1st oversize).

These things will get combed out very quickly, and Boeing has pretty much decided NOT to ever outsource so much of an airplane again.

I'm not certain how much BONDO is in a new LEARJET, but the old ones had around 600 pounds of BONDO to make them smooth, thats 600 pounds of moisture absorbing,dead weight to drag everywhere at the cost of burning that amount of fuel, plus having to dig that crap out of seams and fasteners locations to acess a skin repair is not the funnest thing I can think of to do, and to charge the customer the time to do the extra work to acess and then slap the crap back on and sand it down smooth to repaint it.

[Michel Lemieux]

Curious to ask again.....back on topic of this georgous P-38

No taker !!!!!

Ohhhh......my....

Is this the most gorgeous thing you ever saw in the sky ????

Just out of curiosity did Mr Gardner ( Lefty ) ever visited during the resto work ? Did he had any comments on the work done to White Lightning and the scheme chosen ?

Do not get me wrong, I am sure he is more than pleased by the simple fact the his son incident turned out without any loss of life or serious injuries. Also, a lot of water has ran under the bridge since then & I am simply curious if anyone know his feelings / insights on the subject since his family had to depart with the P-38.

Please do not let this turn into a right or wrong thing to do argument. I am simply looking for how one feels after seeing the end result.

[Pim Pouw]

Michel Lemieux , please excuse me from being off the georgous P38 topic

But please let me have the opportunity to clarify somethings.

I had hoped that my remarks on the posting of the Inspector with the use of the words "imagine" and a wouldn't be taken so seriously.

In my short ( 20 years ) experience in the aircraft industry I have worked with people from : Boeing, Airbus, Gulfstream, Lockheed, McDonald Douglas, Bell Helicopter, Cessna, British Aerospace. From 90% of the people I have met , these persons were dedicated , responsible and aviation minded. I worked with allmost all european nationalities, americans and canadians and I never noticed any difference being proud of what they were doing.

That being said every persons ( including me) makes mistakes in their work, the person who claims otherwise isn't doing much.

I believe that Boeing cannot do without Airbus and vice versa. Businesses need a good adversary to keep them sharp.

Businesses need to take risks , for Airbus this turned out to be the A380 ( A huge aircraft compared to what they build before ) and Boeing with the 787 ( going from moderate use of composites to go the whole 9 yards )

But business make also mistakes , like the Airbus A340 ( 4 engines ? ETOPS ), which is outclassed by the almost perfect Boeing 777. There was the JSF Boeing ( good aircraft , but just too ugly ). The Britisch Aerospace BA-146 , regional jet with 4 engines ??. The list is endless.

I as a composite tool designer am awed by the comlexity to build an all composite jetliner. I would have been very surprised that there weren't going to be considerable starting up problems.

Composite have allmost unlimited posiblities in surface design and manufacture.This being said , if an uneven surface is better , were is it on the all composite 787 ??

BONDO on a business jet can only serve on purpose, that is to please the owner with a sleak toy. Aerodynamicly it isn't doing much good, like small dents are not doing bad. I bet that the amount of BONDO applied to the entrancedoor side is twice as thick as the other side.

Back to the P38 ..............................

[mustangdriver]

Any chance of it being at Oshkosh?

[Iclo]

Despite that bolero III was postponed to 2009. That would be nice to have two P-38 making the cross together

Somebody has news about how this one will come to Europe ?

[MattP38]

Gary

................................................wow