Airbus details Smarter Skies vision for planes in 2050

[rev-jaholbrook]

Having worked on planes ruins movies for me.

Totally agree... as an avionics engineer dealing with Flight guidance and control and autopilots etc I can't help but notice every little bit of "artistic licence" that creeps in!

But I'm a far worse passenger on an airline!

.  Eh.  I'm not so bad as a passenger.  If anything I'm better for it. Especially when sitting next to someone on there first flight..  Haha.

[rev-jaholbrook]

Ah well, flipping a switch isn't as dramatic... to paraphrase Randall Wallace (who wrote Braveheart): you can't let the truth get in the way of a good story. 

I watched an F18 demo where the pilot did a 360 degree box loop, essentially drawing a vertical square in the sky. Each "corner" he took was just like that maneuver in TG... huge AOA and deceleration.  Fun to watch...

. My father-in-law lives down the street from the Air Force base I used to be stationed at so I get to see all the fun air shows from his house.  It's pretty sweet.

[Hominid]

The Snowbirds practice over a farm house I used to house sit in Saskatchewan, south of Moos Jaw. One day I was driving in my van, and one was in a low right bank at 12 o'clock... I flicked my head lights, he flicked his landing lights right back...  pretty cool.

[rev-jaholbrook]

That is pretty cool!!!!

[Caesar dude]

Eh.  I'm not so bad as a passenger.  If anything I'm better for it. Especially when sitting next to someone on there first flight..  Haha.

That's sorta what I mean.....I have to give a commentary to whoever is in the next seat...good or bad....I delight in telling them all the little things... like "do you know, every time an aircraft flies it loses several bolts?" "Don't worry though....the engineers only replace them when there are more than three in a row on a panel missing!"

We used to go on detachment (TDY) every year to Cyprus for APC at the same time as the Red Arrows.....so used to have to put up with their practice airshows three times a day for a month! Tedious dudes!

All their ground equipment is as red as their aircraft....our squadron colours were red and yellow checks....so we used to take rolls off yellow dayglow tape in our flyaway packs for midnight excursions....it was always good to see them in the morning with their red and yellow, landrovers...and ground power supply units and hydraulic units and fire extinguishers...etc!!!   

Ahhh what jolly japes we had!!

[rev-jaholbrook]

That is badass c-dude!!!! I do kinda miss those days of going tdy.

[Caesar dude]

And then there was the TDY in Decimomannu where our squadron started work at 05:00 and the other British Sqn started at 06:00....

We "stole" one of their Jaguars....and parked it behind a hangar!!!

The look on their confused faces .... Priceless!

[Caesar dude]

The following URL is some pictures of one of my old squadrons 92 (East India)

http://forums.airshows.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=40&p=311710

This Sqn was stationed at RAF Wildenrath in West Germany during the height of the cold war and beyond.

The first 4 pics are of Battleflight or QRA (Quick Reaction Alert)

Two jets had to be ready at a moments notice 24/7 and if they didn't launch within 5 minutes there had to be a letter on the Prime Ministers desk that day stating exactly why!!

The aircraft has a blue tail as earlier in the 80's there had been a couple of air to air collisions and a couple more near misses...they were experimenting with Blue and Red and even yellow it sort of defeated the object of painting the aircraft grey to match the German skies!!

As you can see the aircraft is armed with 2 sidewinder heat seeking missiles (AIM 9L's) 4 Sparrowhawk Medium range Radar guided missiles (AIM 7's) and a SUU-23 20mm Cannon with 1200 rounds which could fire at 6000 rounds per minute....

All that being said... Battleflight was an excellent two weeks slacking....as you can see the guys seem pretty laid back, if you look closely in the first pic you can even see one of the aircrew lounging in an armchair which he's dragged from the crewroom! This is because the duty was 24 hours on and 24 hours off...... watching videos, playing board games and cards, stuffing your face with food from the officers mess which was of course delivered and only four hourly aircraft checks...oh yeah the occasional scramble which invariably came at a meal time or the middle of the night!!

That was then ....this is now.....I still like the hardware but don't like it's effect which is a bummer!

Peace dudes...

[rev-jaholbrook]

That is so awesome!!!!  How was it to work on those things? 

[DigitalBuddha]

Bad ass, C dude!!

[Hominid]

Wicked shots dude... For me, that would almost be a religious experience!

[Caesar dude]

The glib answer is dirty smelly noisy and at times a tad frightening....although we were never scared!

The truth is, it was a labour of blood sweat and tears. A lack of sleep (which we cured with copious amounts of oat sodas!) A total respect for the machinery which as you know is alive and is female and deserves the utmost respect else she will bite you in the arse! And total and unconditional love for engineering and technology.

Our Phantoms (F4M's) ex USAF were bought in 1968 and they saw service until 1992. The issue is that we didn't buy them new and we didn't buy them all at once!

Some of our aircraft still had repaired damage from Vietnam! All of our Phantoms had more hours on them the oldest retired Phantom in the US Forces.

In fact one time we were on detachment (TDY to you) at Nellis on exercise Red Flag, when my aircraft had a major problem....8 pulled rivets in the rear left flap...they had totally ripped the shit out of the skin of the panel....so the flap needed repaired!

To get a new flap would have taken 5 days .....so...there we were at night swapping our U/S flap with your Gate Guardian's! It had over 2000 less flying hours than ours!

The trouble with this is that our Phantoms were Grey...your Gate Guardian was Vietnam green.... no one noticed! We swapped it back a few days later after some very successful flying!

Peace

[Caesar dude]

For me, that would almost be a religious experience

I think I know what you're saying.

For me the "religious experience" was working a 16 hour shift and fixing a  radar missile system then seeing that aircraft fly in time for it's first slot, then seeing it return serviceable....made some sense of the whole darned comedy!

How do I post pics here without a url? sorry to be dumbass! 

[rev-jaholbrook]

Man C-dude.  That sounds so much like my USAF experience.  Haha.  And every aircraft I ever touched was very much alive, female, and moody.  Every so often you could be rough and it would fly right for a day.  And then there were days that didn't work either.  We changed 8 pri/sec heat exchangers in Iraq my first trip.  Three were for bird strikes and the rest was all because the jet took a shit. And then we had a jet decide to shellout its standby generator.  That was a fun clean up. Haha.

[Hominid]

For me, that would almost be a religious experience

I think I know what you're saying.

For me the "religious experience" was working a 16 hour shift and fixing a  radar missile system then seeing that aircraft fly in time for it's first slot, then seeing it return serviceable....made some sense of the whole darned comedy!

How do I post pics here without a url? sorry to be dumbass!  

Good question.  It seems that once someone posts something after your post, the "reply" button isn't there, where there's that "Additional Options" link... just "Quote", where there's no such option to upload an image that I can see.

Anyone else know how to upload an image using "Quote"