AggieBand2004 said:

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Hardly counts as airplane porn, but the biggies are lining up to leave

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porn equivalent of the awkward waiting around during the 8 on 1 scene.

And the 1 is also closer to a 1 than a 10

jkag89 said:

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I can see a US Army Ranger Battalion exiting those birds if they would drop down to about 500 ft AGL.

AggieBand2004 said:

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Random pic just taken at work, but I always get a kick at how the 777's engine nacelles seem the same size as the 717's fuselage

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Repeated because scientific method and stuff

Nerd alert: there is no 717 in the previous picture

Eh. ERJ... 717... size matters, and nobody cares about the little guys

Nerd alert: there is no ERJ in that picture. At least not the first picture. Ok I'm done

Goose said:

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So ugly and scary it's beautiful.

harleyds2 said:

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B-1. I think you mean jack oliver. Retired O6. Friend of mine. He is 96. Had lunch with him Friday.

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The Olivers and my family came from Mississippi together in the late 1800s. I dropped by a few months ago and had coffee with him.

HummingbirdSaltalamacchia said:

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Need a little more love for the Big Ugly Fat ****er, In my biased opinion (bc my dad flew it for 15 years) one of the sexiest damn planes imaginable:

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My dad was triple qualified in BUFFs and a master navigator/instructor.

Pooh Ah said:

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These are really neat in person. Flew a 17 down to New Zealand to swap tails for the guys that are ice qualified. Those hercs fly out of the same field, saw one taxi with the skis pulled up and flew one of their turboprops back to the states with us

NO. No no no no no. A million times no.

AFSOC has 3 of these, I believe. Looks like a lot of fun.

B-1 -

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My dad was triple qualified in BUFFs and a master navigator/instructor.

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Just curious what "triple qualified" refers to - Nav, Radar, and ... ?

Cool story. I was in the 17th TAS at Elmendorf (post ski birds, but some of the old timers were still there from those days - the D models went to the NY ANG). One of my buddies at Pope went Guard and would up commanding that NYANG squadron and eventually was the General in charge of the the entire NY Guard Bureau - great stories about Antarctica.

How long were these in service? Guess the variable wing thing became obsolete?

Hey Nav said:

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B-1 -

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My dad was triple qualified in BUFFs and a master navigator/instructor.

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Just curious what "triple qualified" refers to - Nav, Radar, and ... ?

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Radar, nav, and weapons as I recall. Old school weapons needed lots of TLC and prep launching/dropping.

Quote:

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Radar, nav, and weapons as I recall. Old school weapons needed lots of TLC and prep launching/dropping.

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Very cool. He was one of my people.

But BUFF doesn't have to be edited by staff.

Big Ugly Fat Fella...

redline248 said:

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How long were these in service? Guess the variable wing thing became obsolete?

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Mid-sixties to the mid-nineties in the USAF. Basically Vietnam through the first Gulf War. The Aussies used then until around 2010.

A lot of the theories and techniques used in the F-111 were used in designing the B-1. The obvious ones are the variable geometry wings and terrain following radar, but a couple of the early B-1s actually used a single "escape module" instead of individual ejection seats like the F-111. The module turned out to be too big with the 4 crew members in the Bone so it was ditched.

The main idea behind variable geometry wings is to have good high speed performance (swept back) while still being able to control the jet at slower approach/landing speeds (swept forward) . Jets like the F-100 and F-104 were notoriously hard to control when landing. I think a large contributing factor for why there aren't more swing wing jets (besides complexity) is the shift in design philosophy from bombers relying on speed and low altitude to relying on stealth. The F-117 and B-2 don't need to go fast to reach their targets so they don't need radical wing sweeps that compromise landing performance.

Fly by wire also makes it easier to fly inherently unstable aircraft. The software and controls are much simpler and easier to implement than mechanically variable wings. The F-117 and B-2 are almost unflyable without it because of their geometry.

The F-117 as a concept was around for quite some time (based on a Soviet paper from the 60's), but until the advent of fly by wire and computer assisted controls, it was considered unrealistic because of its unstable aerodynamics.

Flying wings are an old idea too. They go back to the 1910's. They had a lot of advantages like low drag, but flying them was a *****. None of the designs ever caught on. Fly by wire controls solved that issue in the B-2.