OSH10 Will Be The Best Oshkosh Ever! (Bonus CoolPix-Vintage)

(click pic for hi-res)    CoolPix - Vintage: the awesome Pitcairn Autogiro at OSH09

 It’s not a gimmick, as I said last year, the best Oshkosh ever is the one you’re at RIGHT NOW! With opening day just a week away, it won’t be long before the magical experience of gathering together with thousands of like-minded avgeeks, and airplanes of every imaginable kind, will turn Wittman Field into literally the best place on Earth.

 There’s no other place I know of where so many people gather in a creative, technical, peaceful, and respectful manner, and then do so for a whole week. No where. I’m blessed to be able to go all week again this year, which will also be my 34th Oshkosh experience. I joined the EAA in 1970, the same year as the first Oshkosh (the annual EAA convention was in Rockford, IL prior to moving to OSH), and even tho I was only 9 years old, I was at Oshkosh 1970 - thanks dad!

Airbus A380 stirring up lots of dust and attracting every eye at OSH09

 I get a chuckle out of the people that go for a day or two and say they saw it all. I’ll be there all week long, I’ll cover the grounds all day long, I’ll keep moving thru the evening, and then do my best to be back out there by 7:30 in the morning… and I’ll still only scratch the surface of what this event has to offer. If it’s just some airplanes sitting on a Wisconsin airport in the summer to you, then I guess a day or two will cover it. But Oshkosh truly represents the spirit of aviation, and no aviation event can inspire a person, in a thousand different aviation ways, like Oshkosh can.

A beautiful example of the highly unusual homebuilt Dyke Delta at OSH09

 If you’ve never been to the event, and you aren’t coming this year, I encourage you to keep watch of AirPigz.com during the week from Monday July 26th thru Sunday August 1st. I’m planning to post an update every night. Hopefully these posts will help to display the amazing diversity of aircraft and people that attend, and, what you’re missing. My biggest hope is that it will inspire you to make attending next year a priority. And of course, if you know how great Oshkosh is, but you aren't able to attend this year, please enjoy these daily posts... I hope they'll help you to feel like you're there on some level : )

The remotely piloted Predator B UAV at OSH09

 And if you’re are headed to OSH10, I highly recommend you dig deep and really take the event in (use the awesome, unofficial ’events scheduler’ at OSHplanner.com to help with that), and remember, because you’re livin’ it, OSH10 Will Be the Best Oshkosh Ever!

Video: Hypersonic X-51A Waverider - Make Go Fast!

 A pretty big deal of a test flight is scheduled to take place in just a couple days, on Tuesday May 25, 2010, as the Boeing X-51A Waverider unmanned hypersonic test aircraft will be dropped from a B-52 at 50,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean to hopefully show true viability for air breathing scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) power.  On the flight, the X-51A will initially be powered by a solid rocket booster up to about Mach 4.5 when the scramjet will be lit and accelerate the vehicle up to around Mach 6. The video above does a great job of explaining the program details.

 The short video below shows a nice animation of how the drop from the B-52 and the flight itself might look.  It's all pretty interesting stuff, and the results will likely give either the pro-scramjet or anti-scramjet folks some ammunition in their relatively long and hotly contested debate.  It should be a pretty exciting show either way!

Video: How To Land On Vertical Walls - Very Cool UAV Project

 I was over at Oshkosh365 this morning and saw that @halbryan had posted a video of a micro UAV project that has mimicked bird feet for landing gear to make an airplane that can actually land on some vertical surfaces.  This is some pretty cool work, and it'll be interesting to see if the concept fills a genuine need.  Either way, it's pretty amazing to see!

CoolPix - Misc: Scaled Composites Proteus 2Fer

(click pic for hi-res)

 (click pic for hi-res)

 The Rutan designed and Scaled Composites built Proteus is hard to categorize in the world of CoolPix, so it’s the first airplane to be put into the ‘Misc’ slot.  And, this is a special posting with 2 hi-res pix, plus one extra detail pic… all for the same low price : )

 It would be easy to think those two top pix are almost identical, and they pretty much are from a perspective standpoint, but the airplane is showing some significant operational differences here.  First let me say, before today, I really didn’t know much more about Proteus than: it’s very unusual looking and I’ve always liked the way it looks.  I really didn’t know that it was designed to operate at such high altitudes, as in 60,000+.  That’s a lot more relevant to me now that I’ve watched the awesome James May video of his U-2 ride, and the podcast interview I did recently with U-2 pilot Col. Lars Hoffman.

 Proteus first flew in 1998, and had been originally designed to be a high altitude platform for carrying a large telecommunications antennae.  In addition to the high altitude capabilities, Proteus is able to remain operational for 14 to 18 hours at a time.  This would have made it very well suited to the airborne antennae idea, however, that venture was cancelled at some point after initial tests had been conducted.  This freed the airplane up to be used in all kinds of interesting ways.

 The top pic shows the airplane in 2002 with a pod mounted on the center pylon that was used in the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program.  The program used Proteus and other aircraft to study the clouds from high altitudes, and also explored the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for this work.  Proteus also has the ability to be flown in an unmanned configuration (I sure didn’t know that!), tho it’s unclear to me if it was used that way on this particular program.

 The second pic shows the airplane in 2003 with nothing mounted on the pylon, but attached to the nose is a special radar that was used to test the ability of UAVs to be operated in congested airspace by using an active, detect/see/avoid system.  The airplane was remotely flown (tho a crew was on board to handle takeoff and landing) and other aircraft, without identifying transponders, were flown toward the airplane to test the system’s ability to provide the data needed to avoid a collision.

 The pic below shows the radar installation up close which gives a good look at a humorous side of the project… part of the radar system looks like a tongue, so it’s painted red!  Even better, there’s a closed eye with lashes on the left side, and as this Proteus pic from LIFE.com shows, an open eye is painted on the right side.  I'm does like!

Did you know that sometimes Proteus sticks out its tongue?!

Look Ma - No Vertical Fin AND No Pilot! X-47B

 

 Moving really fast out of the 1930's of the last post and into what looks like it should be the 2030's, here's the Northrop Grumman X-47B.  The Naval UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle) was just rolled out on 12-16-08 in Palmdale, California.  The X-47B is designed not only to operate in combat conditions and fly off of aircraft carriers, but to do so without any vertical surfaces and no pilot onboard!  The times, my firend, they are a changin'. 

 First flight isn't expected for quite a while yet, and the flight test program is scheduled to last 3 years.  Sea trials are set to take place in November 2011.

 The aircraft pictured at top is the first of two planned demonstrators of the overall concept. The photo illustration below gives a good view of the overall planform.  More info on the expected X-47B performance and flight capabilities when it becomes available.