i was working on concourse d the first time the concorde came into miami. the whole job shut down and the expressway almost totally shut down to watch this thing come in. always enjoyed working at airports to watch the planes take off and land.
At 250' long and 225' from wingtip to wingtip, the cargo version of the 747-8 that they tested yesterday is about 18' longer and 14' wider than the current-gen 747. Here are some other fun stats.
Max takeoff weight: 975,000 lbs. Max cruise speed: Mach 0.85 Max thrust: 66,500 lbs. (per engine) Max payload: 154 tons Est. range: 5,000 miles (7,000 for passenger version) List price: $300M
Wasn't the lifting capacity of the C5 lowered because of some structural flaw??? I know it was originally designed to carry more weight than they allow it to.
85,000 pounds of thrust... That's what we used to call "a pretty good start".
You should hear what an engine sounds like when it goes from +92,000 pounds to -23,000 pounds over the course of some fraction of a second. I bet it woke up all the deer (which, at Peebles, outnumber GE employees by a factor of about 1000 : 1).
Shoulda combined the blade out tests with deer season, and gotten some good jerky out of it...
The C-5 is also known as FRED ( ridiculous economic/environmental disaster) by its crews due to its maintenance/reliability issues and large consumption of fuel. The C-5 requires an average of 16 hours of maintenance for each flight hour based on 1996 data.[
quote:
During the 1980s the C-5As were re-winged to restore full design capability.[19] The US Air Force took delivery of the first C-5B on 28 December 1985 and the final one in April 1989.[44] The reliability of the C-5 fleet has been a continued issue throughout its lifetime,[45][46] however the C-5M upgrade program seeks in part to address this issue.[29]
On the other hand . . .
quote:
C-5A JET REPAIRS TO COST 1.5 BILLION
Pentagon Puts Outlay to Fix Wing Defects at 1.3 Billion as 'Overruns'
E-MAIL By JOHN W. FINNEY Special to the New York Times
December 15, 1975, Monday
Page 1, 832 words
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 The latest Defense Department estimates show that it will cost $1.3 billion to fix defective wings on the C-5A cargo plane, which already is a symbol of Pentagon "cost overruns."
The 747-8 is the larger of the two by just a couple feet in length and wingspan. The 747-8 has an almost 130,000 lb. heavier max takeoff weight. the 7478 has about 1900 more nautical mile range in freighter form. 747-8 spec. http://www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/747-8_f acts.html
It's was always fun . . working in Wichita . . to see some of the stuff coming and going.
Boeing used Shilling, in Salina, for the flight testing of the 747 when it was in development and at the time I was building a transmission line not far away.
The thing . . when most of what I was flying were Convair 580's . . looked like a flying city.
(Actually, it's called a turbine stall, and it is when the thrust through the engine gets reversed because something went wrong... the engine is still spinning the same direction, but the thrust reverses. The result is generally about 1/4 mile of titanium glitter...)