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Old November 8th 03, 02:35 AM
Jake Donovan
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Mary,

I am about to triple dose myself with "C" and hit the rack.

Yes, I know fast Eddie and I was in on the 31

It was my distinct pleasure to chat with you on the phone today. I hope to
catch up with you in Lancaster.

Jake


"Mary Shafer" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 7 Nov 2003 07:11:27 -0600, "Jake Donovan"
wrote:

I do have time in the 29, my reference to one hanging in the Air and

Space
Museum was just that - looking up at it brought back memories. (Poorly
worded)


Not knowing that the model even existed, I was astounded to walk into
that gallery and see the model when I was at NASM back when I knew,
without a doubt, that both aircraft were at Dryden. Realistic, isn't
it? I think it was an antenna model, but that doesn't seem likely.
That's more something you do for production aircraft than for research
aircraft. But if not, what was it for?

For some authentic nostalgia, you should come to Dryden. We've got
one of the X-29s on a pad out in front of Dryden now; we've stopped
giving every plane we ever flew to someone else's museum. Of course,
it's kind of a motley collection, comprising two lifting bodies, one
LLRV, an X-29, an F-104G, an SR-71A, the X-1E, and two F-8s (one the
Digital Fly-By-Wire and the other the SuperCritical Wing). We've also
got the X-15 mock-up, which looks pretty good for being a complete
fake.

As for the HARV, DARPA most definitely had input. I had quite a bit of
flight data from the HARV come across my desk. No where did I say I

flew
the test program.


You're right--DARPA was definitely in the loop on HARV and I misread
what you wrote. Sorry. I knew we'd had a bunch of guest pilots at one
time and assumed you were one of them. It's too bad you didn't get to
fly it, as it was, I'm told, a lot of fun to fly. We sure did get a
lot out of that program, too, as you know from the masses of data you
saw. Ken did the S&C estimates on it, now that I think about it. I
spent some time advocating an HMD (not an HMS, because we weren't
supposed to do weapons system stuff, of course) but never got
anywhere. The airframe went back to the Navy about a year ago and I
don't know what they've done with it.

Weren't you involved with X-31? Fast Eddie thought you were, but
we're not sure.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer