This wonderful Wylam drawing of the Wright Flyer from the Air Age Archive will answer a lot of technical questions about how wing warping works and the geometry of things like the flying/landing wires and the dimensions of the canard and rudder surfaces. The three-view is so complete a model could easily be built from [...]
1884 – Birth of Claude Honoré Desiré Dornier, German airplane builder and founder of Dornier Flugzeugwerke. 1915 – The U.S. Navy contracts with the Connecticut Aircraft Co. for its first airship. 1940 – The Allies lose 110 aircraft – 70 British Fairey Battles and Bristol Blenheims and 40 French planes – on one day in a disastrous attempt to bomb bridges over the River Meuse. 1973 – Skylab, the United [...]
WFMY News 2 of Greensboro, N.C., recently took a rare look at aviation innovation inside Honda Aircraft Co. The headquarters is home of what’s known as the fastest and most fuel-efficient business jet on the planet. Honda Aircraft President and CEO Michimasa Fujino designed the seven-seat HondaJet. ”Every time I see this airplane, this is art,” he said. “I [...]
Drones in the tens of thousands will be in the skies by 2030, the Federal Aviation Administration predicts. But where some may fear precision weapons or flying spy cameras, Steve Markofski sees flying tractors. Markofski, a new business planner for Yamaha, hopes to repeat in the United States the success that the company has had in [...]
One of only four surviving members of the 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force was honored Monday night with a concert performance by students of Lovinggood Middle School in Powder Springs, Ga., northwest of Atlanta. Maj. Edward Stiles Sr. is the honoree, is the grandfather of Lovinggood’s assistant band director Michelle Koenig. [...]
The U.S. Navy plans to make aviation history on Tuesday by catapulting an unmanned jet off an aircraft carrier for the first time, testing a long-range, stealthy, bat-winged plane that represents a jump forward in drone technology. The Northrop Grumman X-47B, which can carry the equivalent of two precision-guided bombs and fly 2,000 nautical miles [...]
By Steve Pace It was first publicly known as the A-11, then the YF-12A, but it actually began life in total secrecy as the AF-12. We’ll call it the YF-12A because that’s what its buyer, the U.S. Air Force, designated it and it was just one of the many derivatives of the Lockheed-built CIA-funded A-12 [...]
The F-35 Approaches U.S. Service By Robert F. Dorr Col. Andrew J. “Drifter” Toth, commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing, the “Nomads” at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, was talking about the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter when he acknowledged a flight restriction on the airplane. “We’re not allowed to fly within 25 miles [...]
