slightly OT - NASA ER-2

Skywise wrote in news:1245n0dkkfsst01
@corp.supernews.com:

I had made passing mention recently about spotting a U2 aircraft
cruising around southern California. Well, this past week I
managed to get some good photographs of it and have put up a
webpage about it. Turned out to be a NASA ER-2.

http://www.skywise711.com/misc/ER2/ER2.html

Brian

On further consideration, this may indeed be a WB-57.

I had looked up the B-57 on wikipedia, but all the pictures
showed stubby clipped triangular wings.

But someone else in another group provided this link,

http://jsc-aircraft-ops.jsc.nasa.gov/wb57/

This shows the NASA WB-57's, and they do look alot like what
I photographed, and nothing like the pics on Wikipedia. Going
back to that article, I found mention that the USAF had ordered
several of these planes but with modified 33 and later 37 meter
wings. Much larger than the original 20 meter wings.

Now, knowing that the plane has two engines would explain the
split vapor trail seen in the first images. I had assumed this
was just some sort of vortex effect causing the single exhaust
of the ER-2 to split.

Furthermore, looking at the enhanced image, the tail does bear
a striking resemblence to the WB-57. The vertical fin starts
ahead of the elevators like the WB-57 does, whereas the ER-2
has them both starting at about the same place.

Wow. Learned something new. I was not even aware of the WB-57's.

Now I have to redo my webpage.

Brian
--
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