Can anyone tell me how far back military experiments with Flapping Flight go? I am interested in why Soaring flight is so rare in nature but so popular with us? I've heard that the Wright Brothers patented Wing Warping (Flapping) and never let anyone develop planes using Wing Warping flight. Is...

I am interested human powered flight, and I have a design for flexible spiral wings shaped like a cornucopia or the coils in an old telephone cord (See "Spring Wings" at http://patricktimony.tvheaven.com/catalog.html ). If anyone in the Washington DC area would be interested in collaborating...

In an attempt to move this discussion into something useful... A vehicle capable of satisfying the requirements for the X-Prize would be useful for joyrides. This can make money, but it's a limited market. How would you envision a commercial private space enterprise developing from this...

I don't think that anyone has mentioned the latest book, "Lockheed's SR-71 'Blackbird' Family: A-12, F-12, M-21, D-21, SR-71" by Jim Goodall and Jay Miller. Of course, I'm not objective because I know both authors.

Something I saw raised a question in my mind: An MD-80's T-tail had one half pitched up and the other half pitched about neutral. My question is why any T-tail aircraft would allopw differential motion of the two halfs of the horizontal stab? It seems to me that the rolling couple such a position...

From this week's AvWeek. Boeing responded to an Air Force RFI against a requirement for improved bombers by suggesting re-engining the B-1 fleet with F-119 engines with the following characteristics: Mach 2 cruise, 3000 mile radius, 60,000 foot ceiling (with a couple of hours loiter). Is this...

In Pete Knight's obituary in AvWeek, it mentioned that the record setting Mach 6+ flight in the X-15A2 resulted in structural damage to the aircraft that resulted in it being withdrawn from use. Was the damage a result of the thermal environment or was it the dynamic pressure envirnoment?

According to this week's AvWeek, DoD test & evaluation people listed several concerns about the F/A-22. The test fleet is getting more and more different from the production baseline, firecontrol problems and some hardware and software reliability problems. No mention of flutter. The same article...

An FM-2 went down on approach to Ellington Field in Texas yesterday. The pilot, William K. Johnson, 62 years old, was killed. Johnson flew in the air show earlier that day at the field, then did a video shoot with other planes right before the crash. The Houston Chronicle says Johnson was an...

A rare P-51C went down May 29 during an air show at Red Wing, Minn., after its engine failed. Pilot Donald Hinz, a 60 year old former naval aviator, was killed in the crash...

tony wrote: Former President Reagan's sunset burial had a dissonant note for me. The Navy flew a missing man formation over the site, and as is traditional the second element lead position (the airplane that would have been represented by your ring finger tip as they flew in finger tip...

Last month the FAI ratified 50 speed records B-1B 85-0068 set at the Edwards AFB air show last year. Half the records are for turbojet landplanes with takeoff weight 100,000 to 150,000 kg. Speed over 100 km closed course with 0, 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, 15000, 20000, 25000 kg payload: 1045.65...

Channel 2 in Los Angeles had their news helicopter taping the landing of a B-17 at the Van Nuys airport this afternoon and got more excitement than expected. The plane's main landing gear collapsed on both sides during rollout. According to the TV station's copter pilot, the B-17 is named "Aluminum...

On June 22 last year, during close air support training in Djibouti, a B-52H flying out of Diego Garcia accidentally attacked the observation post controlling the bomber. Nine M117 750-lb unguided bombs killed one U.S. Marine and wounded seven Marines and a sailor. Both parked CH-53E helicopters...

According to a story in the Houston Chronicle, NASA has a plan for getting photo coverage of night shuttle launches. "The fix involves flying two modified B-57 high-altitude airplanes on either side of the shuttle, filming its liftoff and the first two minutes of flight, said NASA imaging expert...

This crazy incident involved an F6F target drone which went haywire back in 1956. After taking off from Pt. Mugu on the California coast the Hellcat's radio control manfunctioned and it headed inland. F-89s fired a couple hundred 2.75 inch rockets at it with no effect. On the drone, that is. They...

The NTSB has posted a preliminary report on Chuck Yeager's October 2 T-6 mishap. http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20031009X01689&key=1 "According to the pilot, he elected to land on runway 23 with a slight tail wind. He said the winds were light and variable with occasional gusts. The...

I'm posting this to a couple newsgroups where I remember discussions drifting off-topic into units of measure. There's a vote going now on creating a newsgroup about the metric system: CHARTER: misc.metric-system This newsgroup is for discussion about the International System of Units (SI) or...

According to the Edwards AFB newspaper, a B-1B set about 50 world speed records during the October 25 - 26 weekend air show. http://www.edwards.af.mil/archive/2003/2003-archive-b1_sets_records.html On the first day the plane was above 330,000 lbs. In that weight class it set 100- and 500-km...

Oops, the first thing I should have mentioned is the webmaster email address on your site. It's unprotected from spambots. Maybe you should remove it temporarily until countermeasures are installed. In the meantime, people can communicate with you via the guestbook. This article presents the...