Your Momma Is So Fat ...

 

Effective Jan. 27, Southwest Airlines will start assigning seats. Also on that date Southwest Airlines will require plus size travelers who can’t fit within the armrests of their seat to pay for an extra one in advance.

Don’t Look Out The Windows !!!

Passengers on board a plane at Milan Bergamo Airport have described the horrifying scenes after a man took his own life by jumping into the jet's engine.
They recalled hearing a dreadful noise before being warned, 'Don't look out the windows' as the nightmare unfolded on Tuesday morning.
Andrea Russo, 35, from Calcinate near Bergamo, who was not a passenger or staff member at the airport, entered the terminal in his red Fiat 500 car before abandoning the vehicle and running into the building.

He arrived at the airport without a ticket and made his way to a restricted area leading to the runway before two Border Police on duty attempted to stop him.
He managed to free himself from the officers before running on to the tarmac and 'throwing himself into one of the two turbofans' on the Volotea Airbus A319 flight V73511 from Milan to Asturias.
One Spanish passenger on board at the time of the incident told La Nueva España: 'Suddenly, we heard a noise and a bang.
'Some people saw something through the window and put their hands to their heads. They told us it was best not to look out, because what was happening was very unpleasant.'
The woman, from Llanera in Asturias, described how the plane had just repositioned on a reserve runway and was taxiing slowly toward the take-off strip.
'We don't know exactly what happened,' she said.
Moments later, the pilot addressed the passengers in a 'shaken' voice, informing them that there had been a 'very serious problem involving a person.'
Police sources said the man had a history of 'drug problems'.
A  witness to the horrific incident told Italian news outlet la Republica that he saw the man running away from a steward and towards the aircraft.
'I wasn't on that plane, I was boarding another plane next to it and we saw everything', he said.
'He ran towards the right side. The he ran and [was] sucked by the left side motor.'
Following the incident, airliner Voltea took to X, stating: 'We regret to confirm flight V73511 from BGY-OVD was involved in an incident at Milan-Bergamo Airport at 10:35h.
'One person not onboard and not affiliated with the company was seriously injured.
'All 154 passengers and 6 crew are safe. A new flight is scheduled for 15:55'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14888423/Dont-look-windows-Passengers-reveal-horror-inside-plane-man-killed-jumping-jet-engine.html

Grounded By That Small Hole ... SMDH

Back in the day, especially during WWII, they would have packed something in that hole and slapped 100 mile an hour tape over it or screwed a curved piece of metal over that and got it back in the air, ASAP. They said this plane won't be back in the air until Monday.

These Canadair CL-415 firefighting aircraft aren't even owned by the U.S. They are leased from Ontario, Canada. $5.5 million to lease two Super Scoopers for the autumn months. The county also pays $1,100 per hour to operate the aircraft.

The Kopp–Etchells Effect

It’s named after Cpl. Benjamin Kopp (1.20.1988 - 7.18.2009 - U.S. Army Ranger) and Cpl. Joseph Etchells (3.23.1987 - 7.19.2009 - British Army), two soldiers killed in combat in Afghanistan in July 2009.

 
The Kopp-Etchells effect is a result of dust striking helicopter blades as they take off or land at night, causing a bright 'halo' effect around the spinning rotor disk. When helicopters pass through dust storms, contact of the particles with the rotating blades produces either sparks or static electricity.
The phenomenon has been described as ‘electro-luminescence’, halo effect’, and ‘corona effect’.

 

Helicopter rotors are fitted with abrasion shields along their leading edges to protect the blades. These abrasion strips are often made of titanium, stainless steel, or nickel alloys, which are very hard, but not as hard as sand. When a helicopter flies low to the ground in sandy environments, sand can strike the metal abrasion strip and cause erosion, which produces a visible corona or halo around the rotor blades. The effect is caused by the pyrophoric oxidation of the ablated metal particles. In this way, the Kopp–Etchells effect is similar to the sparks made by a grinder, which are also due to pyrophoricity. When a speck of metal is chipped off the rotor, it is heated by rapid oxidation. This occurs because its freshly exposed surface reacts with oxygen to produce heat. If the particle is sufficiently small, then its mass is small compared to its surface area, and so heat is generated faster than it can be dissipated. This causes the particle to become so hot that it reaches its ignition temperature. At that point, the metal continues to burn freely.
Abrasion strips made of titanium produce the brightest sparks, and the intensity increases with the size and concentration of sand grains in the air.
Sand particles are more likely to hit the rotor when the rotorcraft is near the ground. This occurs because sand is blown into the air by the downwash and then carried to the top of the rotor disk by a vortex of air. This process is called recirculation and can lead to a complete brownout in severe situations. The Kopp–Etchells effect, however, is not necessarily associated with takeoff and landing operations. It has been observed without night vision goggles at altitudes as high as 1700 ft.
The erosion associated with the Kopp–Etchells effect presents costly maintenance and logistics problems, and is an example of FOD.
Sand hitting the moving rotor blades represents a security risk because of the highly visible ring it produces, which places military operations at a tactical disadvantage when trying to remain concealed in darkness.
The light from the Kopp–Etchells effect can interfere with the pilot's ability to see, especially when using night vision equipment. This may cause difficulty with landing safely, and produce spatial disorientation.

 Good as new, maybe even better. 100 mph tape is bad shit.

 

Bentfield Charles Hucks (October 25, 1884 - November 7, 1918), Captain, Royal Flying Corps, inventor of the Hucks Aircraft Engine Starter, and first British Pilot to complete a 'Looping the Loop' aerial maneuver which he performed in his Blériot at Hendon airfield in September 1913.

 

 

 

 The Dornier Do X: The world’s largest ‘flying boat’ that could barely get off the ground, 1929-1933.

The Dornier Do-X was the largest, heaviest, and most powerful flying boat in the world when it was produced by the Dornier company of Germany in 1929.
With a wingspan of 157 feet (48 meters) and length of 130 feet (40 meters), the Do X was powered by 12 engines and carried 169 passengers.
First conceived by Claude Dornier in 1924, planning started in late 1925 and after over 240,000 work hours it was completed in June 1929.

The Do X was a semi-cantilever monoplane and had an all-duralumin hull, with wings composed of a steel-reinforced duralumin framework covered in heavy linen fabric, covered with aluminum paint.
It was initially powered by twelve 391 kW (524 hp) Siemens-built Bristol Jupiter radial engines in tandem push-pull configuration mountings, with six tractor propellers and six pushers mounted on six strut-mounted nacelles above the wing.
The nacelles were joined by an auxiliary wing to stabilize the mountings. The air-cooled Jupiter engines were prone to overheating and could barely lift the Do X to an altitude of 425 m (1,394 ft).
The engines were managed by a flight engineer, who controlled the 12 throttles and monitored the 12 sets of gauges. The pilot would relay a request to the engineer to adjust the power setting, in a manner similar to the system used on maritime vessels, using an engine order telegraph.
Many aspects of the aircraft echoed nautical arrangements of the time, including the flight deck, which bore a strong resemblance to the bridge of a vessel. After completing 103 flights in 1930, the Do X was refitted with 455 kW (610 hp) Curtiss V-1570 “Conqueror” water-cooled V-12 engines.
Only then was it able to reach the altitude of 500 m (1,600 ft) necessary to cross the Atlantic. Dornier designed the flying boat to carry 66 passengers on long-distance flights or 100 passengers on short flights.
The luxurious passenger accommodation approached the standards of transatlantic liners. There were three decks. On the main deck was a smoking room with its own wet bar, a dining salon, and seating for the 66 passengers which could also be converted to sleeping berths for night flights.
Aft of the passenger spaces was an all-electric galley, lavatories, and cargo hold. The cockpit, navigational office, engine control, and radio rooms were on the upper deck.
The lower deck held fuel tanks and nine watertight compartments, only seven of which were needed to provide full flotation.
Three Do Xs were constructed in total. The original operated by Dornier, and two other machines based on orders from Italy. The X2, named Umberto Maddalena (registered I-REDI), and X3, named Alessandro Guidoni (registered I-ABBN). The Italian variants were slightly larger and used a different powerplant and engine mounts.
The Flugschiff (“flying ship”), as it was called, was launched for its first test flight on 12 July 1929, with a crew of 14. To satisfy skeptics, on its 70th test flight on 21 October there were 169 on board of which 150 were passengers (mostly production workers and their families, and a few journalists), ten were aircrew and nine were stowaways.
The flight set a new world record for the number of people carried on a single flight, a record that would stand for 20 years.
After a takeoff run of 50 seconds the Do X slowly climbed to an altitude of 200 m (660 ft). Passengers were asked to crowd together on one side or the other to help make turns. It flew for 40 minutes.
To introduce the airliner to the potential United States market the Do X took off from Friedrichshafen, Germany, on 3 November 1930, under the command of Friedrich Christiansen for a transatlantic test flight to New York.
The route took the Do X to the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Portugal. The journey was interrupted at Lisbon on 29 November, when a tarpaulin made contact with a hot exhaust pipe and started a fire that consumed most of the left wing. After sitting in Lisbon harbor for six weeks while new parts were fabricated and the damage repaired, the flying boat continued with several further mishaps and delays along the Western coast of Africa and by 5 June 1931 had reached the islands of Cape Verde, from which it crossed the ocean to Natal in Brazil.

 

The flight continued north via San Juan to the United States, reaching New York on 27 August 1931, almost ten months after departing Friedrichshafen.

Dornier Do X Flying Boat Over New York - 1931

The Do X and crew spent the next nine months there as its engines were overhauled, and thousands of sightseers made the trip to Glenn Curtiss Airport (now LaGuardia) for sightseeing tours.
The Great Depression dashed Dornier’s marketing plans for the Do X, and it departed from New York on 21 May 1932 via Newfoundland and the Azores to Müggelsee, Berlin, where it arrived on 24 May and was met by a cheering crowd of 200,000.
The Do X2 entered service in August 1931, and the X3 followed in May 1932. Both were initially based at the seaplane station at La Spezia, on the Ligurian Sea, and reassigned to various other bases during their service.
Both orders originated with SANA, then the Italian state airline, but were requisitioned and used by the Italian Air Force primarily for prestige flights and public spectacles.
Germany’s original Do X was turned over to Deutsche Lufthansa, the German national airline after the financially strapped Dornier company could no longer operate it. After a successful 1932 tour of German coastal cities, Lufthansa planned a Do X flight to Vienna, Budapest, and Istanbul for 1933.
The voyage ended after nine days when the flying boat’s tail section tore off during a botched, overly-steep landing on a reservoir lake near Passau.
The Do X remained an exhibit until being destroyed during World War II in a Royal Air Force air raid on the night of 23–24 November 1943. Fragments of the torn-off tail section are displayed at the Dornier Museum in Friedrichshafen.
While never a commercial success, the Dornier Do X was the largest heavier-than-air aircraft of its time, and demonstrated the potential of an international passenger air service.

Many pictures at the link:
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/dornier-flying-boat-photos/