Favourite Youtube videos v2.0

[Spica75]

That's the problem with a LOT of the "superpower" fiction, glasscannons everywhere and yet somehow they survive, all the time?

[Neko-]

The guy had two swords... who's to say the original script didn't state a certain amount of chivalry, by him tossing Indy one of the swords, for a 'fair' fight?

[Té Rowan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANjy2RcEeGs — Earth Views

[Té Rowan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR09I1hTCQU — The aftermath of someone scoring a Darwin Award by driving past traffic cones and over a live wire. The goon was an electrician, to boot!

[Té Rowan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI7HrzGjvBw — "Pardon my Blooper"
Just in case someone wanted to know of Pres. Hubert Heaver.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Ah, a classic spoonerism for President Heaver!

[Spica75]

Just happened to find this lovely piece of "Not the 9 O'Clock news".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asUyK6JWt9U

Sooo totally missing comedy on their level today.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIEIIwcVPHA — Douglas C53D Skytrooper take-off and landing.
I suppose one could call LN-WND a Barenaked Lady.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Once upon a time, about fifty years ago, I was walking down the street in Minneapolis, near the Mississippi river. A Ford Trimotor flew overhead. Even way back then, they were an unheard-of sight in the wild. I suppose it could have been a Junkers JU-52 (when I saw one of those, I thought it was a Ford) but that is even more improbable.

[Spica75]

Once upon a time, about fifty years ago, I was walking down the street in Minneapolis, near the Mississippi river. A Ford Trimotor flew overhead. Even way back then, they were an unheard-of sight in the wild. I suppose it could have been a Junkers JU-52 (when I saw one of those, I thought it was a Ford) but that is even more improbable.

Dear gods, that one isn't even ancient, it's frickin pre-historical.

And i very much doubt it was a Ju-52, engines IN the wings, LOWmounted wings instead of HIGHmounted, and overall the -52 looks more like a weird DC3 than it does a Ford triple.
There's the Fokker F.VII that came out 2 years before the trimotor that looks almost exactly the same, just a tiny bit smaller, but i don't know if there's any of those left(or was left 50 years ago). Oh, and the Avro 618 from 5 years later, and oh bummer, the Fokker F-10 is also almost the same, and a few more built of those, though still less than a third of the Trimotor.

Anyway, there's a lot more triple engine planes from the 20s-40s, but not nearly so many that uses the "underslung" mounts for the wing engines or was built as many of, nor as many surviving(wikipedia says 8 flying trimotors still around, only half as many Ju-52s, despite total production was 199 for the trimotor and nearly 5 thousand -52s).

Heh, even found something from as late as 1977, a DC-3 refitted with a trio of turboprops. Actually looks kinda cool:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conroy_Tri-Turbo-Three

Was fun looking at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Trimotors

[Té Rowan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzHoMJtW7kQ — Auntie Ju flying at an airshow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSja4qYQp-c — A short hop in a Ford Trimotor.

Yes, they are similar yet different. The Junkers's low-mounted wing v the Ford's high wing is probably the most obvious difference.

[Spica75]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzHoMJtW7kQ — Auntie Ju flying at an airshow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSja4qYQp-c — A short hop in a Ford Trimotor.

Yes, they are similar yet different. The Junkers's low-mounted wing v the Ford's high wing is probably the most obvious difference.

Hehe, and the trimotor's cockpit forward windows, lol, looks more like it belongs on a ship.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Well! I was going through the Air Force Museum, again, long ago, and met this old airplane with three engines and a corrugated skin. Obviously a tri-motor, and I assumed a Ford until I read the museum copy. My knowledge of tri-motors was sadly deficient. The only tri-motors I have actually flown in were the Boeing 727 and the DC 10. They were jets.

The oldest plane I've flown in was the Boeing Stratocruiser (a very neat plane, based on the B-29 tamed for civilian use. The first plane to really startle me was the Vickers Viscount -- that thing took off like a scalded cat. And the weirdest plane I've met personally (and thankfully not flown in) was the Goblin, the B-36 parasite fighter.

I like air museums.

[Spica75]

The oldest plane I've flown in was the Boeing Stratocruiser

Careful, you're showing your age!

My knowledge of tri-motors was sadly deficient.

Something i have learned over the years, in regards to aircraft history, is that there's always more weird shit to find and if it's happened once, it's probably happened at least twice somewhere else as well.

As an example, of course you've heard of the Harrier jumpjet right? And you might have heard about the Yak-38 that is roughly similar idea but somewhat different concept... Buuut, how many know that Germany designed TWO different "jumpjet" fighters, the EWR VJ 101 and VFW VAK, 2 and 3 prototypes built and flown respectively, but preceeded by Focke Wulf 260 and 300, which were supposed to be VTOL passenger aircraft, while the Dornier 31 from just a few years later also got a triplet of prototypes built.
France built 1 of the Dassault Balzac V and at least 1 of another i now cannot find the name of but IIRC it was built by SNECMA.
And then just a couple of years ago, i found that here in Sweden, the SAAB-35 Draken was actually in heavy competition during the design phase with an almost finished design for a jumpjet fighter, and that it wasn't until the latter was almost completed that it was dropped(barely).
And i found that Fokker got as far as building a mockup and several windtunnel models for a jumpjet design...

And that's just what i've pretty much stumbled blindly upon, because most of these, i never ever heard about them before mostly randomly finding out about them. And several of them could easily be mistaken for another.


And for another excellent example, Concorde and Tu-144, the latter often maligned as a "poor copy" of the former, despite the fact that the designers of the latter not getting access to anything more than some vague rumours about the Concorde until the -144 design was already mostly complete. And as noted by one of the designers, the parts they by then might have been interested in copying, they could not, for the simple but somewhat stupid reason that one plane was designed in metric, the other, very much was not, and trying to make the two play nicely with each other would have generated a ridiculous amount of additional, mostly useless, work.

They look alike because both sides engineers had roughly the same design requirements and access to similar levels of understanding and knowledge about aeronautics, with some differences in material engineering and manufacturing abilities causing the greatest differences.

IF the -144 had been designed a decade later, at the time when Soviet aircraft engineers were assimilating the aeronautic understanding that resulted in the MiG-29 and Su-27, it wouldn't matter if they had a perfect copy of the Concored blueprints, the end result -144 would have been markedly different because the aeronautical advances were simply too good to not use them. Difference on the same level as if USA had built a contemporary to the Concorde after gaining the aeronautics understanding required for the F-22, which is a similar development to what the Soviet's learned prior to the -29 and -27 designs.
Yet if you look, you can find a proposed US "ConcordUSA", from the same time, and what do you know, the model looked almost like a copy of Concord.


Eh, i'm rambling. Anyway, the point was that it's quite amazing how many similar aircraft tend to be designed at roughly the same time, even when the designers have zero knowledge of each other, while at the same time, there's no end to the weird shit that sometimes pops up when someone gets a brilliant(or not) idea.
The asymmetrical planes made by Blohm&Voss during WWII is a good example of the latter. And just the idea of using oblique wings, sheesh. With Burt Rutan taking up the job of producing the weirdest possible more recently.

I like air museums.

Strangely, despite being far too much of an aircraft nerd when i was young (i was very seriously looking at getting a pilot certificate by age 18, until i found just how badly affected my tendency towards motion sickness is by actual flight, not good, really not a good idea), i've never actually been to an air museum.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Careful, you're showing your age!

I'm a proud (though rather weary) septuagenarian. In a couple years, I'll be an even wearier octogenarian. I was hoping I'd age as well as Ken Fletcher's character Osgood Weems. I'd put up a picture or two, but don't have any good independent ones, so I'll just put one closing panel up from two pages of his prophecies:

(Osgood reminds me of my great-grandfather Albert, though since my age back then was in single digits the memory may be clouded.)

For those unfamiliar with Ken Fletcher, he's one of the best cartoonists I've ever known. We collaborated on the fourth issue of God Comics, worked together at the Minnesota Technolog. and collaborated, again, on Bubble On, a cartoon war with some Australian cartoonists. Unfortunately, none of the characters were mine -- the three people in the cauldron belonged to Australians, the trolls to Dick Tatge, and the rest to Ken. I did the idea and art for the cover, and Ken and I did the remaining pages. Good times! I fondly remember the Intergalactic Squash, who also showed up in my "Bears in Space". Funny people and funny animals were okay, but we were having a spate of funny vegetables back then.