A blog by a "sucker" and a "loser" who served her country in the Navy.
If you're one of the Covidiots who believe that COVID-19 is "just the flu",
that the 2020 election was stolen, or
especially if you supported the 1/6/21 insurrection,
leave now.
Slava Ukraini!
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5 comments:
The plane, the sea, the sky, it's hypnotic.
In the late seventies when I was still flying for the airlines I lived aboard my boat anchored in a lagoon off the departure end of runway eight. The British flew one of these around the world once a month and it always stopped in Honolulu. When it would depart it would cause the little hairs all over my body to stand on end and even on the hottest day it would give me chills. It had such a twilight zone sound that even I, a jaded professional pilot, thought the aliens had finally come when I first heard it.
During the late 70s and early 80s I was stationed at Offutt AFB in Nebraska. There was an RAF Vulcan detachment assigned there for training (flying against the Radar Bomb Scoring sites). Was always a pleasure to watch this aircraft doing transition
I grew up outside of Barksdale Air Force Base and they had a yearly airshow. It was always cool watching the Vulcan bombers that Britain dispatched for this air show, it was like watching some strange Romulan Bird of Prey flying around.
Regarding the Concorde, it is a far more sophisticated plane than a Vulcan (which is, after all, early 1950's technology). Unlike a Vulcan it is a touchy beast to fly and it is also very expensive to fly -- the Vulcan with its smokey turbojets is more expensive to fly than a modern turbofan aircraft, but way cheaper than anything supersonic. So I'm not at all convinced that a private group will be able to get a Concorde airborne, especially given the limited supply of qualified Concorde pilots -- unlike the Vulcan (which had a regular turnover of pilots for decades as pilots joined and left the RAF), the Concorde pilot force stayed in service for much longer duration and the fleet was much smaller, meaning that there are probably only a few dozen people worldwide who know how to fly a Concorde, as vs. hundreds of retired RAF personnel. Granted, new pilots can be trained, but this is a big issue, given that many of the Concorde pilots have either retired and relinquished their pilots's license or are still on active service with Air France or BA.
I had the pleasure to witness this particular aircraft perform at an KLu (Dutch Air Force) Open Door at Volkel a few years ago, and it is so very spectacular to see/hear/feel it. And yes, it is running on private money (including some of mine), and hope that it will continue to do so for quite some time yet. Incidentally, the engines on the Vulcan are 'the same' as those on Concorde, except on the latter they have AB.
Sadly, Concorde was retired before I had managed to accumulate enough dough to fly on it... :-(
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