Northwest Flying Photography Blog

I finaly took the time to update my home page. Now it’s a nifty flash site with cool pix and neat navigation, just like all the big kids are doing.

You can take a look by hitting the link to the right. Or you can Click Here.

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I hate it when Hal posts a cool thing before I do.

Now with with 80% less Travolta.

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Today marks the 50th birthday of that Icon of (my) childhood, the Lego Brick. I don’t know about you, but I have always thought that Legos were the perfect toy. Something that lets you create anything you want to, really was the holly grail for me. A lot of blocky airplanes took off from my living room runway.
GizModo has a nice time line and writeup.

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Now with visual aids:

[youtube 4owlyCOzDiE nolink]

also also wic:

[youtube -EopVDgSPAk nolink]

As artfully demonstrated, the speed of the conveyer has almost no effect on the ability of the aircraft to move forward. Once rolling friction is overcome, the aircraft doesn’t know the conveyer is moving.

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There are some things that I simple can not avoid, no matter how hard I want to. This seems to be one of those things. Over the past year or so, I have been having small exchanges of posts with several individuals concerning the “airplane on a conveyer belt” question. For those of you who have not been blessed with this diabolical method of argument creation, here is the postulation:

A plane is standing on a runway that can move (some sort of band conveyer). The plane moves in one direction, while the conveyer moves in the opposite direction. This conveyer has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyer to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction).

Can the plane take off?

Being firmly on the side of physics, I say that it will. Here is my, one year late and slightly inadequate, reasoning:

Let’s put aside the pedantic arguments about the exact wording of the question and focus on the spirit of it. Most folks will immediately think of this with analogies to automobiles, which is incorrect. Automobiles and aircraft are propelled in two different manners. An automobile’s engine turns the wheels, which in turn moves the car forward by “pushing” against the road surface. If the road surface is moving backward at a rate equal to the forward rate of the automobile, the net forward speed will be zero, because the wheels are what provide the energy to move the automobile. An aircraft is moved by the engine either turning a propeller, or a jet producing thrust, both of which exert a force on the surrounding air, not the road surface. A propeller (in a standard configuration) “pulls” against the air and a jet “pushes” against the air, both are independent of the road surface. Also, the wheels on an aircraft are free spinning, they provide no energy to the aircrafts forward speed nor do they impart a significant amount of energy from the road surface to the aircraft. In fact, they are specifically designed to eliminate (as much as possible) that transfer of energy.

So what will happen when you put the airplane on the conveyer? It will take off as if it were on a regular runway.

Let’s think it out. The aircraft spins it propeller (jet) which pushes against the air and moves the airplane forward. As the aircraft moves forward, the conveyer moves backward. The backward movement is transferred to the wheels. Now here is where the most misunderstandings happen. Since the wheels are free spinning, and the propulsion of the aircraft is independent of the wheels, there is no effect on the forward motion of the aircraft. The energy transferred by conveyer belt is isolated in wheels, and is not transferred to the rest aircraft. Also, the energy transferred by that aircraft is also isolated in the wheels. The net effect is that the wheels spin twice as fast, but the aircraft continues down the conveyer belt just as if it were on a regular runway.

The Straight Dope tackles this as well.

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I will take a brief moment to admit that I have a favorite airplane. The Globe/Temco Swift. Not only is it a beautiful aircraft, but it has all the things one should look for in a favorite.

1. It’s no longer manufactured. Let’s face it, old aircraft have a style and panache that will never be duplicated with modern design ideals.
2. It has the nose wheel correctly situated at the back of the aircraft. Of course you know that tail draggers are inherently cooler than tricycle geared aircraft. I shouldn’t really have to point that out.
3. Polished Aluminum. Ooooo, shiny!
4. When you see a swift, the pilots look like they are having fun. When see a C-172, the pilots look like they are balancing their checkbooks.

With that last one in mind, here are some videos of Swift pilots having fun:

[youtube kyfIBCwRvm4]

[youtube 9NC3HVQqKCI]

[youtube 20UyBsxGWxY]

[youtube QYvQ0Qi0UAU]

[youtube QZ6ml7D8t1Y]

I regret that I have not yet had the opertunity to fly in one of these fantastic airplanes. But should I win the lotto, this is the airplane I’m buying.

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Thanks to Kent Wein for pointing to this Youtube vid:

[youtube jaqhTn7xB8E]

As a former Pilot and former Alaskan, I can tell you with some authority that being a bush pilot in Alaska is hard and dangerous work. It’s also totally freaking cool. Were talking fighter pilot cool with an extra cool add-on.

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