Word: xc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nineteen more showed their wares around the field. Gemini Astronauts Michael Collins and David Scott were there along with the 250-seat DC-8-61, largest passenger jet now in scheduled operation. Experimental craft ranged from Ling-Temco-Vought's V/STOL XC-142 to Martin Marietta's Lifting Body, in which astronauts may some day glide back from orbit. In military aviation, the star of the show was General Dynamics' swing-wing F-lll fighter, flown from the U.S. and shown for the first time abroad. No less anxious to unleash a spectacular were the Russians...
...transport, built its experimental XV-9A hot-cycle model, which is powered by hot gases shooting out of rotor-tip vents. Beyond that come bizarre crossbreeds intended to graft the convenience of helicopters to the greater speed and durability of conventional planes. Ling-Temco-Vought's tilt-wing XC-142A can fly straight up, backward at 35 m.p.h. or forward at 400 m.p.h. Lockheed, a relative newcomer to the field, is building an odd-looking hybrid called the AAFSS (for Advanced Aerial Fire Support System) with stubby wings, a pusher propeller and rotor blades to give the Army more...
...engines blasted so much prop wash straight downward that they kept pieces of trash flying in all directions around the field. Back and forth they rocked, 50 ft. above the ground, when suddenly they stopped and hovered in the 10-m.p.h. wind. Ungainly as they looked, the pair of XC-142As were the first large U.S. military transports to demonstrate a helicopter-like capability for vertical lift-offs and landings...
Other fighter-type V/STOLs have already flown, but Ling-Temco-Vought's XC-142As are full-scale troop carriers, and they are remarkably agile. LTV's Director of Flight Operations John Konrad took his plane through a series of 360° turns only 20 ft. off the ground, then flew backward and forward with equal ease. Both pilots then reached for the one cockpit control that would have been out of place in a conventional plane: the lever that controls the two powerful screwjacks that can turn the wings until they point skyward or roll them back into...
Though the XC-142A's performance resembles that of a fast-flying helicopter, the resemblance ends there. It is the largest plane of its type in the world, can carry 32 combat troops or four tons of cargo. The two that were flown last week are the first of five to be delivered to the Air Force this year at a cost of more than $100 million. "With an aircraft like this," said LTV Executive Vice President Paul Thayer, as he talked of the brush-fire wars the plane might be used for, "a clearing in a forest performs...