I enjoy watching videos of difficult landings: maybe it’s because it reinforces the idea that even if it looks bad, it can be safe.

You’ve probably seen the video of a plane almost crashing because a crosswind caught it and tried to flip them over, resulting in a wing strike on the runway. Somebody with image stabilization software processed the clip so that you can see what happened a bit better.

Jason Calacanis twittered about a really neat panoramic display of the cockpit of an A380.

One good way to do it is to test one to make sure that the wings can take 150% of the design load limit. (They could, but 154% was something of an issue.)

A Miracle of Science linked to a picture of the XB-70 Valkyrie, which inspired me to search for more info on this Mach-3 bomber. I finally came across a very detailed history that talked about the engineering challenges that were (or were not) overcome in this project.

As I scanned across the various high-res images, one of my co-workers accused me of viewing flight porn at work. :-)

Do the C-5’s still do touch-and-goes at the Bangor Airport in Maine? If so, anyone have pix?

I used to love standing right at the end of the runway, watch those things creep in, and see how long I could go without needing to slam my hands over my ears.

Alex Feldstein points us to a tour of the A380, the soon-to-be-largest passenger airplane. The article points out that the horizontal stabilizer (on the tail) is wider than the wingspan of a Boeing 737-200!

When I lived in Bangor and worked near the airport, I loved to go park at the end of the runway and watch the C-5’s from New York practice their touch-and-goes. At the time, I didn’t realize that they weren’t really the biggest airplanes in the world. Wikipedia strikes again. :-)

Of course it had nothing to do with his suing the government….

Slashdot points to someone who was not content with the wrap-around view I pointed to before: he needs the whole cockpit!

For quite some time now, I’ve wanted to learn to fly. I just took a tiny step in that direction by buying Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002. “Flying” from Harvey Field in Snohomish through Snoqualmie Pass (most of the way) to Yakima Air Terminal was a trip, even if I did bump into a mountain or two on the way. :-)

One of these days I will actually go for my $49 introductory lesson from Be A Pilot.

Honest.

In the meantime, I can practice with the flight lessons in FS2002, so I’m not completely clueless when I start. :-)