The General Airplane Thread

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KM964
While we can all agree 2020 was less than ideal, I managed to get one trip in before the pandemic blew up - to South Florida. MIA and FLL always provide some fun spotting oppurtunities, and OPF is a nice place to see some aircraft on death row.
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I found that the parking garage at FLL is a great pace to spot aircraft for the north (old) runway.



The other spot is the little paring area by I-95 and Perimeter Road. Of course, if they land on Runway 10L instead of 28, the view isn't so great.



Some shots from the last 8-9 months:

United's Boeing 737-800 (N732283) Landing at Dulles while I refueled by rental car:


Southwest 737-800 (N8678E) about to take off from Atlanta:


Hey...US Airways still lives as a special livery on an Airbus A321 for American Airlines (N578UW)


Silver's ATR 72-500 (N402SV) at Huntsville:


Usually a telephoto lens doesn't work so well from a distorted airplane window, but I think it worked out pretty good at roughly 2000-3000 feet...


KM964
EVA Air Hello Kitty, bringing in a bunch of PPE from Taipei. EVA has dedicated cargo service to DFW as it is, so not sure why they brought a passenger 77W but I'm not complaining.
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We've had a passenger TUI B788 land a few times from Brussels to Huntsville, which I can only presume is cargo. There's a decent amount of cargo through our otherwise un-busy airport, DSV has a "hub" here so Atlas and CargoLux 747Fs aren't terribly unusual sights.

wfooshee
So, note every airliner's tail number you fly on, and watch the site...
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Working on it!
 
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Ever since I have enlisted, I was lucky enough to see various F18s, F35, and Helos. Before I left Virginia; I went to an aviation museum and took some shots of the planes there.

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it's a week late but-
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2...ng-a-small-engine-plane-crash-near-lake-hood/

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The Anchorage Police Department says a small engine plane crashed near Lake Hood Sunday around 4 p.m. Sunday.

APD says one person suffered minor injuries in the crash. All lanes of Spenard Road were closed for over an hour but have since reopened. The crash happened on the 4900 block of Spenard Road.

Police say the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
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pics from Facebook
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In the south of England, we've essentially been on lockdown since the start of November. Those restrictions were finally eased at the start of this week, and in the last few days I've seen and photographed some interesting aircraft.

Last Monday I had a trip to the US Air Force bases at RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall. I had hoped to see the F-15C wearing special D-Day markings, but unfortunately it didn't fly. Some of the based aircraft do still carry noseart from their last deployment though.

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On Thursday morning, an E-4B Nightwatch brought the US Secretary of Defense to the UK for talks:

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And the last two weekends I was fortunate to get very close to a newly-restored Spitfire. PT879 is a Mk.IX that was sent to Russia as part of the lend-lease programme during the Second World War. It crashed during a dogfight with only 29 hours on the airframe, and flew again for the first time in November 2020. She is now back home with her owner at my local airfield.

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I showed that to a coworker, starting with the head-on shot after landing, waited for his reaction when it taxied over to the people! :lol:
 
Surprised this never made the thread.

An old 737-200, the JT8D-engined model, ditched just off the cost of Honolulu the other day at 1 am. The pilots were rescued and survived but it was not a clean landing. The plane broke up to some extent, sank, and the pilots held onto bits of wreckage and cargo as the Coast Guard helicopter arrived. You'll hear a lot of what sounds like miscommunication in this video - I'm not personally familiar with Honolulu ATC but apparently they operate multiple frequencies together at night resulting in blocked messages often.

 
And to be clear, this was an engine failure, the aircraft was not a MAX, and this had nothing to do with the issues the MAX has been going through.
 
There was an accident at KTRK, Truckee-Tahoe airport yesterday. Challenger 605 with three people onboard. Rest in peace.

Here's the audio and radar track:



Investigators are going to do their jobs. Based on the radio and radar track compared to the approach plate, it looks to me like everything was normal. My own speculation, because I personally have never flown into Truckee and am unfamiliar with the terrain and distances involved, was concern over an obstacle off the end of runway 11. This peak is above the plane's last reported altitude but that's not uncommon - I would expect that hill to be outside even a jet's landing pattern, likely a mile or more away. I circled what I was worried about in the chart below. The freeway near the airport is likely a local visual cue that pilots follow, for example for this plane's circling approach. That's also very common. The crash site was very close to the airport, too close for a safe turn, so this may be what many people are speculating as a stall due to banking too hard to capture the final approach. That's a relatively common factor in landing accidents like this.

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You can follow this chart with the audio and radar track in the video, and you can see that the plane was flying this approach to runway 20, then broke off the black approach course near the point called BOFFS to begin their circling approach to runway 11. This would've taken them near that 6817ft obstacle which should be further away than it looks on the chart, and based on the crash site likely was not a factor like I feared it was. If you check Google Maps you'll also see that leaving BOFFS on the course the did would make the freeway a good visual reference to follow toward the airport which makes it easy to stay inside that obstacle.
 
So Florida has over 100 "specialty" plates you can get for your car. The extra fees for these plates go to one charity, fund, or other support function related to the tag's subject. You can support a scholarship fund at your favorite university, or a charity supported by your favorite sports team, or maybe some environmental concern like wildlife, turtles, the ocean itself.

Last fall I saw ads on FB from the Naval Aviation Museum for a new specialty tag honoring the Blue Angels, who are based at Pensacola NAS, where the museum is. They were selling vouchers to pre-order the tag, and if they sold 3,000 vouchers, the tags would go into production. Apparently the lead time is significant, as I got the email saying they'd met the 3,000 goal in January, but the tags were only released this month. The tags support the museum, and aybody here who's seen any of my airshow posts knows how much I love the Blue Angels! Anyway, I got two, one for each car.

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W3H5
I have to assume that’s the American equivalent of the Red Arrows. If so, the awesomeness is immeasurable.
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Yes and no. I think the Thunderbirds would be considered slightly more the equivalent being part of the US Air Force like the Red Arrows are part of the RAF. The Blue Angels are the US Navy's aerobatic team.
 
The Blue Angels are the Navy's demonstration squadron, and the Thunderbirds are the team from the Air Force. Both teams fly a 4-ship main formation (the diamond) and two solos, with the solos occasionally joining for 5- and 6-ship formations.

The Thunderbirds fly F-16s and the Blue Angels just transitioned from Hornets to Super Hornets this year. The Blue Angels Also fly a demonstration of their C-130 before the jets fly, demonstrating a low transition max performance takeoff, several steeply banked turns, a high-speed flat pass, and a steep descent for landing, about 30 degrees nose down, to demonstrate minimum exposure at low altitude for a combat zone landing. I don't know why he cut it out of the video, but after the low flight down the runway on takeoff, the pilot pulls the C-130 about 40, maybe 45 degrees nose up for a rapid climb, then levels off as the airspeed drops at the top. They get negative gs in the cockpit! (Well, not seriously negative, but lose stuff floats up!)


The Blue Angels fly the tightest photo pass of any team in the world, with the number 3 jet's canopy 18 inches (!) under number 1's wingtip!
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EDIT to add this image:
In an atrium of the museum at Pensacola Naval Air Station, they have the retired A-4 Skyhawks suspended in the diamond formation. The plan was originally to have them in the photo pass separation, but (according to the tour guide's spiel) the building's structure wouldn't hold them; they had to spread out the weight. Personally I think they could have done it, but the formation looks bad except from the airshow crowd viewpoint, as in the photo pass, 2 and 4 are offset quite a ways to the right so that in perspective, they look like they are under 1 and 3, even tighter than is possible without overlapping. 3's canopy is under 1's wingtip, and 4's canopy is under 2's wingtip, with 2 and 4 offset so that the wingtips of 2 and 3 don't bang each other.

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Speaking of airplanes, I'm about to go burn about 70 gallons of leaded fuel for no reason other than to meet some arbitrary requirements. I'll be driving this tractor above the farms of Ohio.

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If you look closely you can see almost all of the oil that leaks out of the right engine.
 
The other day 2 old military jets flew over really low past my house and I just happened to be looking out of the window. Too quick to grab a picture but I've only just decided to check what they were.

According to flight tracker they were BAC 167 Strikemasters flying at 250 kts at 300 ft. :scared: The last I saw of them they were banking quite hard at 200ft and apparently they dropped to as low as 50ft! Not quite sure how accurate that is.
 
Swagger897
At least it's an Aztec lol 😅
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Apparently finding repair and replacement parts is getting tough for these things. I actually chose not to earn my multi rating in this plane because it was down for maintenance for quite a while this past winter. But Aztecs are really popular for certain commercial ops like aerial survey because they can easily haul the load of camera equipment and whatnot - I know of one survey company that owns about 40 Aztecs. I don't doubt that they're hoarding repair parts to maintain their fleet, causing a problem for flight schools who usually only have one or two.
 

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