Thanks for the link to the Brian Schul story. It’s clear that Schul loved his SR.

Re helicopters, I taught with a guy who attended an avionics/aviation engineering school. On a trip we took together he noted the same about helicopters it’s a miracle they fly.

As far as finding the blackbox, I am quite certain it will be found this is good practice for the Navy in locating vital things on the ocean floor. A book by the name of Blind Man’s Bluff is a fascinating read on the underwater skirmishes we fought with the Soviet Union — in the areas of subs penetrating Soviet waters, locating critical items (such as lost submarines both US & Soviet), and espionage.

Thanks.

W.

Bell’s Chief Test Pilot Jack Woolums had a brainstorm. Whenever he saw a training flight, he would slip on the top half of a gorilla suit, put a derby on his head, pull up alongside them and make like Groucho Marx with a cigar.

Now if YOU are a 19 year old aviation cadet in 1942 are YOU going to report;” There I was at 18000 feet when suddenly alongside me was an airplane without a propeller being flown by a gorilla wearing a derby and waving a cigar.”?????????????

And if any spies are in the vicinity are they going to believe that tale??????????

And I just happen to know one of the guys who
obligingly failed to see that apparition.
He was busy strafing a Japanese Cruiser in the Mojave Desert at the time.

Buddy, if you can find a picture of the “Muroc Maru”, I’ll call off Beevo and
restore your Teasip standing.

Seriously though, reopening the old Silver Spur Dancehall to go with the current Silver Spur Dude Ranch is a bit newsworthy, I would say.

So the margin above stall at max Mach# and max cruise alt is more like 100kt indicated. Plus there will be an ample safety margin between Vmo and the critical Mach # (the speed at which airflow first becomes supersonic), maybe 20 to 30 kt, before mach buffet would start. In practice the cruise is probably more like .8 for fuel economy reasons, which is a slower indicated airspeed but that means the margin below Mach crit is more, so the coffin size doesn’t change.

So “coffin corner” in an airliner is actually well over 100kt wide, not 28 kt. The 28 kt applies to airplanes like the U2 which cruise at 70000 and have a low Mach Crit.

What IS a problem at that altitude is that the low indicated airspeed (cruising at 230-250) is close to a point called “back side of the power curve” where decreases in speed require increases in power to maintain the level. If speed starts to decay, and you’re maxed out on thrust, you have no choice but to go down and convert altitude to speed. If the airplane is on autopilot and pitching up to hold altitude in this condition, and the crew is not paying attention to the decaying speed, the autopilot will take the aircraft right up to the stall warning threshold on its own. A Pinnacle airlines crash of a CRJ200 was due to just that.

Cheers

John

The Bell XP59A –Autumn of 1942.

The craft flew so smooth the instruments kept sticking –so one of the field mechanics had the bright idea to install a two dollar doorbell ringer in the dash panel –which provided enough vibration to unstick the needles. If the test pilot needed to know something, i guess he had to ring the doorbell & hope a gremlin didn’t answer.

Whenever they had to move the secret prototype along the roads they made it wear a big old wooden propeller. It already looked like an Airacobra so i’m sure that ruse worked just fine.

Here it is (Go Longhorns!):

http://www.videosift.com/video/Americas-First-Jet-Flight-October-1942