civil aviation

In the very first Thnunderbirds Episode "Trapped in the Sky" the London Airport building features the letters BAOC (based on the British Airways predecessor BOAC) as a rival to the Air Terrainean company who flew the Fireflash. As a BOAC fan I always hoped to see the BAOC version. So 50 years...

The Thunderbirds series from the 1960s featured in its first episode a wonderful airliner called Fireflash, which was totally improbable but looked very cool. In the series it crops up in a few episodes in the livery of "Air Terrainean", a sort of mixture of Pan American and BOAC. However, in...

In the late 60s the Germans were looking for a replacement for its ground attack Fiat G 91s. As an offset against costs for BAOR and RAF Germany the UK succeeds in selling Harriers to the Bundeswehr and getting Dornier involved in its production and a joint trainer which becomes the Hawk. HS and...

Last night I was on board an 8 year old British Airways A320 from Berlin to London. For a half an hour after take off the route map screen showed us zigzagging round Berlin until the pilot told us that because some hydraulic equipment had failed he was returning to Berlin. We landed and the...

Sad news: http://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/joe-sutter-father-747-dies-95 I was just watching him in this BBC documentary a few days ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03wtnfv/jumbo-the-plane-that-changed-the-world A great loss - the designer of an iconic aircraft.

Hi, http://archive.aviationweek.com/issue/19441009#!&pid=1 http://archive.aviationweek.com/issue/19441009#!&pid=48

Hi! Aichi AB-1(Aichi Biplane-1)civil transport and her competitor Mitsubishi MC-1, Nakajima N-36. The Ministry of Communications Civil Aviation Bureau invited the prize design of the pure domestic transport plane which will convey cargo with a passenger in 1925. This was a transport plane...

http://youtu.be/-idcnKx3PQo http://youtu.be/MGQ-7TtM4Kg The Shanghai Y-10, the Chinese attempt to copy the Boeing 707. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/23269353@N00/5288276795/in/photostream/

Hi, here is the early drawing to De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver with Gipsy Queen engine. Jet & Prop 5/1995

Hi, The Columbia Aircraft Corporation and the designers,Edmund Changiard and Alexander Kartveli created the Uncle Sam,it was a transoceanic transport all metal aircraft,with cantilever wing looks like a blended wing,and powered by three engines,all details are in Les Ailes journal and in...

Ever since 1911, Glenn H. Curtiss constantly dreamed of an airplane which would become a "family car of the air". His last efforts in this direction was a "flying wing" biplane with a pusher propeller, the configuration of which was very much like that of the Dunne D.8 of 1911. The similarity...

Just to complete the B-70 excursus. Ciao Giuseppe

Found this British aircraft of the 1930s and have no idea if it was actually produced, or if the Navarro company did anything else. Here are excerpts from the 1931 brochure... Has anyone heard of Navarro before? Other pics would be greatly appreciated! THE NAVARRO "CHIEF" THREE SEATER SALOON...

This sounds like a fascinating series of competitions (with more than fifty registrants and twenty flying prototypes in some years). I'm quite curious to no more about it. I've found references (and photos) of a few individual contenders - but trying to figure out what the designers were...

Came across this old NTIS translation of a Soviet pamphlet written by an A. F. Aksenov: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/783051.pdf

Hi, the Ben-Air Sparrowhawk was a side-by-side two seat high wing lightweight aircraft project,had been designed by a team of former British Aerospace (BAe) and Britten-Norman designers,powered by only single 32 hp two cylinder engine...

Ever heard of the Douglas « Skybus »? I can hear you from here: "Of course! That was supposed to be a much-enlarged airliner derivative of the XB-42 Mixmaster..." Well, yeah. But no. Not THAT Skybus. A couple of days ago I came across this eBay item, an article about ANOTHER Douglas Skybus...

Dear Boys and Girls, here is an article describing the BAC X-Eleven "project" for a (then) new technology short-medium range jet airliner with CFM-56 engines. This "project" has a wider fuselage cross-section than the standard BAC 1-11. I believe this was the final attempt to make a stand-alone...

Dear Boys and Girls, here is an article in French announcing the development of the Bréguet Br.765 Super Deux-Ponts which is an enlarged and pressurised derivative of the well-known Bréguet. Br.760/761S/763 Deux-Ponts/Provence series...... The Bréguet Br.765 Super Deux-Ponts was not built and...

Random thought.... Have there been any designs for jet VTOL tailsitters, on paper or actually built, with the engine reversed in the airframe and the efflux turned 180 degrees or so to exit from the nose? It's not hard to imagine such a design with a pair of Harrier-style rotating louvers for...