Yep, I Think The USAF Needs A Negative Stagger V-Tail Bipe!

My concept for a Medium extreme STOL (MeSTOL) Airlifter - (c) 2010 Martt Clupper

 I admit that I'm a frustrated aeronautical engineer wannabe. I wound up passing on my acceptance to Purdue in engineering for the fall of 1979 and decided to become an airport bum instead. The allure of a small country airport with a 'clip-wing Cub' to play with and lots of grass to mow was too much of an opportunity to pass up. But that doesn't mean that the guy who wanted to design great airplanes isn't around anymore. He's still right here inside my head... and sometimes he yells loud enough that we can all see what he's thinking : )

 This design is what I call the MeSTOL Airlifter, or Medium extreme STOL Airlifter. It picks up where the Advanced Medium STOL Transport concept from the mid 70's left off. The AMST role was intended to be a replacement for the C-130, but with more lifting capability and even shorter takeoff and landing performance. The YC-14 and the YC-15 were both excellent aircraft, but the AMST idea was abandoned, interestingly enough, in 1979. Now we're many years down range, and yet the C-130 is still the workhorse of the smaller side of airlifting. There's a rapidly growing need tho for a replacement that offers greater flexibility and increased capability. It would also be far cheaper to acquire and operate than the much larger C-17.

I plan to provide more details later, but the basic idea with the MeSTOL is that it's a little bigger all the way around than the C-130J, the largest and most recent variant of the C-130, but it's smaller than the Airbus A400M. The MeSTOL has several very unique features, including:

* Negative stagger biplane wing configuration

* Non-circular (slab side) cross section to maximize interior volume

* Composite wing, aluminum fuselage 

* 4 geared turbofan engines (PW1400G - approx 26,000 pounds of thrust each)

* Direct thrust blown flaps on the upper wing (similar to the C-17 flaps)

* Vectored thrust vanes on the engines to provide direct lift enhancement

* Vectored thrust also works to increase operational AOA on the lower wing

* V-Tail

 As always, I'd be interested in your feedback, even if you think I'm crazy. Even better, it would be awesome if some other frustrated aero engineer wannabes like me would throw together a unique concept for the MeSTOL role. Here are the basic design goals: minimum cargo bay width is 13 feet, cargo load requirement is 80,000 pounds, and minimum runway performance of 2,500 feet with 50,000 pound cargo on board.

 Would my concept for the MeSTOL achieve these goals? I dunno, I'm just making this stuff up! But I honestly do believe there are some interesting and viable ideas presented here, and I always enjoy the challenge of thinking outside the bun : )

 disclaimer: I've got about 4 hours total time in this project which includes the aerodynamic concepts, the actual design, and making the drawings. It's not intended to all make sense... it's just meant to be a strong starting point for continued thought.

F-35 Propaganda Video Makes It Seem Worth $100 Million!

 Official Lockheed Martin video that sure makes the F-35, and especially the VTOL capability, look awesome.

 Personally, I still have confidence in the project, but it would sure be nice to see some great news surface... soon.

Caption Contest #40 Winner - DC-3 McDouble?

 

 If it looks like you're seeing mc'double', you are. We wound up with a tie in the original round of Caption Contest voting that ended on Friday evening. So early in the morning on Saturday, right before I departed for a 4 hour drive to Cedar Point for some rollercoaster induced smilage, I put up a tie-breaker poll to finally get the winner picked. After a full day of rollercoasters, chilly air, and my first ever ride on the maXair (review coming before long), I left America's Roller Coast at 10:15 pm and wound up checking the poll results while on the drive back home, I was very surprised to see that the tie-breaker had ended at midnight in a tie!

 I decided we'd just have to make them both a winner this time around. Congrats to 'seerjfly' for the top caption, and to 'TTurley' for the bottom caption. You'll each get a bacon sandwich if you can make it to Oshkosh 2011... or should I call them an AirPigz McBacon Deluxe? : )

 Lastly, due to the tie, and to my extreme Cedar Point fatigue (from acting liking a hyper 16 year old in a 49 year old body), we're gonna skip the Caption Contest this week and set our sights on next week. Cheers.

Video: STOL Testing The McDonnell Douglas YC-15 - Circa 1975

 I was a young teen when the McDonnell Douglas YC-15 and the Boeing YC-14 were built and tested to fulfill the proposed Advanced Medium STOL Transport (AMST) role. I was really interested in this kind of stuff back then (and still now), so it was fun to see some of the thinking that went into these unique airplanes. You may have seen my CoolPix post of the YC-14 a while back where I make it clear that the Boeing aircraft caught my eye more than the MD one, but that doesn't mean I didn't find the YC-15 to be a very cool airplane. 

 This video from the mid 70's shows fascinating footage of the YC-15 during some of the STOL testing of the prototype. The best parts are at the beginning where the airplane is seen landing, and at the end where it performs a STOL takeoff. It's awesome to see how high the airplane is on the approach when the dirt from the runway below first begins to stir up. It really shows how massive the amount of air is that the rather small wing is pushing down. You may already know that neither the YC-14 or the YC-15 were put into production, but the YC-15 did became the foundation for what we now know as the C-17 Globemaster III. The YC-15 and the C-17 both mount their engines below the wing and aim high velocity engine thrust at large, highly deflected flaps to significantly increase overall lift at slow speeds.

 As we look into the future and the U.S. Military's need to eventually replace the C-130, it's going be very interesting to see what unique solutions arise to once again address the desire to be able to carry large cargo and get off the ground quickly. I think there are a few ideas yet to be uncovered that will combine extremely short takeoff roll with significantly improved simplicity of manufacture and maintenance. I sure hope there are anyway as I believe we are creating too many ultra-complex aircraft that are simply too expensive to design, build, and operate.

 KISS.

Video: PiperJet Altaire - A Stellar Evolution

 At Oshkosh 2008 I remember very clearly the one big (or should I say small) element of the PiperJet cabin mock-up that turned me off... extremely cramped quarters. Sure, they were claiming 400+ mph cruise speeds, but in my mind, it would have to be more like a Mach 4 cruise to tolerate such a small space in my human life form. Still, there was a lot to like in the general concept of the PiperJet, but I felt it needed a bigger cabin to really be a success.

 Well now it looks like I was on to a good thought as evidence by the re-designed PiperJet: enlarged, with a bigger cabin cross section, and now called the PiperJet Altaire. They're still claiming 360 knots max cruise, and still running with the simplicity and affordability of a single turbine engine, but with the re-design, they've turned a really good idea into a great one. Stellar in fact.

 This Piper video gives a great overview of the airplane. It starts with images of the original prototype PiperJet and works its way to showing the updated design in simulated flight. In my opinion, just about everything on the Altaire looks like it's in the right place. I'm actually pretty excited about this airplane - what's up with that?

Video: C-5 Galaxy And The Crazy Rotating Main Gear Trucks

 I've been familiar with the C-5 Galaxy since I was a kid, but for some reason I never caught the detail about the main gear trucks rotating 90 degrees before they tuck up inside the fuselage bulges. I noticed this for the first time when I got some nice pix of the one departing Oshkosh 2010 - you can see the pix about halfway down the page in this OSH10 Picstream #8 post.

 This video I found today gives a good look at the basic retraction procedure. There are 4 main trucks in all, each with 6 tires, but only one truck is seen in the video. The engineering required to make all this work seems rather intensive, especially when you consider that the airplane has a gross weight over 800,000 pounds! I'm a geek for this kind of stuff... I watched it about 6 times : )

Caption Contest #40 - Ends Wednesday 10.27.10 At 9PM EDT

 It’s time for more of your clever caption wit and all-around avgeek fun with Caption Contest #40. There were more caption submissions in that last game than ever before, and I hope that even if yours didn’t get picked, you’ll still keep trying. It’s way more fun with lots of people giving it a go for a chance at a bacon sandwich at OSH11 : )

 So, you've got til Wednesday evening at 9pm EDT to submit your clever/funny/cool captions to go with this McImage. Then, I’ll pick the best 5 (or 6) and put ’em in a poll for everyone to vote on for all day Thursday and Friday.

 The Rules: 

1) Max of 3 submissions per person

2) Submissions go in the 'comments' area 

3) Game ends Wednesday at 9pm EDT 

4) Keep it clean!

 Then, anyone who wants to can cast their vote will be able to starting Thursday morning and running thru til 9pm EDT Friday. The winner will be posted Saturday morning 10-30-10. And hey... you want fries with that?

Video: Hot Air Balloon Skydiving Stunts Look Like Fun Fun Fun!

 Did you know you can stand on top of a hot air balloon when it's inflated? Well, if you had any doubts about the ability to do that, watch these videos! it's really special to see these two very different and unique ways of flying mixed together. You might think it's crazy, but to me it looks like fun, fun, fun!

Caption Contest #39 Winner - Fiscal Responsibility?

 It was a real barn-burner of a competition in the poll for the caption winner, but the gem above from 'Tailgear' jumped out in front on the second day of voting and never looked back. It was actually a 3-way tie for second place, but only the winner will snag a bacon sandwich at Oshkosh 2011! Congrats to Tailgear for the win.

 I was unable to find details on this slick little non-flying F-35 caricature other than it seems to be somewhere in Europe and it's obviously very well done. Unfortunately, this caption is a reminder of the troubled nature of the F-35 project. I was really hoping we'd see this one come in on time and maybe even under budget. I know a project like this has to be insanely complicated, but at this time in our history, we desperately needed to get it done right.

 I think we need Scaled Composites (or a similar mindset company) to get in on designing and building fighter aircraft... you know, before it's too late.

FlyingMachinesTV: The Beautiful Ballet Of The Avro Vulcan - Wow!

 The only flyable Avro Vulcan in the world shown performing at the 2010 RIAT (Royal International Air Tattoo)

 A huge 'WOW' to this amazing airplane, and to the people who designed and built it, and the people keeping this one in the air... and another huge 'WOW' for the quality of the video from FlyingMachinesTV.