The General Airplane Thread

[Crash]

It's a -200, and Iran Air is the only airline still operating them for commercial flights. They're at least 30 years old, pretty insane considering that the average age of some FLEETS is 10 years old.

I've heard smaller airports fly them as well after big airliners sell them. But for a larger group to keep them on is cool especially considering the age as you mentioned. They're supposedly good planes so why not keep on with em I suppose.

Iran Air still flies the 747-200 because they couldn't buy new planes from Boeing or Airbus until very recently due to sanctions.

Planes can continue to go on for quite the time in the air, it's engines and flight time hours that is the issue 9/10. Some people say that the pressure changes it experiences over its life is a big factor, but it's not really proven..

Different systems and different component lifecycles use different metrics to gauge age and wear. Engine life are highly impacted by flight hours. With that said, the airframe service life, the fuselage in particular, is absolutely driven by the pressurization cycles it experiences throughout its lifecycle rather than just numerical hours. In fact, short haul airplanes are designed to have a higher number of service cycles in its lifetime despite a lower flight hours Limit of Validity because a short haul airplane is expected to make more flight cycles each day than a long haul airplane. The design service objective lifetime is then one of the factors that drives structural sizing.

Aluminum as a material slowly fatigues naturally over time, but cyclical loading will drive that fatigue rate much higher. If you've seen an aluminum commercial airplane that's towards the end of its life, you'll see numerous doublers and triplers underneath the skin to strengthen the areas that have fatigue cracks that have developed and been arrested.

Boeing put out a document that talks about how it will comply with the fairly recent FAA rule that established regulations on airframe limit of validity, and laid out what the airframe DSO vs LoV for each model is.

The pressure changes do have an effect on the lifetime of the air due to the cyclic stresses applied to the airframe, but generally it's a quantity that is proportional to the number of hours flown and the intended use of the aircraft.

I just want to clarify that it's primarily proportional to the number of take off-get to altitude-landing cycles rather than just pure hours flown, though you're also right in the sense that different structural components will have different loading scenarios that will drive variations in life limit considering the application of factors of safety.

 

[Carlos]

 

[catamount39]

Get those ugly ducklings away from them beautiful F-16's.

 

[Swagger897]

F16 any day of the week lol

 

[Dan]

It just goes to show how massive the F-22 is. I still love it though.

 

[Venom800tt]

Dun hate, the F-22 is also a beautiful aircraft
In person, it looks a lot more menacing and sleek than in pictures though. The paint is really amazing looking, with its metallic matte look to it.

 

[catamount39]

P-51 is sexier than them all.

 

[wfooshee]

Especially when you have more than one!!!

But both, with an F-22??? Oh, yeah!!!

 

[catamount39]

Nope...Mustang better.

 

[Encyclopedia]

I just had to post another picture I found of the John Player-esque Viggen I posted earlier in this thread.

 

[catamount39]

I just had to post another picture I found of the John Player-esque Viggen I posted earlier in this thread.

I love Sweden.

 

[GregTheStig]

I thought this was neat

And a fleet of Soviet Tu-16s taken from a Royal Norwegian Air Force F-104

 

[Encyclopedia]

^There's something special about mid century airplanes.

 

[catamount39]

^There's something special about mid century airplanes.

Late WWII fighters and 50's jets were beautiful.

But prop era was best era. ;_;

 

[Swagger897]

DC7 was the king:

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

I say DC8 did it better cause Xenu lives with in all of us.*


*let's see how many get this joke.

 

[Dan]

I say DC8 did it better cause Xenu lives with in all of us.*


*let's see how many get this joke.

Finally a reference I understand!

 

[Swagger897]

Taadaa!!

 

[wfooshee]

So there's this replica of a Spanish galleon touring Florida now, and it's in Panama City this week. It's the type of ship Spain used to explore and colonize Florida. One of our local club guys arranged to have a group of us allowed on board before they opened to the public, so we had an hour to shoot touron-free. A little bit of "Hey, can you step behind that mast for a minute so I can get my shot?" but all in all a pretty good time.

It's tied up at the downtown marina, and downtown is directly beneath the approach lane for Tyndall AFB (from whence comes Venom's F-22 above.) I'm wandering around getting some fisheye shots of the rigging when I hear a jet approaching. I start wondering if it would be possible to juxtapose two pieces in the frame, across the 500-year separation in technology, so a quick lens swap to the 70-300, look up and try to find the jet, and I got 4 trips of the shutter.

I almost never found the jet in the first place, and of the 4 trips, the first three were useless, either the jet was mostly hidden behind some yardarm or something, or there wasn't enough of the ship in the frame to convey the idea.

I got this one, though, and it's cropped from the original frame, which had a lot of useless distraction to the left, a bit of useless clutter on the right, and a bunch of dead space up high. As I was going through the series in Adobe Raw I actually had the delete flag set, but decided to see what I could do with it. The one in-focus rope was a complete accident, and the reason I originally set the file to be deleted was because the jet was OOF. A selective crop, to remove the clutter and dead space, strongly emphasized that one rope and turned the hazy blur of the jet into a positive feature.

No, this is not just an excuse to sneak yet another F-22 into the thread.

(OK, yes, it actually is! )

So: What would Ponce de Leon have made of such a sight and sound?

 

[Carlos]

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Is that Japanese Apache? With snow/water landing pads?

 

[catamount39]

Is that Japanese Apache? With snow/water landing pads?

Those would be skies.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Those would be skies.

Get out...

 

[Carlos]

Is that Japanese Apache? With snow/water landing pads?

Looks like we can see more of them:

The Pentagon is realizing that fighting in the frigid north may be more of a possibility than ever as Russia prepares its forces for sustained arctic operations. Now a handful of the US Army’s attack helicopters are getting optimized for this scenario, receiving skis, a pilot survival pod and being tested to see how they adapt to the extreme environment.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/apache-attack-helicopters-don-skis-and-other-upgrades-f-1764321093

Not sure why but to me, with the ski's on, it looks like it can jump.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Looks like we can see more of them:

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/apache-attack-helicopters-don-skis-and-other-upgrades-f-1764321093

Not sure why but to me, with the ski's on, it looks like it can jump.

Pretty cool insight Carlos, reminds me of some G.I. Joe sort of stuff when they have to adapt to all conditions. It's strange for a Military might that is so large to not have it's resources set up in the same manner, until late down the road. I mean I know most combats have been desert and forest regions over the past few decades but still

 

[catamount39]

Well things are getting spicy.

 

[gnomefromnome]

1968 Cordova Airlines Golden Nugget Service, includes piano bar and can can girl flight attendants

 

[Carlos]

 

[Dan]

Great videos. 👍 Two questions about them:

1: What is that thing protruding off the back of the Su-34? I think I heard it's a rear-facing radar that's used to guide missiles to hit targets behind the Su-34.

2: What is the efficiency/total flight time of an Osprey and how does it compare to current helicopters used to fight fires?

 

[TVR27]