Word: wingspans
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Filling the Gaps. Last week a live ringer for the Tin Goose, Aircraft Hydroforming's newly refined Bushmaster 2000, trundled down a Long Beach, Calif., runway and took off over the Pacific on a test flight. The Bushmaster has the 77-ft. 10-in. wingspan, all the lifting power and durability of its venerable predecessor, and the basic structure of the aircraft remains virtually unchanged. "After all," says Hydroforming's president, Ralph P. Williams, "not one Tri-Motor in all these years has ever had a structural failure...
...price tag of $900,000-about a third of the cost of the F-4 Phantoms the U.S. is using in Viet Nam-the Freedom Fighter is a lot of plane. With a razor-thin wingspan of only 27 ft., the F-5 can carry ordnance, including nuclear bombs, weighing up to half of its own 61-ton weight. That makes it, pound for pound, just about the biggest payload carrier of any supersonic plane. So maneuverable is it that pilots claim that "under 30,000 feet, the F-5 can lick anything that flies-no matter how fast...
...Super VC 10 has some radical innovations for a plane its size. It mounts its four engines aft on twin pods attached to the fuselage, much like the smaller two-engine French Caravelle and three-engine Boeing medium-range 727. This design leaves its swept-back wingspan uncluttered, permits slower landing speeds, shorter takeoffs and more dependable lift. For the passengers, there is more comfort: more leg room, improved air conditioning and a considerably quieter ride...
...pilotless plane the Chinese shot down almost certainly was a Ryan Fire-bee flown out of South Viet Nam. The Ryan Aeronautical Co. of San Diego has sold some 2,000 such aircraft to the Defense Department. With a 12-ft. 10-in. wingspan, the Firebee can fly at a maximum altitude of 61,000 ft., attains speeds of up to 633 m.p.h., and can stay up for an hour and a half. It is launched from a mother ship, generally a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, from a distance up to 200 miles away from the target area. The mother...
...great birds (wingspan: about 7 ft.) go through such distressingly gooney antics that Navymen long ago dubbed them gooney birds. Among other things, they need large, clear areas to take off and land, and they find airports ideal. The friendly gooney birds lay their big eggs on or near the runways, rise in clouds as if to welcome planes on landing or to see them off on takeoffs. Often they fly smack into an airborne craft. They have dived into propellers, smashed against expensive radomes, causing about $300,000 damage a year. Far worse is the ever-present danger that...