21st century Blue Riband?
The legendary slowness of the Hairbrush A340-200/300 versus the Megaplanes 747 and 777 is nothing new to the industry, or to the Megaplanes marketeers who have spent years making the most of this interesting characteristic. Imagine Hairbrush's unbridled glee therefore when on the first-ever commercial route-proving flight of the Super Fatty to New York recently the opportunity came to settle some very high profile public relations scores. Our very own Angela Obvious was on board and reports that "future A380 customer Lufthansa was cruising over the Atlantic at M0.85 and was about to slow down to co-ordinate with the Los Angeles-bound A380 sister flight when the crew spotted one of Birdseed's 747s ploughing its own lonely furrow to the New World. Never slow to acknowledge the broader irony of the encounter, the Airbus-Lufthansa flightcrew accelerated to M0.87 and overtook it. The 747, not to be outdone, responded in kind and crept up to M0.87 as well. The A380 soon had to drop back to M0.83 for the rest of the way however in an effort to co-ordinate its arrival with the Los Angeles flight. It was still early - landing at 12.10 at Kennedy.
Mega-power?
Astute, sharp-eyed nephews James Johnson and Phil Barker wish to be "kept apprised of Megafan's progress in increasing the electrical output of the GEnx above its present single milliwatt level. OK, so it's trueBudgie News did have a brief Budgie Blues issue the other week when it reported the GEnx can generate more than 1mW (1 milliwatt) of power - as opposed to its real capabilities of close to 1MW (1 megawatt). Nephew Phil says "if the engine really needs so little power then it must truly a miracle of technology. In that case I assume the load tank is not for the engine but to run an improved cabin air conditioning system to keep all the self-loading cargo in extra comfort!"
They came in the night.
(Space Tourist to Perform Experiments for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on ISS - from a Space Adventures press release)
What is it they say about aliens and experiments?
Old, bold and sleepy
Ace fast jets and "there I was upside down over the western desert" flight-test reporting hack Max Cue was at a recent test pilots' meeting and saw an old jet jock gently snoozing during a presentation in which the test team explained how they'd rigged remotely controlled trucks as moving ground targets. The audience enjoyed dramatic footage from the missiles themselves as they hit the targets. During questions the sleeping jock suddenly woke up and noisily said: "I have a question! Who the hell did you get to volunteer to drive those trucks!?"
Read Flight from 1956 or read Uncle Roger's web log.
Source: Flight International
