Dreaming of Airshows
25/06/12 04:32
Summertime is air show time. There are a lot of different air shows and over the years I have spent a fair amount of time walking among the static displays and looking up at the sky. Most US Air Bases host a regular air show and offer opportunities to see both military and civilian aircraft on display on the ground as well as flying demonstrations in the air.
An air show is a good place to get a sunburn. It usually involves hours on a hot tarmac ramp looking up at the sky. But for those of us who enjoy airplanes, it is worth the discomfort to watch them fly.
I grew up around airplanes and pilots. I’ve heard talk of air shows from the time that I was little. We had simple fly-ins in our part of the country. When I was young, I enjoyed the annual Montana Flying Farmers meetings. The event usually involved a fly in breakfast, short take off and landing contests, some flour bombing and other fun competitions to test the flying skills of pilots who would never own or fly the fancy and expensive airplanes flown by business and military pilots.
For our crowd, the big air show each year was AirVenture, held at Oshkosh, Wisconsin on the third weekend of July each year. I’ve never made it to that air show, but I’ll probably go once. The show is hosted by the Experimental Aviation Association and is the largest gathering of home-built aircraft. It is also a gathering place for those who enjoy vintage and restored airplanes. There is a great aviation museum at Oshkosh that we’ve visited and enjoyed. But during AirVenture, the entire airport is filled with rows and rows of one-of-a-kind airplanes. There are daily air shows and fly bys that show off the skills of some of the best pilots in the world.
But the granddaddy of all air shows is not even held in the United States. It is the Farnborough Air Show held in England each July. Pilots talk of that event the way devout Muslims talk of a trip to Mecca. It is considered a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many, but there are a few who get to go over and over again. Farnborough is another event that I’ve never attended, but I pay attention when it is coming around and I enjoy reading articles about it. These days there are plenty of opportunities to watch videos of the flying demonstrations. Some events are easier to watch on the computer than they would be in person. Many of airplanes are really fast and all you get at the show is a glimpse.
Farnborough is the place where you feel like you are getting a preview of the future. The world’s largest aviation companies like to use Farnborough as a place to roll out new ideas. Mock-ups of airplanes that have not yet become available are often displayed. Sometimes there will be a prototype airplane that a company hopes to bring into production at sometime in the future. There are lots of pictures and drawings and ideas that get shared. Sharing ideas is essential to the process of moving from an idea to a real airplane. The aircraft of the future are projects that will require a lot of collaboration and cooperation to move from an idea to a real airplane.
For years before it became a reality, there were drawings and ideas of what a commercial space vehicle might look like. Dreamers drew drawings and sketched out ideas of how such a vehicle could be financed and brought into production in a way that would allow financial success. This year the Virgin Galactic Space Ship 2 will be on display at Farnborough – an actual commercial space ship that holds the promise of financial success for its developers and investors. Ideas on their way to becoming realities are exciting and part of the attraction of an air show.
If I were to make it to Farnborough this year one of the things I’d like to see are some of the concept drawings of proposed new supersonic passenger aircraft. So far planes that fly faster than the speed of sound have been flown only for military purposes, with one notable exception. The Concorde was built by a consortium of British and French companies and saw limited use as a commercial airliner. The Concorde has significant problems, not the least of which was that it make a loud sonic boom, something that meant that trips had to be planned so that the noise took place far from urban areas. Commercial airlines have to serve urban areas in order to be successful. The other problem with the Concorde was that it was so expensive to produce that it really never was anything more than a family of experimental aircraft that got used as airliners, but always were operated at a significant financial loss on each trip.
The new generation of supersonic airlines is being designed for a specific market – the trip from London, England to Sydney, Australia. Right now, that is one long flight. There are no airlines that operate a direct flight. The usual trip involves a stop in Singapore and takes more than a day – about 26 hours of which about 23 hours are spent actually flying. Quantas has visions of using an Airbus A-380 for the run. The airplane would take about 22 hours to make the trip and would require a specially built airplane with extra fuel capacity and lowered passenger and freight capacity. But it is only a concept at this point. At Farnborough this year will be concept plans for an airliner that could fly between the two cities in about four hours and, the promoters claim, make a profit for the airlines.
A joint project of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Gulfstream with help from NASA hopes to produce supersonic airplanes that are lighter, faster and a lot quieter than anything now available. The hope is that the sonic boom will be more like a pop or a puff. The project, called X-54 isn’t expected to fly until 2020 and probably won’t be in regularly scheduled service before 2030. But there will be drawings at Farnborough this year.
Air shows are all about looking up. It is a literal reality and a figurative description. I’ll probably never fly on an X-54. But in my imagination the trip seems possible. The excitement of an air show is seeing the results of what happens when people take imagination and turn it into reality.
An air show is a good place to get a sunburn. It usually involves hours on a hot tarmac ramp looking up at the sky. But for those of us who enjoy airplanes, it is worth the discomfort to watch them fly.
I grew up around airplanes and pilots. I’ve heard talk of air shows from the time that I was little. We had simple fly-ins in our part of the country. When I was young, I enjoyed the annual Montana Flying Farmers meetings. The event usually involved a fly in breakfast, short take off and landing contests, some flour bombing and other fun competitions to test the flying skills of pilots who would never own or fly the fancy and expensive airplanes flown by business and military pilots.
For our crowd, the big air show each year was AirVenture, held at Oshkosh, Wisconsin on the third weekend of July each year. I’ve never made it to that air show, but I’ll probably go once. The show is hosted by the Experimental Aviation Association and is the largest gathering of home-built aircraft. It is also a gathering place for those who enjoy vintage and restored airplanes. There is a great aviation museum at Oshkosh that we’ve visited and enjoyed. But during AirVenture, the entire airport is filled with rows and rows of one-of-a-kind airplanes. There are daily air shows and fly bys that show off the skills of some of the best pilots in the world.
But the granddaddy of all air shows is not even held in the United States. It is the Farnborough Air Show held in England each July. Pilots talk of that event the way devout Muslims talk of a trip to Mecca. It is considered a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many, but there are a few who get to go over and over again. Farnborough is another event that I’ve never attended, but I pay attention when it is coming around and I enjoy reading articles about it. These days there are plenty of opportunities to watch videos of the flying demonstrations. Some events are easier to watch on the computer than they would be in person. Many of airplanes are really fast and all you get at the show is a glimpse.
Farnborough is the place where you feel like you are getting a preview of the future. The world’s largest aviation companies like to use Farnborough as a place to roll out new ideas. Mock-ups of airplanes that have not yet become available are often displayed. Sometimes there will be a prototype airplane that a company hopes to bring into production at sometime in the future. There are lots of pictures and drawings and ideas that get shared. Sharing ideas is essential to the process of moving from an idea to a real airplane. The aircraft of the future are projects that will require a lot of collaboration and cooperation to move from an idea to a real airplane.
For years before it became a reality, there were drawings and ideas of what a commercial space vehicle might look like. Dreamers drew drawings and sketched out ideas of how such a vehicle could be financed and brought into production in a way that would allow financial success. This year the Virgin Galactic Space Ship 2 will be on display at Farnborough – an actual commercial space ship that holds the promise of financial success for its developers and investors. Ideas on their way to becoming realities are exciting and part of the attraction of an air show.
If I were to make it to Farnborough this year one of the things I’d like to see are some of the concept drawings of proposed new supersonic passenger aircraft. So far planes that fly faster than the speed of sound have been flown only for military purposes, with one notable exception. The Concorde was built by a consortium of British and French companies and saw limited use as a commercial airliner. The Concorde has significant problems, not the least of which was that it make a loud sonic boom, something that meant that trips had to be planned so that the noise took place far from urban areas. Commercial airlines have to serve urban areas in order to be successful. The other problem with the Concorde was that it was so expensive to produce that it really never was anything more than a family of experimental aircraft that got used as airliners, but always were operated at a significant financial loss on each trip.
The new generation of supersonic airlines is being designed for a specific market – the trip from London, England to Sydney, Australia. Right now, that is one long flight. There are no airlines that operate a direct flight. The usual trip involves a stop in Singapore and takes more than a day – about 26 hours of which about 23 hours are spent actually flying. Quantas has visions of using an Airbus A-380 for the run. The airplane would take about 22 hours to make the trip and would require a specially built airplane with extra fuel capacity and lowered passenger and freight capacity. But it is only a concept at this point. At Farnborough this year will be concept plans for an airliner that could fly between the two cities in about four hours and, the promoters claim, make a profit for the airlines.
A joint project of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Gulfstream with help from NASA hopes to produce supersonic airplanes that are lighter, faster and a lot quieter than anything now available. The hope is that the sonic boom will be more like a pop or a puff. The project, called X-54 isn’t expected to fly until 2020 and probably won’t be in regularly scheduled service before 2030. But there will be drawings at Farnborough this year.
Air shows are all about looking up. It is a literal reality and a figurative description. I’ll probably never fly on an X-54. But in my imagination the trip seems possible. The excitement of an air show is seeing the results of what happens when people take imagination and turn it into reality.