4e209a12
From: stealthman@iglou.com
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:38:58 -0700 (PDT), "miso@sushi.com"
wrote:
[snip old]
>On Jul 22, 10:21 am, Gosh Darn wrote:
>> I only saw one F-117 on the ground at an
>> air show about 10 years ago, it was in a hanger
>> and I couldn't see any features at all with the
>> black paint.
>
>I think the security around the F117 at air shows was ...well...for
>show. What they don't want photographed is the back of the B2. I've
>had media passes for Edwards a few times and they always instruct the
>photographers not to shoot the back of the B2 on the ground, i.e. as
>it taxis. At air shows, they park the B2 with the back towards a
>secure area.
I guess I went to Edwards twice in 1964, the first time I stopped
at Tropico Gold Mine, abandoned then, and then went in the
back road on the south side.
There were no signs or security, not even a gate or
guard house on the road, and I found an operations office
easily, and went in, walked through and out to the tarmac.
Within minutes I saw a twin engine jet taxi out, one
that I had never heard of, and it took off, the loudest
plane I ever heard.
I didn't stay long, and the next day I read in the
newspaper the F-111 had made the second test flight
the day before.
The second time there was an open house, I think
I entered a different gate, I remember seeing the Boron
plant, and the big thing on the program was the completion
of the C-141 test program.
>One really annoying restriction for media at Edwards is no photography
>of south base. Now south base is where the directed energy work is
>done, but that is also where they store the old planes waiting for
>restoration. As you drive by the back, you can see the large vacuum
>tank they use to replicate the atmospheric pressure at the altitude
>the ABL is operated. You can also see the cabin of an aircraft poking
>out the building, which I presume is to replicate the ABL. It looks
>like somebody screwed up and the plane shot out the sheet metal.
>
> 34°54'0.11"N 117°52'32.88"W
>
>I"m not sure the plane is there anymore, but the imagery now is simply
>amazing.
You are lucky to live near the action, I really
like to look at and read about the machines, but
haven't ever been in a civilian airliner, I only flew
as asst crew chief on a B-25 for a few months,
one trip to Fort Bragg to deliver and install an
engine on a B-25 in 1947 in a C-82, and a C-47
flight on furlough to Fort Knox.
I was a preflight instructor in Basic Inspections
in 1946 teaching engine run-up on all the WWII
aircraft to Nationalist Chinese maintenance officers.
The only military jet I saw before going to Edwards
was a P-80 that stopped at Keesler Field Mississippi,
and on take-off lost the canopy, so it was it the
hanger waiting for a replacement.
I went to a few airshows at Bergstrom Air Base
in Austin during the 1980s, but it is closed now
I guess.
The only glimpse I ever saw of a facility that
had security was a trip in 1958 as a guest of the
EE engineers to Plum Brook nuclear in Sandusky
Ohio before it was commissioned, so I saw the
storage pool, the reactor hole in the floor,
and the robot work stations with real thick
leaded glass windows.
At NASA Cleveland I saw a space ion engine
running in either 1958 or 1967, and a three-axis
gimbaled rig the astronauts practiced controlling
the orientation of the Mercury capsule.
In 1954 I worked in a die cast foundry making
compressor blades for two different size engines
or air movers, the building was paid for by NASA
and the blades were rumored to be atomic
airplane blades, but there was no security,
just no information or complete engines,
just a section of the rotor and stator housings
to test the fit of the 15 rows of blades.
I really liked California, but my family was
all back east, and I lived in Berlin, Pennsylvania
when I got the brainstorm for stealth shapes.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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