Something that has not been picked up on the subject is the practicality of manufacture.
Given that with most types of aircraft rivets you have to be able to get a bucking bar to the inside of the stucture to set the rivet, think of the problems that creates with actually building the component and think how will it be prepared.
There are sequences of assembly which will allow this but they can be involved especially on something with an eliptical wing.
Fabric on the other hand is cheapish and does not require the same amount of training to use.
My bit to the thread…..

That problem exists all over the shop, not just in narrow T/e wedges. It is overcome by using Blind Rivets. Basically an airworthy version of a Pop Rivet. Larger versions are, for example, Huck bolts. They can run to dozens of dollars PER HOLE.
I was looking at some bolts the other day which are $1,750 each. The nut was another $250, washers $15. 36 of them required, per side. 72 per A/c.
$150 grand to assemble 2 parts. Important parts though 🙂

As said, it was the BEA fleet livery at the time and one of many colourful liveries around at the time. The short lived UK charter airline ‘Court’ was quite possibly the most colourful livery of the period.

One can only assume paint was much cheaper back in the 1960’s and 70’s, it’s all ‘eurowhite’ these days…:rolleyes:

Court Line, the airline which belonged to Clarksons Holidays. Thanks to them going bust I had an extra weeks holiday :-). We were given some spending cash, as a loan IIRC (There were no cash tills then) and we flew back a week later on a Spantax CV Coronado. Now that was an aeroplane! Fastest Pax liner ever built, and probably the smokeyest.

Court Line’s livery was good on the 1-11’s and the Tristar, but Branniff was a step higher on the wild colour schemes IMO. They operated out of LGW in the 70’s.

And I still can’t remember the reg. of that Heron on the South Side of Ringway! (Ch Islands Trident picture, above)

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Also, if made of ally, the rivets would have had to be mush-heads, which is not nice to the air on a wing. The ally wouldn’t be thick enough to take the countersink of a flush-head. You could of course chemi-etch the ally down from say 16’s SWG (.063″) to paper thin between the ribs (Leaving the 16’s thickness on the ribs to take the c/sink)

When rivetting very thin skins to very thin ribs the usual process was to ‘Dimple’ the two items, this in effect pressed a rivet head shaped depression into the skin and rib without removing any metal, often it was done cold but hot dimpling was available and was used, especially on magnesium skins.

In my experience flutter nearly always effected control surfaces but it can be a problem on a very poorly designed wing,tailplane or fin.

I remember a Vanguard that the crew were complaining about vibration through the controls, that was badly worn rudder tab bearings allowing the tab to flutter . Even tabs are balanced in their own right.

Richard

In 35 years messing with A/c and military equipment I’ve never seen dimpled skins on an A/c. I’ve seen it on vehicles and trains. The dimpling is a metal deforming process which is bound to induce cracks, so I doubt if that practice is used today….but we are talking olde worlde days of Historic A/c. I stand to be corrected.

I’m mixing me flutters up……or we are divided by a common language :-).
The flutter I speak of (Because I dealt with the ramifications of it on the A320 early flights) was a resonating vibration at cruise. Cause by minute errors in the wing tip design. It was corrected, then corrected further with the “Fence”.
Flutter of a badly balanced moveable is actually more like a shake.
The Erik Hokuf answer is the best here.

Many flying control surfaces are balanced, ailerons, rudder and elevator which means adding weights foreward of the hinge point. So to reduce the amount of weight foreward of the hinge the trailing structure has to be as light as possible. The whole purpose was to avoid flutter.
Even on fully powered controls the surfaces are balanced, including modern airliners. The number of times paint is added is controlled, after a certain number you have to strip it all off and start again, a point the marketing people wouldnt understand.
Fabric was the lightest covering known for many years, and was very suitable on the light structure it was attached to.
Aerodynamic balance is a portion of the control surface ahead of the balance point, this was used to reduce pilot stick forces.

Richard

I agree with all of that, apart from the bit about it being for flutter. Flutter is actually more likely to happen with a lightweight moveable.
As stated, it’s all about weight-off.
Flutter is not really a problem on a flap / aileron because these structures are hinged near each end and in the middle if there is room. Each hinge will be fixed to a rib inside the moveable, and as you say there will be a counterbalance of some description, forward of the hinge line but not necessarily behind the hinge. The C/balance could be in the fuse, on the end of the hinge rod for example.
Doped fabric was strong enough for this purpose and is considerably lighter than the thinnest SWG of Ally. Also, if made of ally, the rivets would have had to be mush-heads, which is not nice to the air on a wing. The ally wouldn’t be thick enough to take the countersink of a flush-head. You could of course chemi-etch the ally down from say 16’s SWG (.063″) to paper thin between the ribs (Leaving the 16’s thickness on the ribs to take the c/sink) but that is a process which is a pain in the A, is expensive and time consuming, the weight saved is actually not worth the cost if there is a simple alternative. Further, I’m not sure the chemi-etch process was in full use during the War years. I’ll sit corrected on that one. So the ally would have to be machined down, this would be an even bigger pain in the A.
Flutter is usually apparent at wing tips or Fin tips.

After following this kind of discussions for more than a decade now and after seeing many of these “donut-on-a-rope” contrails over Europe I’m rather sure that these contrails build up under certain atmospheric conditions – by well-known, highflying planes.
Therefore, they are no evidence at all for the existence of an exotic aircraft like Aurora!

Oh dear.
I can promise you that there is indeed more than one “Dark” project under development in the UK, and has been for many years. Obviously I am covered by the OSA and certainly would not broadcast on the WWW anyway.
I have been in the hangar, but not past the final screen. I have seen CATIA 5 drawings of the nose and a very basic parts list of that section.

Do you really think that a superpower like UK is NOT going to be developing such platforms? Leave it all to the merkins, Russians or the Israelis to develop?
We have secret research for Land, Sea and Air platforms, all the time.

I find myself wondering how the worldwide “economic crisis” will affect the manufacturers.

On the one hand, one would tend to believe that a new focus on efficiency will help them sell newer, more efficient airplanes. The A380 has the lowest seat mile costs, for example. The airplanes in the pipeline that are not here yet, the 787 and 350, should have huge efficiency improvements when they finally get here. Then again, by the time they arrive in significant numbers this “crisis” could be over. Remember how quickly Y2K, the Asian crisis/SARS, and even the downturn from 9/11 passed?

On the other hand, if a true, worldwide economic slowdown occurs, passenger numbers might decrease rapidly, putting extreme pressure on low cost carriers (the can’t make much money unless loads are very high), and also on big airplanes like the 380 and 748, because they will be hard to fill. What would happen to the 380 if the “bubble economy” in the “modern” middle eastern countries pops?

Perhaps commercial aviation is such an important aspect to our modern world economy on so many levels, that it will all just be propped up endlessly, a la fannie mae and freddie mac and the banking industry essentially being nationalized in the U.S.?

The long term view prevails. Designs and plans for airliners and biz jets is as healthy as ever. Planned production quantities have not suffered on future projects. Yet.
There is an air of caution though, companies are looking to curtail contracts with unfavoured suppliers and blaming it on the E-crash. But, most contracts don’t allow such an easy get-out clause.

You could try going into the custom function menu and seeing if the noise reduction is on or off. Select on and see if this helps the muddines. It does have an impact (under certain conditions), on write times (to the CF card), but would affect this more when you shoot RAW.

There are other software products such as Noise Ninja that might also help you (I have not used these myself yet though!).

Noise reduction on or off shouldn’t be making a great deal of difference at 100ISO in (Even poor) daylight.
The other custom functions need checking too. Set them all to default until we solve this problem.