RE: Wysiwygs F-4 mate……..

Yes the same one. He spent a fair time in hospital afterwards but the enquiry started with an 8 hour questioning in his hospital bed the very next day. Further inspection of other Phantoms showed several other nose cones were on the point of failure. I find the term ‘a few years ago’ spans a longer period the older I get! We have a lot of ex-mil guys in my outfit. A guy who joined the same day as me banged out of a Tornado ‘a few years ago’ over the Canadian Rockies after a refuelling mid air collision.

RE: QANTAS FLIES AIRBUS A330 NONSTOP FROM EUROPE TO AUSTRALIA

Yes you’ve both struck the nail on the head. Little aeroplanes can go a very long way provided you just have one or two very high paying customers.
I would be very interested to know a typical APS (aircraft prepared for service) weight for a BBJ compared to a typical config 737. I wonder if the weight reduction by removing the vast number of seats is less than the weight of the gold trim!

RE: Daffynitions

Very good, I haven’t seen those before.

RE: QANTAS FLIES AIRBUS A330 NONSTOP FROM EUROPE TO AUSTRALIA

Yes but again it was empty!

Let me give you some figures to illustrate the point. Imagine a typical aeroplane that has 200 seats and weighs 60 tonnes when empty. Lets assume that its maximum take off weight is 100 tonnes. This aeroplane would typically burn about 30 tonnes of fuel to cross the pond. So we load 30 tonnes of fuel into the aerplane and we now weigh 90 tonnes giving 10 tonnes remaining for passengers and freight. A typical passenger (including his/her baggage) weighs about 90kg so we can put 111 passengers on board the 200 seater before reaching the max take off weight. Now what we haven’t yet considered that as well as the fuel required to get there we must also carry holding fuel, diversion fuel (enough for ETOPS requirements) and a contingency amount which could easily total another 7 tonnes. Now we weigh 60+37=97 tonnes before adding payload. We can now depart and cross the pond so long as we only carry 33 passengers on our 200 seater and no freight! Those ticket prices had better be very high if we want to make a profit!
One other point to note is that the designers can put on fuel tanks of any size they like but it doesn’t mean you can fill them.

RE: My Short Pilot Career Thus Far

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 13-01-03 AT 10:17 AM (GMT)]Gary, in the past I have owned 2 Luton Minors and used to fly them alongside a friend of mine in his FRED. Here’s a picture of me in my second Luton Minor. It’s a bit like a FRED, just more aerodynamic!
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RE: Favourite Soviet Built Aircraft?

Having seen several pictures of their cockpits I don’t think I’d have a clue how to get one started! They have some very different ideas out there. I would dearly love to take a jumpseat ride on any of them (as long as I was allowed to breath test the pilots first!!!). I don’t doubt the aircraft, just their pilots!