Interesting well i guess that squashed that rumor. I’m sure though they could still get them airworthy rather quickly if motivated enough. Analog aircraft are rare these days and the reliance on digital tech is becoming so insane if there was an EMP most (95% or more) commercial airliners would be dead. I fly a Learjet and I’m pretty sure I could still fly in the event of an EMP I only have a couple digital systems on board. I wouldn’t be IFR capable unless the VORs and ILSs were still operational
Question - the leading edges were rubberized? I wonder how they survived the extreme temperatures the surface would endure in high speed flight. I thought the skin got over 1000 degrees in sustained super sonic flight
I'm not sure what the substance was, but it was all leading edges. It was a red material somewhat soft to the touch. It wasn't a cover that could be removed.
My time in the hangar was because my neighbor in Okinawa was a mechanic on it. They were prepping for one of the decommissioning flights, and he asked if I wanted to ride into work with him and have a close look. Since they were shutting it down security had become pretty lax. I got to run the starter cart when they started one of the engines, which as pretty cool. It was a cart with a V8 engine on it. It had a shaft that went up into the engine to crank it up.
That’s an insane amount of power required to get those engines spinning. I fly a Learjet and we have an electric starter to get the engines spinning. It pulls about 300 amps to get it going but no where near V8 power
Interesting well i guess that squashed that rumor. I’m sure though they could still get them airworthy rather quickly if motivated enough. Analog aircraft are rare these days and the reliance on digital tech is becoming so insane if there was an EMP most (95% or more) commercial airliners would be dead. I fly a Learjet and I’m pretty sure I could still fly in the event of an EMP I only have a couple digital systems on board. I wouldn’t be IFR capable unless the VORs and ILSs were still operational
Question - the leading edges were rubberized? I wonder how they survived the extreme temperatures the surface would endure in high speed flight. I thought the skin got over 1000 degrees in sustained super sonic flight
I'm not sure what the substance was, but it was all leading edges. It was a red material somewhat soft to the touch. It wasn't a cover that could be removed.
My time in the hangar was because my neighbor in Okinawa was a mechanic on it. They were prepping for one of the decommissioning flights, and he asked if I wanted to ride into work with him and have a close look. Since they were shutting it down security had become pretty lax. I got to run the starter cart when they started one of the engines, which as pretty cool. It was a cart with a V8 engine on it. It had a shaft that went up into the engine to crank it up.
That’s an insane amount of power required to get those engines spinning. I fly a Learjet and we have an electric starter to get the engines spinning. It pulls about 300 amps to get it going but no where near V8 power