Radar gives range and no identity. Infrared gives bearing and no range. Deciding that both describe one aeroplane is the whole of sensor fusion, and the Pentagon test record shows how hard it was.
FAR Part 103: The Aircraft You Can Fly With No License
Thirteen sections, about a thousand words, and no pilot certificate, no medical, no registration and no airworthiness certificate. What FAR Part 103 actually allows, and the four numbers it costs.
Short Sperrin: Britain’s Insurance-Policy Nuclear Bomber
Share this story Everyone remembers Britain's three V-bombers: the Vickers Valiant, the Avro Vulcan and the Handley Page Victor. Almost nobody remembers the fourth. It had straight wings, engines stacked one on top of the other, and a job description that amounted to:...
Dassault Étendard IV: France’s First Carrier Strike Jet
Share this story In the mid-1950s Dassault built a small strike jet that nobody wanted. The French Air Force was not interested, and neither were the NATO air forces it had been pitched to. Then the French Navy took a look at a bigger, more powerful version, and...
Vickers Viscount: The World’s First Turboprop Airliner
Share this story On 29 July 1950, fourteen paying passengers boarded an aircraft at RAF Northolt, west of London, and flew to Paris Le Bourget. Nothing about the trip was unusual except the engines. It was the first scheduled airline flight by any turbine-powered...
Tailwheel Endorsement: What It Takes to Fly a Taildragger
Share this story Most pilots today learn on aeroplanes with a nosewheel. They taxi like a shopping trolley that wants to go straight. Then one day they climb into a Piper Cub, a Super Decathlon or a P-51 Mustang, and discover that the little wheel at the back changes...
How a Helicopter Flies: Collective, Cyclic and the Tail Rotor
Share this story An aeroplane has it easy. Point it down a runway, let the wings do the work, and a few simple controls take care of the rest. A helicopter has to make its own wind. Its wings are the rotor blades, whirling overhead at a few hundred revolutions per...
Alpha Jet: The Franco-German Trainer That Went to War
Share this story Ask a Patrouille de France pilot about the jet they fly, and you may get an unexpectedly modest answer. They all come from the Rafale or the Mirage 2000, one of them told British forces broadcaster BFBS this year, and by comparison the little red,...
FAA Controller Pay Raise: NATCA Deal Unlocks 2.8% After Months
Share this story America's air traffic controllers are finally getting the raise Congress approved for them in April. On Friday, 16 October, the US Department of Transportation and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) announced a deal that releases...
Austrian Eurofighters Deploy to Klagenfurt for the 20th Time
Share this story At lunchtime on Friday, 16 October, a flight of Austrian Air Force Eurofighters touched down at Klagenfurt, the civil airport of the southern state of Carinthia. Until Monday they will not train, not fly displays and not do circuits. They will sit on...
GA Telesis Parts Out Its First Boeing 737 MAX 8 for Spares
Share this story Airliners are usually broken up for parts when they are old, tired and worth more as spares than as aeroplanes. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 is none of those things. It is one of the two most in-demand narrowbodies on the planet, with airlines waiting years...
Gripen Flight Control Computer: Saab Wins SEK 1.3 Billion Order
Share this story Every second a Saab Gripen is in the air, a computer is quietly stopping it from tumbling out of the sky. The Gripen was designed to be aerodynamically unstable, because an unstable jet turns harder and faster, and it only flies straight because its...
E-130J Phoenix II: Navy Takes Delivery of Its First TACAMO C-130J
Share this story It does not look like a doomsday aircraft yet. Tail number 510 is a plain grey Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules, four propellers and a long fuselage, sitting on the ramp at Marietta, Georgia. But on 15 October the US Navy accepted it as the...
Tesla’s Flying Roadster: SpaceX Thrusters, a Flip and an FAA Puzzle
Share this story The car drove up a ramp that curled over until it was hanging upside down, stuck to the concrete by its own suction. Then it ran off the end into thin air, fired its thrusters, flipped itself upright and settled onto its wheels. That was the opening...
F-22 Commands a YFQ-44A Fury Drone in Flight for the First Time
Share this story Somewhere over the Mojave Desert, in the first week of October, a Raptor pilot did something no fighter pilot had done before: sending a new mission plan to a combat drone flying alongside, and letting the drone take it from there. The US Air Force...
Tom Morgenfeld: The F-117 Pilot Who Landed Without a Nosewheel
On 27 January 1982, the nosewheel of a top-secret F-117 bounced down the runway at Area 51 as it took off. Lockheed test pilot Tom Morgenfeld was told to eject. He finished his test flight instead and landed on the bare strut.
Sky Shield II: When RAF Vulcans Slipped Through North America’s Air Defences
On 14 October 1961 North America grounded its airliners for twelve hours while NORAD fought a mock nuclear attack. Eight RAF Vulcans played the Soviet bombers, flying higher than anyone else, and most of them were never touched.