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Aug. 1st, 2009
Writer's Block: Crystal Ball
Aug. 1st, 2009 11:51 am[Error: unknown template qotd]
I've been waiting for the next World War to break out over the last three or four Augusts. You don't want me to play this game.
I've been waiting for the next World War to break out over the last three or four Augusts. You don't want me to play this game.
I Bombed In Dandridge
Aug. 1st, 2009 03:26 pmYes, bombs. The kind they drop from warplanes. Nothing actually exploded, but I did get some exercize defusing a dilemma.
In my research addiction Google-roaming, I came upon an article about the IML Group (a team of aircraft designers in New Zealand at the end of the Seventies) who had created a set of warplane proposals under the name ADDAX. None of these were able to get funding for construction (one [happy or unhappy, depending on where you are in the world] fact about New Zealand is that it's too far away from the population pressure of conflict rampant elsewhere on Planet Earth and is surrounded by good-buddy nations that will never threaten it). But I did find scaled drawings for some of them. The Addax-S strike fighter is a wild blended-body design, almost like the Captain Power or Buck Rogers fighters from their respective TVB series. I wanted to figure statistics from the drawing...but the article where I found it had no further information.
And then I noticed that the drawing had the plane armed with BOMBS.
The U.S. standardized its bomb design in the 1950s after years of chaotic development programs and the ultimate obsolescence of the WW2 "box-tail" bomb...which was okay for B-17 and B-29 internal bays but getting to be a problem with delivery from high-performance jets. The central figure was Ed Heinemann, the chief designer for Douglas Aircraft. The shape was the same basic slim teardrop he was using for auxillary tanks on the A-4 Skyhawk and F-6 Skyray. It was easily scalable, and easily adaptible. And, in the case of those into scale models, a workable yardstick.
I go into my spare parts boxes and find a box of add-on armament parts and their instruction sheets. I compare what I have to my printout and decide that the plane in the picture has 1000 lb bombs strapped to the underside. I measure my 1/72nd scale 1000 lb bomb: 37mm. Bombs on drawing: 26mm. Scale of drawing printout: about 1/100. Made sense because of the size of the engines and the cockpit relative to it all.
While it's impossible to learn everything about something from just one feature, there are ways to learn quite a lot.
In my research addiction Google-roaming, I came upon an article about the IML Group (a team of aircraft designers in New Zealand at the end of the Seventies) who had created a set of warplane proposals under the name ADDAX. None of these were able to get funding for construction (one [happy or unhappy, depending on where you are in the world] fact about New Zealand is that it's too far away from the population pressure of conflict rampant elsewhere on Planet Earth and is surrounded by good-buddy nations that will never threaten it). But I did find scaled drawings for some of them. The Addax-S strike fighter is a wild blended-body design, almost like the Captain Power or Buck Rogers fighters from their respective TVB series. I wanted to figure statistics from the drawing...but the article where I found it had no further information.
And then I noticed that the drawing had the plane armed with BOMBS.
The U.S. standardized its bomb design in the 1950s after years of chaotic development programs and the ultimate obsolescence of the WW2 "box-tail" bomb...which was okay for B-17 and B-29 internal bays but getting to be a problem with delivery from high-performance jets. The central figure was Ed Heinemann, the chief designer for Douglas Aircraft. The shape was the same basic slim teardrop he was using for auxillary tanks on the A-4 Skyhawk and F-6 Skyray. It was easily scalable, and easily adaptible. And, in the case of those into scale models, a workable yardstick.
I go into my spare parts boxes and find a box of add-on armament parts and their instruction sheets. I compare what I have to my printout and decide that the plane in the picture has 1000 lb bombs strapped to the underside. I measure my 1/72nd scale 1000 lb bomb: 37mm. Bombs on drawing: 26mm. Scale of drawing printout: about 1/100. Made sense because of the size of the engines and the cockpit relative to it all.
While it's impossible to learn everything about something from just one feature, there are ways to learn quite a lot.