Our flying club got an exclusive tour of the new bigger 747 freighter last night, at San Bernadino. had to get a shot of the "EXPERIMENTAL" sign over the door. It's insanely huge and while I don't usually have a lot of interest in this type of airplane, extreme engineering appeals to me in all forms.
They had been doing maximum rotation trials, where they bolt two big blocks high density organic composite - hardwood- to the back of the airplane and drag the tail all the way trough take off, leaving charred bits of wood all over! Sometimes it's nice to see a little low-tech among all the multi million test equipment. The fuselage had about 20 test engineer's station each with four foot high computer tower and spewing a mass of wiring, which we were not allowed to photograph.
I am always amazed what an aerodynamically dirty mess the wing becomes in its landing configuration, with bits detaching themselves all over the place, enormous screwjacks revealing themselves, boat-size fairings drooping away etc.
The sheer human effort that goes into one of these things is mindboggling
$350,000,000 and you can have one.
They had been doing maximum rotation trials, where they bolt two big blocks high density organic composite - hardwood- to the back of the airplane and drag the tail all the way trough take off, leaving charred bits of wood all over! Sometimes it's nice to see a little low-tech among all the multi million test equipment. The fuselage had about 20 test engineer's station each with four foot high computer tower and spewing a mass of wiring, which we were not allowed to photograph.
I am always amazed what an aerodynamically dirty mess the wing becomes in its landing configuration, with bits detaching themselves all over the place, enormous screwjacks revealing themselves, boat-size fairings drooping away etc.
The sheer human effort that goes into one of these things is mindboggling
$350,000,000 and you can have one.
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