Caption Contest #64 - Ends Wednesday 10.19.11 At 9PM EDT

 I haven't done the research for more info on this Chinese 'homebuilt' mostly cuz I'm afraid to know anything more about it than can be learned from this BoingBoing article where I learned of it. One thing I do know... it's a perfect Caption Contest pic! 

 So give it a go-round with your best and most clever caption my dear avgeeks. And don't forget that the winner will fetch a bacon sandwich at Oshkosh 2012, because cooked pig strips are most delicious!

 You've got til Wednesday evening at 9pm EDT to submit your clever/funny/cool captions. Then, I’ll pick the best 5 and put ’em in a poll for everyone to vote on for all day Thursday and Friday so we can find the winner. 

 The Rules: 

1) Max of 3 submissions per person

2) Submissions go in the 'comments' area 

3) Game ends Wednesday at 9pm EDT 

4) Keep it clean!

 Then, anyone can cast their vote starting Thursday morning and running thru til 9pm EDT Friday. The winner will be posted Saturday morning 10-22-11. And hey, be sure to look at all the details around the edges of this pic for caption ideas : )

Video: MythBusters Prove Advanced Aerodynamic Duct-Tapelogy

 I put a post up almost 2 years a go on the Alaskan story from 2009 about a bear that ripped up a Super Cub... and how the pilot fixed it well enough to fly it back to home base with a boatload of of duct tape. And now, the MythBusters are doing their part to see if this story is confirmed, plausible or busted!

 The video teaser shows the crew doing a great job of working up some advanced aerodynamic duct-tapelogy, but you'll have to watch the show on Wednesday, October 19, at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central on the Discovery Channel to find out if it really works. I'm guessing it's gonna work just fine : )

Caption Contest #63 Winner - That's Jacked!

 So as it turns out, this Caption Contest was over in just a few minutes since the first submission wound up as the winner! Congrats to 'Don' for being fast in getting the definitive caption in just a few minutes after I posted the game. I hope you've got plans to be at Oshkosh 2012 to get your bacon sandwhich prize : )

 I didn't see any info on what exactly is really going on in this pic. I assume it's real, but it seems a bit odd to have this hull sitting in such a wide open ramp area. It looks a lot like the A320 from the Hudson ditching (see 15 pix of Cactus 1549) but it's not. If anyone knows what the specific deal is, please let us know.

Watch next Monday for another Caption Contest. I found a great pic a couple days ago for more harmless avgeek fun!

Video Of 320# Qu8k Rocket Going To 121,000' On 4,000# Of Thrust!

Nearly 14' tall Qu8k rocket to 121,000 feet on September 30, 2011

 Wow. Wow! This whole video is awesome, but if move ahead to 2:57 you'll see the most amazing part. It's the outward facing cam view of the launch and the incredibly fast ascension to 121,000'. Watching the thin layers of clouds go by is cool, and then seeing the black above and curvy earth below is stunning. And you should watch it in fullscreen HD too for best effect!

 Congrats to Derek Deville and all the people who helped him with this amazing rocket project he calls Qu8k (Quake) - it appears to be a fabulous success. I'll try to have an in-depth post later, but for now, you gotta watch this!

short video of the flight here: http://youtu.be/5HTwbpjBUOk?hd=1

CoolPix: X-47B Tailless UCAS 'Gear Up' 2Fer!

(click pic for hi-res)  Northrop Grumman X-47B UCAS: first gear up flight September 2011

 The envelope is being opened up significantly in the Northrop Grumman X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) program. It's now wheels up and throttle forward to the cruise configuration of the autonomous unmanned aircraft that's eventually headed for the aircraft carrier. These two images were released a couple days ago showing the wheels up for the first time, so I've made them available as CoolPix images for your viewing pleasure. Be sure to click 'em to make 'em big! (feel free to say 'wow' when the pix open up big)

 So far, the X-47B is performing extremely well, tho the bar will be raised a mile or so when they start getting serious about those unmanned, autonomous carrier landing trials at some point down the road. However, I'm pretty confident that we'll see great success there too as the program has been performing very well.

(click pic for hi-res)   Awesome view of the clean underside of the X-47B UCAS

 Actually, the X-47B is beginning to resemble God's creation we call birds as it has no vertical tail, can fold its wings, and, it's under its own pre-programmed guidance. It's all quite impressive... but I honestly can't imagine a day when we'll build a flying machine that can approach a moving wire in full flight on a gusty, windy day and rapidly translate to vertical flight for a flawless VTOL landing on said moving wire. Birds do it every day without even thinking about it!

 We're good, but we aren't God : )

Video: Sweet Sonex Shows Off Fab Smoke System - Smoke On!

 This recently uploaded video from youtuber tomhuebbe is cool on many levels... beautiful aircraft, excellent video with great editing, and a really sweet smoke system on that tri-gear Sonex! The only way it could've been better was if it was a taildragger with a Y tail, a la Waiex.

(disclaimer: this statement reflects my own personal bias toward aircraft that have their landing gear configured in the old fashioned, out dated, difficult-to-fly, and obviously much more beautiful 'taildragger' arrangement. This opinion is my own and is not meant to belittle or in any way put down a pilot or builder who chooses the easy way out and drags his pitiful little nose. I also have an extreme fondness for aircraft with unique and exciting design components, and a Y shaped tail with a really small little rudder placed at the end of the fuselage wins out over a run-of-the-mill, uninspired, plane-jane standard tail any day. But again, I don't mean to snub anyone who chooses to tip toe down the middle of the road and selects a boring tail on their aircraft. It is still a free country... for now anyway : )

Screenshot from this awesome video of a smoke-system equipped Sonex

United Airlines Retro Paint - 4 Star Friend Ship Service (+ Video)

Celebrating 85 years with some retro United Airlines paint on an A320

 This is kinda old news, but I missed it when it was new news, and it fits nicely now after having just posted that QuickPic of the Saul Bass scheme United L-1011 a couple days ago. You might remember there was a fun poll by the AirlineReporter.com concerning the possible retro scheme United would use to celebrate their 85 birthday. It was an unofficial poll tho... the one that really counted was just for UAL employees. The orange, red and blue striped Saul Bass designed livery won the AirlineReporter poll, but in the real poll, the Friend Ship livery won out. It had been reported that the paint was gonna go on a 757, but for some reason it's on an A329 instead. I think the 757 would have looked a lot better, but I'll take what I can get.

 This early 1970's livery was a big part of my younger life, and definitely one of my favorites. With my dad flying for UAL for 35 years, he flew 727's, DC-8's and the 747 in this paint, or a version very close to it. I guess technically the '4 Star' part of the livery was only around when he was flying the 747. I rode a lot of DC-10's in this paint along with the other aircraft as well. In my mind it was a good time for the airline. The change to the orange, red and blue Saul Bass livery marked a real frustration for many of us close to the airline for a variety of reasons.

 Only one airplane is painted in the retro United livery for the 85th anniversary

 But airlines are run in odd ways sometimes, and honestly I'm somewhat surprised there's even still an airline with the name United on it. Maybe the Continental merger will eventually bring us a real world-class airline once again... but I'm not counting on it. Either way, I'm pretty happy to see the Friend Ship paint once again, even if only on this one airplane.

Fly the Friendly Skies of United?

N475UA, the Friend Ship A320 taking off from Portland International Airport (PDX)

Caption Contest #63 - Ends Wednesday 10.12.11 At 9PM EDT

 Life goes on... and so the Caption Contest is here again to give us a chance to have a little avgeek fun with an unusual aircraft image. And, as has been the custom for quite a while now, the winner will get a bacon sandwich at Oshkosh 2012.  

 You've got til Wednesday evening at 9pm EDT to submit your clever/funny/cool captions. Then, I’ll pick the best 5 and put ’em in a poll for everyone to vote on for all day Thursday and Friday so we can find the winner. 

 The Rules: 

1) Max of 3 submissions per person

2) Submissions go in the 'comments' area 

3) Game ends Wednesday at 9pm EDT 

4) Keep it clean!

 Then, anyone can cast their vote starting Thursday morning and running thru til 9pm EDT Friday. The winner will be posted Saturday morning 10-15-11. So c'mon, jack up your avgeek humor skills and play along : )

QuickPic: A Rare United Airlines Lockheed L-1011

Click the pic to see it over at flickr - or click this link to see it there in its largest size

 The time stamp on this pic makes it clear that it isn't a recent pic... and that should be obvious since the major airlines stopped using the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar many years back. But what makes this pic so interesting is that many people don't know that United Airlines operated L-1011's at all.

 United had opted for the similarly sized (and also 3 engine) McDonnell Douglas DC-10 over the L-1011 in the early 70's. The two airplanes were very similar, but the TriStar marked Lockheed's first modern attempt at producing an aircraft that would appeal to the airlines, and a variety of factors made their road to success difficult to navigate. Two of the largest hurdles were the delays in getting the Rolls Royce RB211 engines on time, and the fact that the L-1011 was more complex (more advanced?) and thus more difficult and expensive to buy and maintain. Had the L-1011 entered service before the DC-10, and had McDonnell Douglas not lowered the price of the DC-10 to make it cheaper to acquire, things might have ended up very different. In the end, 250 L-1011's were built compared to 386 DC-10's (436 total if you count the KC-10 tanker variants) -  and that just wasn't enough TriStar's to ultimately make the program a success. The Tri-Star's are a much-loved aircraft tho and Lockheed did a great job in bringing the airplane to the market.

United operated a large fleet of DC-10's, and I rode many of them as a kid! (photo: wiki)

 But what's the deal with United actually having the L-1011? Well, they were really Pan Am TriStars that were purchased by United when they bought the Pacific Division from Pan Am around 1986. These routes comprised about 25% of Pan Am's entire route structure, but were sold off in a desperate effort to try to keep Pan Am from bleeding to death as an airline. As you probably already know, it didn't really help... Pan Am went under in 1991. 

 When United bought those routes, and the airplanes that flew them, it was really the routes that they wanted. The six L-1011's were just part of the package, and since maintaining such a small fleet of totally different aircraft was not cost effective, United sold them off in just a few short years. But it makes an interesting footnote in the history of both United and the L-1011 that a handful of airplanes like the one above were painted in the Saul-Bass-designed livery and operated by United.

(QuickPic image from flickr.com/photos/22331715@N06/ - more great pix over there!)

CoolPix: Continental A-40 On A Taylor J-2 Cub (NAHI 2011)

(click pic for hi-res) Classic aviation beauty! Continental A-40 engine on a Taylor J-2 Cub

 I'm beginning to have a little infatuation relationship with the Continental A-40 engine from the 1930's. I've known since I was a kid that the A-40 was the basis for what would eventually become the A-65 (65 hp), which begat the C series engines (like the 90 hp C-90), which then led to a little engine called the O-200 (100 hp) which just happens to be the engine Cessna put into over 20,000 150's. There's a LOT of aviation history built around these little 4 cylinder engines! But, even knowing all this, I'd still never really studied the A-40.

 So when I saw this immaculate Taylor J-2 Cub at the National Aviation Heritage Invitational (NAHI) at Reno a few weeks back, I took a little closer look. What a beautiful little engine! This one is single ignition (later A-40's went to dual ignition) - and how cool is it (no pun intended) that there are cooling fins in the head? Almost looks like a little model airplane engine!

 Even more amazing to me is that this little 40 hp engine would actually get a 2-place airplane like the J-2 off the ground. If I could, I'd have me a Taylor J-2 Cub with an open cowl A-40... AND an early Taylorcraft, the side-by-side follow up design by C.G. Taylor, also with an open cowl A-40 on it. That would make a really cool collection of amazing low-powered 2-seaters from the golden age of aviation. And the best part to me is that the open cowl lets you take in that classic engine style all day long.

 BTW, this image, or one similar might be another option for my large, high-quality photo print idea. Hopefully by early November I'll have the first of some fabulous aviation prints (like the 'dawn patrol' B-25) available for you to consider purchasing : )