- Welcome to the Airplanes & Rockets Website -

Electric Air Racing Looking to Take Flight

Note: I don't see the inverted gull wing plane mentioned. "Today, the best-known air race event is probably the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, where small single-engine aircraft fly through a slalom course featuring sharp turns at high speed against the clock. However, the Formula One Air Racing series in fact predates this event, and was first proposed in 1936 with its first event in 1947. The biggest air race event in the world, the US National Championship Air Races in Reno, Nevada, attracts some 150,000 spectators annually. In contrast to the Red Bull championship, Formula One events are full multi-entrant races, where eight aircraft compete virtually wingtip to wingtip around a 5.13km oval course at an altitude ..."

PEP Engine Ad, June 1960 Aero Modeller

Prior to the advent of the Internet, receiving information on foreign modeling activity was pretty much limited to what the U.S. publications like American Modeler and Model Airplane News decided to print. Even that was limited to things like flying events and not to specific products. Before a few years ago, I had never heard of PEP engines, a product of Electronic Development, Ltd., of Surrey, England. This full-page advertisement from a 1960 issue of Aero Modeller magazine promotes PEP's line of diesel engines. Along with the English spelling of words like "aluminium," it mentions a type of metal called "Mehanite" and another called "Hiduminium." Another advantage of the Internet is the ability to look up unfamiliar terms like that which would never be found ...

How Flying Cars Could Change the Aerospace Industry

"A new study of the environmental sustainability impacts of flying cars (electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or VTOLs) finds that they wouldn’t be suitable for a short commute but could be valuable in congested cities or in places where there are geographical constraints. The found that for trips of 62 miles, a fully loaded VTOL carrying a pilot and three passengers had lower greenhouse gas emissions than ground-based cars with an average vehicle occupancy of 1.54. Emissions were 52% lower than gasoline vehicles and 6 percent lower than battery-electric vehicles ..."

Fighter Jets with Missile-Killing Lasers

"U.S. Air Force says a ground-based laser downed multiple test missiles over New Mexico. A successful ground test has moved the U.S. military one big step closer to putting anti-missile lasers on its aircraft. A ground-based laser shot down 'several' missiles in flight during an April 23 test at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Air Force officials said. Run by the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, the test was part of the Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator, or SHiELD, a program intended to protect aircraft from incoming missiles. AFRL officials said security reasons prevented them from saying how many missiles were downed in the test. The laser that the Air Force lab used for the test was ground-based ..."

Berkeley Models Privateer

Mr. Steven Krick wrote to ask a question about my method for applying Silkspan on an open frame area on a vintage Berkeley Privateer seaplane model he is in the process of building. After imparting some of my limited knowledge on such matters, he responded with some photos of the framed-up Privateer. A few days he followed with a photo after the Silkspan has been applied. Hopefully, more images will be made available as the progress continues. A Cox .049 is being used for power. The Privateer was - and still is- a very popular amphibious model. When Berkeley first produced the kit, modelers built it for radio control, control line, and free flight ...

Drones Swarms Piloted by AI to Patrol Europe's Borders

"Imagine you’re hiking through the woods near a border. Suddenly, you hear a mechanical buzzing, like a gigantic bee. Two quadcopters have spotted you and swoop in for a closer look. Antennae on both drones and on a nearby autonomous ground vehicle pick up the radio frequencies coming from the cell phone in your pocket. They send the signals to a central server, which triangulates your exact location and feeds it back to the drones. The robots close in. Cameras and other sensors on the machines recognize you as human and try to ascertain your intentions. Are you a threat? Are you illegally crossing a border? Do you have a gun? Are you engaging in acts of terrorism or organized crime? The machines send video feeds ..."

3D Rocket Factory Takes Flight

"A rocket manufacturer pioneering 3D printing technology is scheduled to loft its first payload into orbit as early as 2021 under terms of a deal between the aerospace startup and a launch services provider. Relativity Space said this week it has signed a launch services agreement with Spaceflight, a satellite rideshare and mission management specialist. The deal calls for Spaceflight to book satellite launches to low-earth orbit using Relativity's Terran 1 rocket, an entirely 3D-printed rocket. Relativity bills itself as the aerospace industry's first autonomous rocket factory and launch service integrating machine learning and intelligent robotics with 3D autonomous manufacturing technology. The startup claims it can build a rocket using additive manufacturing ..."

Vintage Northrop Flying Wing Crashes

"A restored one-of-a-kind 1944 flying-wing airplane owned by the Planes of Fame Air Museum crashed April 22 during a flight to prepare for an upcoming airshow, killing the pilot. The crash of the Northrop N-9MB on the grounds of a state prison near the Chino Airport, where the museum is located, occurred under unknown circumstances. News accounts reported that the pilot had stopped responding to calls from the Chino Airport control tower about seven minutes after takeoff from the airport. There were no serious injuries of persons on the ground reported at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco ..."

Dornier Do-335 A-6 Scale Model by Steven Krick

One of the advantages of publishing a website like AirplanesAndRockets is that occasionally I get contacted by modelers of exceptional skill and, sometimes, renown within the modeling universe. Such was the case recently when Mr. Steven Krick (a USAF jet engine mechanic many moons ago) wrote to ask a question about my method for applying Silkspan on an open frame area on a vintage Berkeley Privateer seaplane model. After receiving my response, he mentioned his other model airplane building aspect - that of highly detailed plastic scale kits like this Dornier Do−335 A−6, a World War II era twin engine craft in a pusher-tractor configuration. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Do−335, the "A−6" version was a "two-seat night fighter aircraft, with completely separate second cockpit located above and behind the original." A few years back at the Erie ...

Model Aviation Comics, January 1961 American Modeler

These couple model aviation-related comics appeared in the January 1961 American Modeler magazine. I'm not quite sure what message the first one is attempting to convey, with the guy peering through a seafarer's spyglass to see his model airplane at the end of the control lines. Maybe it is meant to imply the lines being used are really long, or that his model it really tiny. Note the telescope dome in the background. Enjoy!

D-Day, June 6, 1944 - 75th Anniversary

Time heals all wounds, as the saying goes. Since the days of gruesome wars, both victor and loser countries have managed to establish civil relations and forgiveness for past actions. Some have thrived, as between the U.S. and Japan and Germany, while others have not. Ultimately, it is the greed for money, quest for power, and/or religious zeal of a relative few at the top of national offices who cause the problems while their people pay the price. So, too, do people of countries that choose to oppose tyranny and free the world's oppressed. Time also erases memories of those actions of men and women that caused the wars and attendant suffering and loss. Today, very few people can tell you anything about D-Day. Socialism and its many forms are gaining popularity again based on ignorance. Nazism = National Socialism. Beware. Listen to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's D-Day prayer from June 6, 1944.

How to Make a Propeller in Six Days

This is pretty amazing. "Culver Props specializes in making custom, fixed-pitch, two-blade, wood propellers. Lewis makes about 120 propellers a year. The path: Lewis was taught by her grandfather, a mechanical engineer. 'I worked here while I was going to college,' says Lewis, 'doing the things nobody else wanted to do, like answering the phones. My grandpa taught me everything as we went along, and I've been doing this now for 10 years. He passed away in 2016, so I continued the business - me and my 84-year-old granny, who comes in every day and helps me. We specialize in the larger-diameter propellers, a lot of World War I replicas. That's our sweet spot ..."

Du-Bro Tri-Star Review, December 1975 RC Modeler

Du-Bro was the first American company to produce a radio control helicopter kit - the Whirlybird 505. That was sometime around 1972 It was modeled after the way free flight helicopters were built an the engine and propeller sitting on top of the main rotor, using a free-wheeling rotor that turned in response to the counter torque of the engine. Fixed pitch rotor blades were controlled via a flybar assembly as was the case prior to the advent of flybarless rotor heads. Du-Bro's next helicopter was a much-improved and very popular Hughes 300, using a driven rotor with the engine mounted in the fuselage. It also used a flybar for rotor control. Building off that success, they next introduced this TriStar R/C helicopter. It was smaller than the Hughes 300 and modeled after the RotorWay Scorpion homebuilt helicopter...

Chinese Hypersonic Vehicle Model for Future Weapon System

"The hypersonic vehicle appears similar to an American hypersonic weapon development project, HAWC. Images on Chinese social media appear to show a hypersonic test vehicle that is a likely prototype for a weapon system. The Jia Geng No. 1 rocket, allegedly built for hypersonic research, appears very similar to an American concept for a hypersonic cruise missile. The images, which recently surfaced in Chinese language media, show the Jia Geng No. 1 rocket, a collaboration between Xiamen University Aerospace Academy and Beijing Lingkong Tianxing Technology Co., Ltd. The images show a rocket 28.5 feet long by 2.5 8.2 feet wide ..."

Keck Telescopes Get a Motion Control Upgrade

"In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii Island is surrounded by thousands of miles of thermally stable seas. The 13,796-foot Maunakea mountain summit has no nearby ranges to roil the upper atmosphere, and for most of the year, this atmosphere is clear, calm, and dry, enabling the W. M. Keck Observatory, with its twin 10-meter-mirror telescopes, to observe our galaxy and beyond at levels special to it since opening in the early 1990s. Now, after the completion of a significant nine-year motion control upgrade project, the Keck Observatory telescopes, each standing 30 meters (almost 100 feet) tall, are offering data and observations with new and impressive nanometer precision. And all changes were made without experiencing any ..."

NASA Unveils Radically New Airplane Wing

"Most planes use rigid wings with moving parts. But what if there was a wing that was not only completely flexible, but could be programmed to change on the go? A wing that could adapt to the most efficient shape for any flight, wind conditions or scientific mission? MADCAT is making that wing a reality. The Mission Adaptive Digital Composite Aerostructure Technologies, or MADCAT, team at NASA's Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, uses carbon fiber composites - a strong and light material made of carbon atoms - to design and test efficient, ultra-light wings that can adapt on the fly ..."

Cunningham on R/C: Edsel Murphy's Law

One of the monthly columns in R/C Modeler magazine, written by Chuck Cunningham, entitled "Cunningham on R/C," that reported on the current state of radio control, which had only fairly recently evolved into fully solid state, proportional control systems. Anyone involved in electronics is painfully familiar with the weird kinds of issues that crop up in complex circuits that operate in hostile environments. The March 1970 issue contained part of an article authored by D. L. Klipstein, Director of Engineering, Measurement Control Devices, entitled, "Murphy's Law: The Contributions of Edsel Murphy to the Understanding of the Behaviour of Inanimate Objects.*" Only a few of the items were printed in Cunningham's column, but I managed to locate a copy of the full article ...

Alain Pons' Turbojet "Duck" Canard

The turbojet-power version of "Alain's Duck" canard has made its maiden flight. As you can see in the video (on the page), it handles as smoothly as the other versions. Of course Alain's piloting skills play at least a small part in how well she flies. More details will follow once Alain supplies them ...