Subdeacon Joe
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Posts posted by Subdeacon Joe
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To the OP, I like it. Maybe not at an event where people would be expected to try to sing along, but aa a performance piece I like it.
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34 minutes ago, Forty Rod SASS 3935 said:
Still NOT my National Anthem.
What is so difficult about doing it the way it is written?
You mean:
Which we all know, is Defense of Fort M'Henry set to Anacreon in Heave (aka The Drinking Song)
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30 minutes ago, Chantry said:
On edit: The PBY-5 design is considered so good that a company is in the process of trying build new ones for a variety of roles: https://catalinaaircrafttrust.com/ngaa-home
Pretty much the same roles it was originally designed for.
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Interesting bit I found on a FB group that usually has solid information about the P-36.
"Somebody once said something about how an optimist sees the glass as being half full and a pessimist sees it as being half empty—whereas the engineer wonders why anybody would specify a containing vessel which was clearly too large. I get the feeling that engineers would make poor stand-up comics—but I digress (Always wanted to say that).
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I've always admired the guys who can crunch numbers with slide-rules and deal in trig and calculus. I can't begin to imagine how to express a compound curve in numbers or predict the performance of an airplane that only exists on paper, but engineers work that magic on a routine basis. I can't help but be a little awestruck at what, to me, might as well be alchemy.
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Take fighter aircraft, for instance. How does one quantify the panicked human response to the sudden arrival of machine-gun bullets rattling against the armor plate attached to the back of the sheet-aluminum seat in one’s P-47 Thunderbolt or F6F Hellcat? Psychologists can deal with that, but it has absolutely no bearing on the design of the airplane in which our hapless fighter pilot happens to find himself. What I'm saying is; yes, the efficiency of good engineering design is important in a combat vehicle, but there's more to it than squeezing out another seventy-six feet-per-minute of climb or an extra three knots of level speed, or another sixty miles of range. When bullets start flying, we learn that maybe something else got added to the mix.
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Designing aircraft is the domain of mathematicians and every airplane I've flown has had certain designed-in specs and numerical limitations with regard to structural strength vs. speed, load and so forth. The Grumman AA5A Cheetah in which I first soloed was good for a load factor of +4 g's. Its maneuvering speed was a specific value at a certain weight and center of gravity, and the pilot was expected to fly the airplane within that “envelope.” I learned that every airplane design is a series of compromises with corresponding consequences. Faster airplanes burned more fuel and stalled at a higher speed. More maneuverable airplanes were not as fast, but could operate out of shorter fields. Airplanes that could carry a larger, heavier load were correspondingly heavier and larger—and climbed slower. And so on, with specific numbers to describe the characteristics of each aerodynamic compromise.
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Back when I got involved with the P-47 Alumni Association, I learned that it was possible to design in the quality of the intangible. Francis S. Gabreski personally bore witness to me of a drag race between his late-model P-47 Thunderbolt and a P-51 Mustang—on the deck. It ended as a tie. But wait, everybody knows the Spam-Can was faster than the Jug, especially at low level—right? Well, Gabby was there. So were quite a few Mustang pilots from the 4th Fighter Group who were surprised that they could not outrun these new, bubble-top P-47s. Yeah, I know that’s hearsay, but at the moment, we’re not in a court of law. Okay, okay, so let me be more specific and refer to the actual published book: Everybody knows the Thunderbolt was the most rugged fighter of WWII. Everybody knows it was built hell for stout. But not even the mathematicians knew just HOW tough its hide really was. Alexander Kartveli designed the airplane for a certain load factor and then added more structure. How much? Well, a little more. How much stronger did that make it? Well, a bit stronger than spec. Yeah. but how much? Ha! Well, first let me say that the g-load limit specification for a P-51 Mustang was published as +8.0 g's and -4.0 g's (which was pretty much across the board for American WWII fighters). But try to find—anywhere—the positive or negative g-load specs of a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Go ahead, look in the manual. Look anywhere. It doesn't exist. We only know it was more than the Mustang or the Lightning or any other WWII fighter. I suppose that was a comforting thing to know when pulling out of a power-dive at terminal velocity. And what was the terminal velocity of that airframe?” 550 mph? 600 mph? Who knows? Well, test-pilot Herbert O. Fisher told me he dived a thoroughly instrumented P-47D-30-RE, with an experimental propeller, to 83% of the speed of sound. That had to involve one heck of a high-g pull-out at the bottom of the dive. It also had to involve an encounter with that nasty, mysterious force, compressibility, which, at that speed, would reliably tear a P-38 Lightning apart. Yeah, that had to have bent some metal on that poor old Jug—right? Well, it if did, it didn’t stop Dr. Fisher from taking that same P-47 right back up to 38,000 feet and doing it again. And again. Over one-hundred times. It must have been that Fisher had a lot of confidence in the structural integrity of that Thunderbolt, because he took his young son along with him on one of those screaming, Mach-tickling dives—and the kid became known as “The World’s Fastest Toddler.” Don’t believe me? Look it up.
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That was fun. Let's do another one: The R-2800-57C engine that went into the P-47M and P-47N was rated for 2,800 HP at War Emergency Power, with water/alcohol-injection. That was the limit published in the manual. Well, baloney! Republic tested that engine in one of the three YP-47M's at a ridiculously over-boosted 3,600 HP for 250 hours—and that engine never did fail. Now, how fast can a P-47 go, in level flight, on 3,600 horsepower? I wish I knew. That airplane must have been one hell of a screamer.
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What it amounts to is this: Republic designed the P-47 to exceed specs by a wide margin and the airplane was faster and stronger than anybody bothered to quantify. I guess there was a war on, and other problems were more pressing.
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And now, just for fun, let’s move on to a {somewhat} more modern flying machine that also exceeded its own published specs: Speaking as a Long Islander, I'll point out how Grumman's Lunar Excursion Module, which was designed to support two men for just a few days, and whose itty-bitty engine was designed to cope with no more than the Moon's almost negligible gravity, somehow managed to support three men for twice that length of time AND tow the crippled mothership of Apollo 13 all the way back to Earth. This story became such a legend, they made a blockbuster movie out of it. There was never a flying machine more tightly-designed than the Lunar Module and the slide-rule gang at Grumman said that Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise were as good as dead. According to all the drawings and math, every bit of that little spacecraft's specs consisted of solid, specific, never-exceed numbers because the rigors of space flight allowed for no extra weight, no additional fuel, no extra anything. But Grumman's little LEM did do the impossible. And why was it able to do that? Because when Long Islanders design and build a flying machine, something goes into it that you cannot see on the blueprints—that's why!
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And don’t you forget it."-
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On 8/19/2024 at 8:38 AM, Blackwater 53393 said:
Baseball is NOT for those who seek instant gratification!! Each game UNFOLDS as it progresses.
Like this:
On this day in 1941, Pirates manager Frankie Frisch was ejected from a game at Ebbets Field after coming onto the field with an umbrella to protest the rainy playing conditions. The heated argument between Frisch and umpire Jocko Conlan was later immortalized in a famous Norman Rockwell painting - a classic scene capturing the passion and drama of baseball. Frisch's umbrella protest has become an iconic moment in MLB history.
#mlb #baseball #pittsburgh
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1908 Indian - By late 1907, Indian had released a 7hp twin cylinder motorcycle to the public, becoming one of America’s first manufacturers to offer a “double”. This machine is preserved with original blue paint and features unique accessories such as a tandem seat. Power is transmitted to the rear wheel via primary and secondary chain, with no clutch.
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58 minutes ago, Texas Maverick said:
You had to keep the pan moving at a high rate of speed over the burner. You couldn't just sit it down and let it pop. Once you got the hang of it they worked.
TM
I'd shake the beejeebers out of it and it still scorched.
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Something that I had never thought about
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10 hours ago, Raylan said:
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I could never make Jiffy-pop. It always scorched. And it was expensive compared to regular popcorn
And the regular bread for hotdogs was the normal way. Buns were for special occasion parties and company or Knights of Columbus picnics.
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19 hours ago, Pat Riot said:
”Oh No, No, No don’t you put that coffee pot in the recycling bin. Your Dad will have a fit if that coffee pot gets tossed out.”
”But Mom,, this thing is hideous.”
”That's okay. That’s your Dad’s coffee pot. He loves that thing.”
”But this thing is old. It was old when he bought it for a dollar at the swap meet. It’s all dented up. You could just get him a new one when you get to West Virginia.”
”Okay, you can toss it, but first you have to tell your Dad that your tossing it.”
Silence…
”Mom, do you want me to pack it with the kitchen stuff or the camping stuff?”
Some background first. My wife's dad had worked at one of the NIKE sites on the Marin Headlands, Site 88, back in the '60s. Eventually it got shut down as a military base and transferred to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Fast forward to the late 1990s.
Site 88 was being turned into a museum/working display, with one launcher restored to being able to take a dummy missile and raise it on the platform, etc. We went down for a work party - weeding, cleaning, painting, etc. Potluck lunch, but pastries provided for breakfast. We knew it would be cold, so we had something to heat up for lunch, so we brought our folding camp kitchen, Coleman stove, and most of our camp cooking gear. There was no water (although we had brought 10 gallons) and no electricity. Worst of all - NO COFFEE! A lot of these people came from military families and NOBODY THOUGHT TO BRING COFFEE. Well, at about 0815 our camp kitchen came out, stove got started, and our good old WareEver percolator (similar to this)
was filled and started doing its job. Must have made 5 or 6 pots that morning.
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46 minutes ago, Charlie Harley, #14153 said:
Didn’t you just describe half the people in our game?Did I?
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For everyday a Hamilton Beach Flexbrew. And we use either Folgers or Yuban, whichever is the less expensive when we need more.
When we want upscale, it's Peets in a French Press.
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55 minutes ago, Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770 said:
The difference is that people don't paint their bodies to look like The Duke
No, but they spend thousands of dollars on " the look."
And get all melancholy when he dies in a movie.
And hold him up as some sort of demigod.
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39 minutes ago, Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933 said:
John Wayne movies are entertaining. You are talking about baseball.
Which is entertaining.
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2 minutes ago, Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770 said:
What difference does it make?
About as much as a John Wayne movie
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2 minutes ago, Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933 said:
So they were playing cards together?
Nope. The Cards were playing the Dodgers in St. Louis.
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Torpenhow Hill
in SASS Wire Saloon
Posted
People forget that he was just quoting Alexander Hamilton.