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There are many things which should remind us that the US of A is a mighty power and that the somewhat fearful China worship that surrounds us is a little over done for the time being at least. Some of these things really only hit you when you visit the US. Their penchant for big has to be experienced to be really perceived and the massive capacity of the armed forces is really only apparent after a bit of reflection when you put together what you can see during say a week or so of touring. Everywhere you go awesome and potent military hardware is roaring about practicing their skills and doing their works. And this mind you in continental USA where there are no enemy armies lined up within shooting range and in a country that has never I think, had a foreign attack on their shores since the declaration of independence. Cause and effect?? Maybe. Anyway it is impressive. Another recent event which might have caught the eye and is evidence of the above is the 45th anniversary of the C-2A Greyhound. For it to be worthwhile for a nation to design and produce an aircraft specifically for the purpose of transporting people and materiel to Aircraft Carriers at sea is not something many nations have to worry about and yet there is was, 45 years of it being celebrated by Northrop Grumman on Nov 18th. What an awesome effort it all is. Are we the safer for it??
I think probably yes. What do you think? Read more…

Probably not many of us lie awake nights pondering how we can be sure our GPS positions are firmly related to reality. It just is enormously reassuring to have that machine telling us where we are. Because it is presented via flashing lights and after much button pushing we are inclined to take its accuracy for granted. Well mostly it is very accurate and a marvel of technology it is too. But when one stops to consider there are some technical difficulties which have been very ingeniously addressed. When you are a photon of electromagnetic radiation or a molecule vibrating in space and time as you go about your business, the Earth, rather than being a solid stable reference point, is a shifting plate of vibrating Blancmange. Not even once does a position on or in the earth trace out the same path. The surface of the Earth is perpetually vibrating and quivering and the centre of rotation of the earth is never the same from one moment to the next when one gets close to serious accuracy. Tides, thermal expansion, Nutation, the influence of the moon, relativistic effects due to the alterations in the earths orbital speed all mean we have to look outside the solar system for a base line to refer orbital motions to in order that we have a base line to reference our measuments to. First it was a collection of fixed stars but they too move. Now there is a new and improved base line. Called the ICRF2, this new map uses observations of about 3,000 quasars with the Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI). Sort of does put it all into perspective.

The VLBI is a special network of radio telescopes from all over the world that together have the resolving power of a telescope thousands of miles in diameter. (Though quasars burn intensely brightly, their enormous distance makes them too faint to locate accurately with a conventional optical telescope.)

The new quasar observations were able to reduce the uncertainties in the quasar positions to angles as small as 40 microarcseconds — about the thickness of a 0.7-millimeter mechanical pencil lead in Los Angeles as viewed from Washington, D.C. This uncertainty is five times better than the original ICRF.
http://www.livescience.com/space/091103-st-gps-quasars.html

US to Base Drones in Seychelles to Fight Piracy

The United States is planning to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles in the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to combat piracy. The use of land-based drones is a new approach to deter ship hijackings in the region.

The spokesman for the U.S. military’s Africa Command, Vince Crawley, has said several Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles will be in the Seychelles by late October or November. He says they will be used to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions throughout the Indian Ocean region.

“We have people going in individually for very short trips right now. We plan to start sending some of the teams that will assist in the September-October time frame. And then it would take a month to begin the flights,” said Crawley. “It is widely recognized that western Indian Ocean piracy is extremely disruptive to international trade and this is simply a U.S. contribution to the international effort against piracy.” Read more…

In the recent press it has been announced that the Victorian state Government has engaged the services of a DC 10 water bomber. Little detail has been release on the nature of the arrangements but it is a good start for the introduction of heavy metal into the fire bombing stakes here in Oz. the DC 10 is in the 11000 category simlar to the IL76 gallon but has a pressurized water load and can carry fire retardant which should assist its effectivness. A lot of observers are seeing the up coming fire season as having the makings of a horror event. It would be good to over react rather than under react. Of the other options, Various people conversant with the 747 have opined that it could easily manage the maneuvering required and the reports of the benefit of the IL76 in the Spanish fires are very enthusiastic. Some water scooping Amphibians would also be pretty good. Let us hope what is available is matched with what is required and the not invented here attitude does not prevail.
We wait with trepidation.

Students of bush fires will know that various authorities claim the Australian Bush fires are as bad as any in the world and the Chauvinists would say they are without parallel. The season has now started and the ghoulish and gleeful but macabre voyeurs are on a countdown to another season of excellence or should it be infamy. It is now clear from the Royal Commission that there was severe mismanagement at very senior levels. This must include the State Government which bears ultimate responsibility. The current Victorian Government has been there for a long time and still seems to think that it can blame previous administrations. It used to be called the mirror government (I’ll look into it) and now seems more and more to be a righteous initiative free area which looks for a scapegoat when pressed and fines them massively while it continues the grand old tradition of Victorian State governments of either stripe, of infra structure inaction. Only the buzz words change: Fiscal responsibility , responsible leadership and so on. A recent little gem surfaced which would seem to bear a bit of closer examination. After a particularly bad summer a number of ultra large helicopters know locally as Elvises (after the name of the first to come to public awareness) have been engaged for fire fighting work. These are the Erickson S 64 (9500 kg of water) of US Military origins and have done a very good job. The first time they came in mass they did not have a lot of wok but subsequently have been veryvaluable. The need is hard to predict and it is a lot of money to spend if they are not needed but still what is the price of insurance? Until that year of disaster, requests for such capability had been steadfastly refused with the usual official smokescreen of reasons.
Even more recently another gem surfaced. During the 2009 prior to the Feb 7th Black Saturday disaster the Russian Government offered the Victorian Government the use of IL 76 very large water bombers (able to drop 11,000 gallons of water). They were turned down for reasons which range from garbage to plausible (Too long to arrange certification, not suitable for the mission, we have enough, time for transit too long etc).
The US fire fighting services have had the same offers and made the same response. Some critics of this decision are very scathing about the reasons. The US at least do have some very heavy metal available but the Vic Government has only Elvises and smaller.
American and some Australian experts have seen the Russian aircraft in action and are very impressed. They put the refusal of the Russian offer by the US Fire Authorities down to Politics. One of the reasons for refusal which seemed implausable was that the water could not be placed where it was needed. At the Kinglake fire this seems very unlikely.
There also seems to have been a lot of politics in the Australian situation. A sort of “don’t question us we are the experts” and “don’t get in the way we know what we are doing”. It would be very interesting to see a detailed account of why the Russian offer was refused and to compare the cost of the Russian offer with the over all cost of fire fighting. More fiddling while civilisation burns?

‘Stealth’ blades take wind turbines off the radar. It seems nothing is ever simple in these days of environmental concern, technological complexity and growing populations and standards of living. A recent example is the innocent windmill. Some see them as a major answers to major problems. Others see them as bird killers, infra noise generators and a con job that will cost too much and deliver too little. Most likely they will find their place but one problem that snuck up on a lot of us is that they can screw with Domestic aviation radars.
The big, fast-moving blades of modern wind turbines interfere with radar for both planes and ships. But ’stealth’ technology could solve the problem. Read more…

There is a saying that if one slowly heats a pot of water with a live frog in it the frog will go to sleep and not get out and so get cooked whereas if he is dropped into a hot pot he will leap out. So it is in many situations in life. We have it in aviation where slowly evolving situations get way past a point where some action should be taken because each development is incremental and not so different from the last situation. So it is with Airbus pitots and standby instruments and now with Flight 188 overflying its destination I think we have the same thing. It does not really matter if they went to sleep or lost track of time there was considerable potential for trouble. Much has been made of the poor match of the human physiology and performance and yet steadily the man is being taken out of the loop in flying so that such things can happen. An extraordinary number of RPT flights pass uneventfully but where a trend emerges it should be addressed. Ground control is now possible and studies should be made, discussed and decisions taken. Pilots do not have to leave the cockpit. It is just another logical progression. The Helios tragedy where apparently a cabin crew member was walking about with a portable O2 system but unable to enter the cockpit is another situation where ground control could have saved hundreds. The reasons why this has not happened are many and various and to do with how aviation has evolved a rigid and inflexible regulatory process. Vested interests are many but it is mainly a sort of general inertia and no one has had the courage really to say come on guys wake up or more to the point, hear those who have been saying such. As usual there will be wails of technical difficulty and cost but it seems clear that it is going to be a small cost in the long-term and long over due for considerations. Maybe the risk of different sort of hostile take over is behind the resistance but we seem to find ways to trust our fellow men in many other situations. Why not? Read more…

While researching STOL airfoils, the Cuanda effect, as well as the Dyson bladeless fan (which uses a blown ring geometry airfoil) , as one does, I came upon an interesting article.   This I am sure will interest those of us who are into aerodynamics. I suppose that is most of us. This article elucidates a surprising understanding of low Reynolds Number flow by the ancient and medieval technologists, and also an insight into pre-industrial revolution industrialisation.

As published in Low-tech Magazine by Kris De Decker this is a truly amazing read follow the link below :

Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills

Please follow the link and leave a comment.

Today NASA’s ARES I rocket was successfully launched down range from Cape Canaveral. No pictures yet.  Given the shadows hanging over NASA’s plans this shot simply had to be perfect, and it was. The US manned space program should now go ahead. More tomorrow, a bit late from my coordinates !…..

Report blames brakes, pilot for E-2C mishap

Bad brakes and pilot error led to an E-2C Hawkeye accident in March in which an aircraft swerved off the runway and sustained more than $10 million in damage.

The Hawkeye was landing after a training flight at Chambers Field in Norfolk, Va., on March 19 when it skidded off the runway and broke its landing gear, according to a Judge Advocate General Manual Investigation report obtained by Navy Times. No one was injured.
From http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/10/navy_hawkeye_102509w/ Read more…