inverted flight

I have seen the most interesting tower in the world and you havent... at least I assume you havent...

In the east of the Northern Territory of Australia there is a place called Gove. It is an old WWII northern defence airstrip and the tower has a cylindrical top with a persplex panel around the sides. The panel has gone green with radiation and someone took the time to hang large realistic looking tropical fish on the inside. This is quite amusing except if you are attempting to land and no-one bothered to tell you about it. It is quite a distraction to see a giant fish bowl on an abandoned airfield.

Any interesting airfield stories out there ?

You're right, but tks for the warning anyway. The place looks pretty, at least from satellite height:
View from 1430 km above 12°16'S 136°49'E


http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth?imgsize=320&opt=-l&lat=-12.269444&ns=North&lon=-136.818333&ew=West&alt=1430&img=nasa.evif

I once drew on a map of Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea the places I had flown between. Almost 1800 hrs and it covered everywhere, except for an area South of Broome and North of Exmouth (where the US base is). I can never figure out how I missed that area. I can no longer fly but I have detemined to go there by wheeled transport one day. Any places you want to go ?

I knew the Diamondbacks well - an F-14 squadron when I last saw them. I believe your friend is flying FA-18s with them now(not F-16s).

The Phantom was designed as an interceptor that would use air-to-air missiles to down its opponents at long range. It had no guns. Incidentally it also had a fairly large max. payload and was pretty good in an air to ground role. The real world of air-to-air warfare didn't conform to the prejudgements of the planners and designers. The missiles weren't nearly as relaible or capable as advertised, and in the fog (and politics) of war it is usually necessary to get a visual ID on any potential foe before attacking him. The result was that dogfights, with an emphasis on maneuverability and tactics were the rule -- and none of our century series fighters were particularly good at that. The Navy (and Air Force) Phantom was the best (least bad in the eyes of many) of the aircraft available. The Navy still had a few squadrons of F-8U Crusaders, a relatively low wing loading highly maneuvearble aircraft with a gun during Vietnam, but they were few and getting old.

During and after the Vietnam war there were heated disputes over the design of the next generation of fighters for the services - the Air Force F-15 and the navy F-14. In an earlier post I briefly cited a very interesting character in the Air Force, Col. John Boyd was the leading protagonist for small, light weight and highly maneuverable fighters. He was much opposed to the F-14 and F-15 and was in many ways the driving force in the Pentagon for the next generation F-16 and FA-18. A fighter pilot and real maverick who regularly took on the brass in the Pentagon for over a decade for wasted cost in ineffective, over designed systems, ranging from the F-111 to the B-1 and even the Bradley Fighting vehicle for the Army - he was also the inventor of the practical concepts of energy maneuverability in aircraft design and air-to-air tactics and later more esoteric concepts in warfare generally. He first described the so-called OEDA (observe, evaluate, decide, act) loop for air combat, emphasizing the value of "getting inside" the enemy's loop by deception, distraction, and agility or fast cycles of your own. He later generalized it further to warfare itself. His concepts played a major part in our brilliantly successful prosecution of the first Gulf war.

Anyway there's quite a bit of stuff available on John Boyd on the web and some here might find it interesting.

Ionus - not sure about the answer to your question, but if my friend George's ELF antennas could have interfered with your navigation he'll tell you. As to where I want to go - right now I'm working on a project (in Sacramento and DC) and have to be at one of those 2 places till it's completed.

I've been on the base and saw George's ELF farm. I immediately stuffed everything down the front of my pants...keys, wallet, hanky, Beret...dont want anything falling off and cant be toooooo careful. A very impressive collection of antennae with a lot of power pushing out them electro-magneto-thingees.

That's odd behavior - the ELF involved would be the same if you went swimming anywhere around that coastline, surely? I always thought than the only danger around George's antenna farm is from high voltages, plus - at line of sight - very high frequencies used for satellite communications.

Yes, you are correct of course. To the unknowing it is very impressive though and it makes a humming noise from the wind. I was trying to be satirical.

LOL - I thought maybe that was a new psychological security technique, to keep the uninformed safely outside the farm gates <G>

No, but it works on those paranoid about their manly equipment.

Speaking of swimming it struck me that it is quite similar to flight in the sense there's a moving object in a medium only dissimilar to air in unimportant respects from a scientific point of view.

The world record for the 100 m freestyle is about 47 secs. and for the backstroke it is about 52 seconds which must mean that we are not designed to swim invertedly according to Darwin's theory if escaping from crocodiles increases the probability of passing on one's genes, a euphemism of course, which must mean that the backstroke is a neurotic activity leading directly to the psychiatric couch.

The breast stroke is obviously pathological and should be discouraged assuming it has no unintentional upside.

What about women ? They tend to land on their back. Is that inverted flying ?

It depends.

My friend has been long retired from the squadron and is a senior remote sensing "analyst" for a govt agency . He was in the ttime when F-14's were the Diamonback's vehicles on the USS Independence.

When he retired I sent him a card that stated that, in the worlds navies there are two kinds of vessels,

Submarines and Targets.





.

When a fly lands on the ceiling it is employing inverted flight. Does it achieve this by a half barrel role or half a loop ?

Well--effemm just gave a demo so you should be able to figure it out.

I know a story, when I was just starting in my rocknocker career, one of my college buddies was a feature reporter for the Reading Times, a papre that served a population of about 300000. He was invited to fly in a Navy F14 or F-4 (dont recall) which was part of the Reading Pa Annual AIrshow. The Blue Angels were flying and my friend was the guy in the back. I went with him and got to meet the pilots and I got a picture signed by the pilots (like some teenager who likes planes). My friend went up in the plane and they did some really minor rolls and not too severe tricks and he blew lunch all over. They hadda wash out the g- suit . We had a bunch of burgers and a pitcher of beer for lunch and that helped his gag reflex.

They had to lift him out of the cockpit and his news feature story was all about how he got sick over the BLue Ridge mountains while upside down. THe publisher then put him on as their fulltime feature reporter based on that one story

I drove him home and he just went to bed he was kinda grey looking .

That is an OLD submariner canard.

I developed a lifelong dislike for submariners when I was forced to go through their required nuclear power training (18 months worth) at a relatively advances age just after finishing command of my squadron. Sitting in a class of Ensigns just out of engineering university and being treated like the students they were and listening to smartass Lieutenant Submarine officer instructors was a ... difficult experience for me - like going through another tribe's puberty rite in middle age..

They are an unimaginative, if attentive and precise, lot. Every new attack sub skipper attached to the battle group felt compelled to send us the standard photo of my carrier through the crosshairs of his attack periscope. Perhaps each one thought he was being original and amusing. We did get one imaginative guy who, instead, sent us a photo of himself, arms akimbo over handles of the periscope with his eye glued to the viewpiece. The caption was "Thinking of You". His older brother was probably an aviator. I felt good having him around.

Frankly getting guest rider sick is (1) easy to do; and (2) a great temptation for a showoff Lieutenant able to demonstrate his mastery. Few can resist the opportunity.

It takes about a year of flying to really get comfortable in maneuvering flight. Lots of built-in reflexes and reactions need to become detuned. Gradually one develops the ability to mentally picture ones spatial orientation, even without an horizon in view, and thereby to calm the alarm and confusion resulting from the conflicting signals from ones ears and the seat of your pants.

In part the nausea results from the rapid expansion of stomach & intestinal gases at altitude, particularly during rapid maneuvers. Experienced pilots learn to vent regularly at both ends. In an afterburner max performance climb after takeoff one can actually fart continuously up to 15,000 feet - sometimes it stings.

THats who told me, a retired nook swabby who , besides being a CE was atotal ragass about subs and other lesser craft.
His mantra was that "not everybody can be a submariner" .

My uncle Ted was a p-38 recon pilot in WWII over Europe and was always needling my buddy who flew F-4's off the Independence. His best line was
", AT least I still knew how my plane worked"