Aviation World, History & Legends
In September 1949, the largest land-based aircraft in the world took to the skies over southwest England. The Bristol Brabazon was a colossus — its 230-foot wingspan exceeded that of a modern Boeing 747. It was powered by eight radial engines coupled in pairs to drive...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Somewhere outside the Siberian town of Abakan, in the Republic of Khakassia, there is a packed-snow airstrip about 200 metres long. It is the only way to get into a village called Nizhny Kurlugash in the winter months. The strip is serviced, twice a week, by a...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Beauty in aviation is a real engineering property. The aircraft that pilots, photographers, and aviation historians consistently call the most beautiful are not pretty by accident — they are pretty because every line, every fairing, every panel break is doing work....
Aviation World, History & Legends
On the back of an early Boeing 737-200’s Pratt & Whitney JT8D engine, just behind the exhaust plug, are two big curved aluminium-honeycomb panels. In normal flight they wrap around the rear of the engine and look like the back end of the nacelle itself. On...
Aviation World, History & Legends
In Ulyanovsk on the Volga, in 1973, a Soviet-Italian film crew built a road. Not a real road for cars. A road-coloured runway, marked up with traffic paint, complete with painted Lada-grey lane lines and roadside signs in Cyrillic, all of it laid down across a reserve...
Aviation World, History & Legends
A .30 calibre bullet hits a fuel tank at 800 metres per second. The aluminium skin punctures. A jet of avgas blows out under pressure, into the slipstream, towards a hot turbocharger exhaust. The aircraft, on most tanks built before 1939, is now thirty seconds from...
English
Recent Comments