Hi RR Was it a single 23mm or what ? Were they using tracer ? What height/airspeed were you generally at and did you vary it much ? Was there any cloud around your altitude ? What was visibility/weather and time-of-day ? What color was the underside of the Mixmaster ? What part(s) of your a/c did they manage to hit ? Was there any possibility they were monitoring your comms ? Were the F-4s this crew had previously downed flying straight and level when hit ? Were the F-4 shootdowns in the same incident or different times ? It can be really difficult for some poor unaided gunner using only eyesight to spot, track, lead and hit someone jinxing around especially if the target keeps changing altitude and airspeed. This crew must have been somewhat competent to have taken down two Phantoms but damned stupid to keep trying to nail you when it was obvious what you were doing. Thanks

(Written on 2021年 06月 12日)(Permalink)

Hi John Thanks for taking the time to reply. Frank

(Written on 2021年 06月 11日)(Permalink)

What "Freedom of Religion" ? In Pennsylvania in 2020 Governor Wolf banned Church Services and closed the churches.

(Written on 2021年 06月 11日)(Permalink)

Hi George Based on FA's comment (see beginning of this chain) is it possible there was a partial brake failure ? Just a speculation.

(Written on 2021年 06月 11日)(Permalink)

To further confuse, according to an actual non-updated paper binder in my old Jepp case, TIA (aka LATI) is in Albania, TUC (aka SANT) is in Argentina, and TUS (aka KTUS) is somewhere in North America. No wonder my baggage was put in wrong British Caledonian hold by the Raytheon system at Gatwick, LGW (aka EGKK) back in 1977.

(Written on 2021年 06月 11日)(Permalink)

Hi John I'm not doubting you, but to clarify my apparent misunderstanding, if the 135 series (and the 3's and 8's etc) are not basically 707's what are they ? Thanks Frank

(Written on 2021年 06月 11日)(Permalink)

Or an attempt to self-destruct was made, but failed. I believe that most people (myself included) do not have sufficient knowledge of all the actual facts to competently evaluate this incident.

(Written on 2021年 02月 28日)(Permalink)

How many nm South ? What is the range of a cruise missile in nm ?

(Written on 2021年 02月 28日)(Permalink)

I would never downvote a statement made by Sparkie. Has anyone who downvoted this post got detailed knowledge of the sensor used in the center tank of a 741 and that it would be carrying sufficient current to create a spark inside the tank if the tank was "empty" except for fumes from unusable fuel and air ? At 13:09 local (20h09Z) on 21 February 2021 the crew of AAL2292 flying at 37,000 feet over New Mexico claimed an object resembling a missile passed over them at high speed. If the object had impacted their aircraft, even if the object only had a dummy warhead, the kinetic energy alone could have resulted in the downing of the A320. There was naval activity south of Long Island on July 17 1996. A missile does not have to detonate a warhead in order to cause sufficient damage to bring down an airliner.

(Written on 2021年 02月 27日)(Permalink)

Thanks. Reducing weight (Torsten Hoff said "mass", the same thing) seems to make a lot of sense especially to reduce the centrifugal force on the hub attachment. I hadn't realised the blades weighed as much as 30 lbs each. Looking at the photographs it appeared that either a leading fan blade or an initial compressor stage blade had broken. I initially thought the hollow blade was for cooling, and I could understand that for later stages where air was heated under compression or, more especially, for the turbine blades. But for the fan, or initial compressor blades, cooling didn't make sense to me. I felt that at the initial stages the airflow over the blades would be at ambient temperature and even after the air had passed the initial compression stages I can't imagine there would be so much of a heat increase as to require special cooling of the blade internals. I could also imagine channels being designed in such a way as to induce uniform heat expansion of the blade ma

(Written on 2021年 02月 22日)(Permalink)