China stabbing Russia in the back?

 aircraft, Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire  No Responses »
Mar 102022
 

China has until now taken a largely “stick fingers in ears, hum real loud” approach to the Russia/Ukraine situation. And their reasoning is obvious: what Russia is doing to Ukraine, China wants to do to Taiwan. If Russia got away with it, China would doubtless launch their own invasion, secure in the knowledge that they too would be allowed to get away with it.

But Russia is having more difficulty than Putin seemed to expect. Not only are the Ukrainians putting up a lot more of a fight than expected (and the Russian military demonstrating a hell of a lot of incompetency), the world is laying an economic beatdown on Russia. This probably surprised the Russian leadership… and it’s clearly spooking the Chinese leadership. The sort of sanctions that are crippling the Russian economy would cause the Chinese economy to implode. And who knows? Perhaps the Chinese people would actually turn on their government. Can’t have that. And thus we get:

Russia says China refuses to supply aircraft parts after sanctions

It’s starting to look like China might be starting to side *against* the Russians, doubtless as a way to deflect attention and potential sanctions away from themselves. What’s ChiCom for “you’re on your own?”

 

And at the same time that Russia is finding it’s list of allies growing thin, they’re working to assure that nobody will ever do business with them again:

Russia draft law raises doubt over fate of $10 bln of jets

The Russian civil aviation industry has leased five hundred and some airliners from the likes of foreign companies Airbus and Boeing. Those foreign companies now want their airplanes back. The Russian government is proposing to effectively nationalize those aircraft… to steal them for the state. Great. So now you have yourself some free airliners. Good luck getting maintenance or replacement parts. Good luck getting new airliners in the future. Pretty sure *nobody* would be dumb enough to lease or rent you anything you could walk off with. Boeing and Airbus might be willing to outright sell you new airplanes… but likely only after you’ve paid for the ones you stole, plus interest.

Good job, morons.

 Posted by at 10:06 am

Recent ebay acquisitions

 aircraft, APR, awesomeness, drawings, eBay, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 062022
 

A few more items I’ve recently paid for that will appear on the APR Patreon/Monthly Historical Documents Program catalog:

1) General Dynamics report “Technical Proposal for Advanced Exhaust Nozzle System Concepts,” 1977 designs for advanced fighters

2) “NASA Aeronautics,” 1974

3) NASA Facts – “The Jupiter Pioneers”

4) “Cessna EV-37E STOL” report, 1964

5) Cessna 407A: report on the proposed but unbuilt 407A transport derivative of the T-37

6) Cessna AT-37E STOL: report on attack variant

7) Cessna YAT-37D counter-insurgency airplane report

Also purchased were a large number of vintage “Space World,” “Aviation News” and “Interavia” magazines for research and “Extras” purposes.

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 

 Posted by at 5:11 pm

Clear footage of a Hind getting shot down

 aircraft, Hmm..., news, rockets, russian empire, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 052022
 

Most videos showing helicopters, either Ukrainian or Russian, getting shot down are from such a long distance that you can’t really see anything. but the video below is reasonably clear; the Hind takes a Stinger (or perhaps a Javelin) straight to the engines and promptly plummets from the sky. A bad few seconds for the crew. Of course, the possibility always exists that this is yet another computer simulation, but it certainly looks realistic.

 Posted by at 7:32 am

December, January, February APR rewards

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, new products, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Mar 052022
 

Yeesh, I am *terrible* at advertising. Just realized I missed reporting on *several* months worth of rewards packages for APR patrons and Monthly Historical Documents program subscribers.

December 2021 rewards:

Document: “B-52G Advanced Configuration Mockup inspection,” Boeing presentation on the design of the then-new B-52G configuration

Document: “Performance Potential Hydrogen Fueled, Airbreathing Cruise Aircraft, Final report, Volume I, Summary” 1966 Convair report on hydrogen fueled hypersonic jetliners

Document: “Integral Launch and Reentry Logistics System” late-60’s Space Division of North American Rockwell presentation on very early Space Shuttle-type systems

Art: Large format McDonnell Douglas DC-10 cutaway

CAD Diagram: Convair MA-1 pod for B-58

January 2022 rewards:

Document: “The Configuration of the European Spaceplane Hermes,” 1990 conference paper on the unbuilt French spaceplane

Document: “Space Rescue Charts,” 1965 USAF presentation charts describing space “life rafts” and shelters

Document: Two nuclear-powered car brochures… Ford “Gyron” and Ford “Seattle-ite XXI”

Diagram: “AGM28 Hound Dog Missile,” North American Aviation informational graphic

CAD Diagram: Boeing MX-1965 missile

February 2022 Rewards:

Diagram: Boeing 720-022 model diagram, United Airlines configuration

Document: Aerojet Ordnance Company brochure, describes aircraft ammo

Document: “The Nova (Liquid) Vehicle a Preliminary Project Development Plan,” October 1961 NASA-MSFC report on facilities planning for the “Saturn C-8” configuration of the Nova vehicle

Document: “Ground Handling Equipment and Procedures for a X-15 Research Aircraft Project 1226,” 1955 North American Aviation report on the early B-36-launched design for the X-15

CAD Diagram: F-111 Escape capsule

 

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.



 

 Posted by at 1:20 am

B-70/SST report

 aircraft, APR, awesomeness, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, news, Patreon, projects, sales & specials  No Responses »
Mar 042022
 

An advantage of being an APR patron or Monthly Historical Documents Program subscriber is that I give subscribers/patrons the opportunity to help out with various crowdfunding opportunities. As probably surprises nobody, I buy a *lot* of aerospace documentation off of eBay. Most of the time, it comes straight out of my pocket… but sometimes, I call for assistance. Some items start off terribly expensive; some items start off inexpensive, but you can tell right off that they are going to explode in price in the end. Such was the case with a recent item, a vintage 1961 North American Aviation report on development plans for the supersonic transport. It was described as being 97 pages in length, was shown to include diagrams showing conversion of the B-70 into an SST testbed, and *could* be filled with all kinds of good stuff. The initial bid was *cheap.* But I knew it would go for much more, so I contacted my patrons/subscribers and brought on board enough pledges to make a last minute kinda-nutty bid. A bid that won, but not by a whole lot. But won it did, so not all of those funders will receive a complete set of high-rez scans. Some pledged to contribute more than the price I’d asked for, which turned out to be very helpful in getting that successful last-minute bid. Those higher-level funders will get some extra rewards.

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 

 

 

 Posted by at 3:41 pm

And there’s confirmation that the Russians trashed the Mriya

 AARRRGH, aircraft, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., history, news, politics, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 032022
 

UPDATE: A better look, courtesy Russian state TV:

—————

Here it is, on fire. You can see the blue, yellow and white nose laying cocked at an angle.

Good job on deNazyfying the Antonov 225. Bah.

 Posted by at 4:19 pm

EA-6B diagram

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, drawings, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon  No Responses »
Mar 022022
 

I got the gigantic EA-6B diagram scanned. This was done without chopping up the original paper; but the end result is a nearly two gigabyte file. Manipulating it was a challenge, requiring sometimes five or more minutes to carry out a single command, but:

1)I was able to chop it up into three half-scale sections

2) I was able to scale down the whole thing to a single 48% scale version that I was able to convert to grayscale and clean up. I present a vastly smallerized version of the original color scan and the grayscale cleaned version, together with a full-scale crop of the refueling probe from the ~48% version. The intent here is to include a half-scale version in a future APR Patreon/Subscription rewards voting-catalog. The two-gig full rez? Not quite sure what to do about that yet. i will probably attempt to convert it to grayscale and clean it up for archival purposes, but at nearly 60,000 pixels wide, it’s just simply *huge.*

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.



 

 Posted by at 12:54 am

Soon to appear in Ukraine

 aircraft, awesomeness, news, politics, russian empire, youtube  No Responses »
Feb 282022
 

A few diverse subjects:

A vapor cone forming around an F-35 at an air show last year. It’s an impressive shot (that I can’t seem to embed in the blog post… just click on it, it’s worth a few seconds). It would be unfortunate if the F-35 gets its combat debut in the skies over Ukraine… and then Belarus… and then Moscow…

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUku2KsJBO8/

In other news, non-Ukrainians are lining up to go there and kick Putin’s ass:

And sooner or later, appearing in Ukraine – hopefully – will be the defiant FU defenders of “Snake Island:”

The defiant soldiers of Snake Island are actually ‘alive and well,’ says Ukraine’s navy

 

 

 Posted by at 6:13 pm

Firing a Fliegerfaust

 aircraft, awesomeness, Crazy, history, rockets, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Feb 272022
 

It’s more relevant than ever: home expedient man portable anti-aircraft missile systems. It is as yet undetermined how successful (or not) manpads have been at swatting the aircraft buzzing over Ukraine, but it’s likely a safe bet that solutions dating back to World War II are unlikely to be terribly effective. Nevertheless, as wonky as this thing is, it is undeniably entertaining as hell. The “fliegerfaust” was a late-war German desperation weapon designed to bring down low flying aircraft by launching a swarm of small unguided rockets. It is unlikely that this sort of thing would have *ever* worked against Shturmoviks or Jugs, much less against Hinds or Frogfoots… but it still seems to be unreasonably *fun.*

 Posted by at 3:44 pm

Antonov AN-225 Mriya: probably lost

 AARRRGH, aircraft, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., history, news, politics, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 272022
 

The Russians seem to have launched a strike on the hangar housing the Mriya.

Note that they don’t actually show images of the trashed Antonov. So until there’s a body, it’s still alive… but it looks bad.

As with a *LOT* of things being broadcast, use skepticism. Still, note the helpful red lines scribbled onto the screencap in the lower photos:

 

The Antonov company themselves have not confirmed the condition of the aircraft:

 

 Posted by at 1:31 pm
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