Ja,

You’re blabbering.

Italy has four 767 tankers on order, but has no plans whatsoever concerning 737 Awacses. There are negotiations with Turkey considering 737 AWACS though, but that is another country. Spain is not looking for AWACs either, it is only a short time ago they joined the NAEWF program. Work has begun on converting Spain’s A310 T/Ts.

Actually, all RF-104Gs were built with the camera bay just behind the cockpit, in place where the gun and ammo used to be with the non-recce 104s. In this bay there were usually three KS-67A cameras. Later, the Dutch removed the internal camera pack, and equipped their RF-104Gs with the Orpheus recce pod with a modular layout, more camera stations and better all-weather capabilities. Some of the Orpheus pods were sold to Italy which used them on the F-104G as well, and nowadays should still have some for their AMXes.

J-10 FUBAR ?

That Tornado is an ItECR, Italy’s equivalent of the German ECR-variant.

Òld colour scheme for Ukrainian MiG-29s? They never changed their paintjobs, the only ones in the blue/yellow livery are the ones with the Ukrainskie Sokoli demoteam. The rest is either regular grey/grey, or camouflaged. Most Flankers indeed now have a splinter paintjob rather than the more subtle blue livery they inherited from Soviet days.

You can actually find ’em on Airliners.net…

MiG-29, grey
Early Su-27
MiG-29UBs

Unfortunately i couldn’t find any decent pics of the camouflaged Fulcrums except for this one:
Don’t follow the link back, the recognition skills of the guy who built the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense-website are disastrous.

I love that old stuff – back in the days when Convair still could advertise with slogans like “Jetnoise. The Sound of Freedom” and then have a short article about how happy people should be for those F-102s to break all their windows with sonic booms 😀

I’ve got a reasonable collection of old stuff, but my most precious one is a little Dutch booklet called ‘Vliegtuigen van de Russische Luchtmacht’, as compiled by father and son De Jong by a Dutch Air Force request – in 1953! In hindsight some parts of it are absolutely hilarious – the six “BMW-028 copy” prop TuG-75 for example, or a MiG-19 with an illustration showing a J-29 with a T-tail…

Unfortunately, i haven’t got too much aviation-focused propaganda from the other side during the Cold War. I have a great 1960s East German series of slides, called ‘Der Frieden hat die Stärkeren Waffen” (“Peace has the Strongest Arms” hehehehe… ) with some really nice aircraft images, a lovely series of the withdrawal of a regiment of Il-28s from Oranienburg (East Germany) in the 1950s, and an East German series with modern Soviet aircraft development from around 1960 which shows an incredible amount of absolutely wonderful but for 95% utterly fake artist impressions – i am REALLY proud of those. I should scan them, unfortunately i haven’t got access to a slide scanner. And photolabs here are way too expensive to have such a bulk scanned.

That’s not an FC-1, it’s the FTC-2000 in what appear to be stress/fatigue tests.

Re: }}}—–>>> Feb2004 QUIZ <<<—–{{{

Here is my second set of answers. Both with cheating, and a few ones i thought of later.

3. — Something about manufacturing stuff’n things:
3.1. Who builds the landing gear for the F/A-22?
Lockheed-Martin at Marietta, GA (which is also the main components builder + assembly line).
3.1.1 Who developed the alloy that landing gear is made of? And what is it made of?
It’s Airmet 100, a steel alloy. I don’t know the developer (which could well be Berkeley), but it’s commercialised by Carpenter Steel.
3.2. Who builds the tires for the F/A-22? (more than one company!)
Euh… Brassey’s 96/97 gives them as Allied Signal 37×11.5-18 for the main wheels, and Allied Signal 23.5×7.5-10 for the nose. Globalsecurity.com gives the manufacturers as both Michelin (Air-X steel belt radials) and Goodyear (Bias-ply tyres). Perhaps the Michelin ones are for wet runways, and the Goodyear tyres are slicks 😉
3.3. Who builds the brakes for the F/A-22?
Allied Signal.
3.4. Who builds the main landing gear doors for the Japanese F-2?
Kawasaki, this time Joe Baugher’s site has been the helpful source.
3.5. Who builds the pylons for the Japanese F-2?
😀 The company is called Nippi.
3.6. Who was awarded with designing (and building) the conformal fuel tanks for the EF2000?
BAe Systems, Warton.

4. — The AMSA. One prototype had two external features that made it easily distinguishable from the others.
4.1 What was/is the AMSA?
The Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft, better known as the B-1A prototypes.
4.2 What were those features?
The fourth prototype had an avionics spine across the fuselage for electronic equipment, and had individual ejection seats rather than the capsule escape system the previous three prototypes had.
4.3 When was AMSA cancelled?
In 1977 by the Carter administration, officially in favour of cruise missiles but in fact because a true stealth bomber was the way forward and the B-2 program began. Don’t forget that the first B-2 was built with fy 1981 money.
4.4 When did that aforementioned prototype made its first flight?
Only in 1979, although production was cancelled by then it was still used until 1981 as a development aircraft. The fourth prototype also served as a testbed for the later Reagan-sancioned B-1B.
4.5 Name five project names that AMSA received to survive, before it got its final designation.
Subsonic Low Altitude Bomber (SLAB)
Low Altitude Manned Penetrating System (LAMPS)
Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft (AMSA)
America’s Most Studied Aircraft (AMSA) 🙂
…

5. — There are jets with straight wings. There are jets with swept wings. There are jets with one straight and one swept wing (like the F-14 on that test flight). Name a twin-engine jet that flew with one forward and one backward swept wing.
You mean those weird designs with those wings placed diagonally across the aircraft’s fuselage? A pretty popular concept in the 1960s i believe (and i think actually suggested for Boeing’s SST), but one actually ever flew? Cool… but a terrible search.
…
Ah, just found that they are called Oblique Wings…
And got it! The NASA Ames-Dryden AD-1 Oblique Wing:

New depths of aerodynamic obscurity have been reached in these quizzes… good job!

6. — Name at least five current helicopters with nicknames that were used on conventional planes before. (Like the Eurocopter Tiger and the Grumman F11F Tiger)
Two more:
AS 565 Panther (military Dauphin) = Grumman F9F (the straight-winged versions)
AS 550/555 Fennec (military Ecureuil) = Sud Aviation-modified T-28
I think Raven is correct too, but it’s not a Robinson helo. Hiller’s OH-23 was the Raven, just like the EF-111. And since the civil variant of the H-23, the UH-12, is still in military use (Egypt and Argentina, both as trainers), it applies as a current military helo.

7. — What was the Argentinan Air Force’ last operational involvement in a war? Which aircraft were participating?
Does the UNFICYP deployment on Cyprus count? The Fuerza Aerea Argentina should still have two helos (either H500Ds or B212s) deployed there as UNFLIGHT.

8. — What aircraft did the USCG contribute to the second Persian Gulf War 1990/91?
It was in fact a lonely HU-25 to look for oil spills. mpa (and Herr A.H.) got it right.
Crews were ferried around by the VC-11A though, it was completely put to use to support the HU-25 detachment.

9. — What was the C-119’s contribution to the U.S. space programme?
A C-119 was the first aircraft to grab a recovery vehicle (the Discoverer XIV sattelite) out of mid-air after returning in the atmosphere?

11. — Name six or more side-by-side twinseater aircraft with jet engines flown from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
Grumble… grumble… Flood always pops up in these quizzes proving himself to be almost as knowledgable as he is inane! I stand corrected on the Sea Vampire and -Venom.

One more to add: NASA’s highly-modified C-8 Buffalo, the Augmentor Wing Jet-STOL, made some flights to and from the Kitty Hawk. I’m not sure if it was a two-seater on those flights or not… but i doubt it actually carried a payload on those demonstration flights.

12. — A little story about an aircraft company. Was the largest in the whole world during WW1. Built the first planes to cross the Atlantic ocean. Merged in 1929 to become to largest aviation company in the US. But then, later, they decided to build a jet – the first jet ever for that company but also the last plane ever for them. They lost, quit and sold the aviation business altogether.
12.1. Name that company. With whom did in merge in 1929? When did they quit? To whom did they sell?
The company was Curtiss, it merged with Wright in 1929 to form Curtiss-Wright. CW is still in the business, according to http://www.curtisswright.com/history/Default.asp they now make actuators, do metallurgy and make valves.
12.2. Name those first aircraft to cross the Atlantic. When did that take place and how long did it take?
In May 1917, a trio of Curtiss flying boats was to fly from Newfoundland to Portugal. It was to follow a series of ‘duckbutt’ ships which were positioned along the route every 50 miles. Nevertheless, all three got lost underway when the weather deteriorated (two, NC-1 and NC-3 landed on the water to wait it out but both sank :rolleyes: ), but NC-4 managed to find the Azores, landed there and waited for better weather to continue the journey. It finally arrived in Lisbon on May 27 (after two more hops), having started on May 16th.
12.3. Name that fateful first jet. To which contender did it loose?
The Curtiss XP-87 Blackhawk, lost out to the XP-89 Scorpion.
12.4. What is that company doing today?
See above.
And a couple of questions out of competition:
– The original plant: What is it today?
Is this the one at Buffalo, NY? It was taken over by Consolidated after WW1, then Bell took it over in 1935, and left it in the 1960s for Texas. If the adress still matches, 2050 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY now either is a shopping mall or, Super Saver Cinema – Elmwood or the M. Wile Clothing Co. and Home Depot building 🙁
– The second plant in Tonawanda: What is it today?
A General Motors engine test site? http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2002/11/11/story2.html
– The third plant in Cheektowaga: What is that site today?
The plant should have been knocked down in recent years, partly for an expansion of the Buffalo Airport terminal, and the rest now should be a Ciminelli Construction Company-owned warehouse. http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2001/07/09/daily26.html
The only remains of Buffalo’s once massive aviation industry seems to be the Calspan institute which should still be there.