Mechanical Craziness!! Cold war preferred, anything nuts also gratefully accepted!

[W2ttsy]

Wattsy are you photoshop savvy? I can give you the image full size and you can scale to your desired liking, as the images is superwide if i do it, it will have letterbox style black on top and bottom, i can do it, but it will be like that, or it can be scaled up to fit, but you only get a portion of the aircraft. Up to you, let me know

could you send me the original file. w2ttsy at gmail dot com

i can then edit it for a few different screens that i have at home!

 

[Matt H]

Not really wild or wonderful, but collective sigh of WTF from a thousand people.

...I don't get it?

 

[Ryan]

I've got to admit that while 'Big Dog' did and still does creep the ever living fuck out of me, I do look forward to the day it becomes self aware and destroys humanity in a fiery thermonuclear holocaust.

 

[mr_casual]

i thought this was a very unusual hydrofoil.... pretty bloody heavy too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRuUtOmMGR0&feature=related

 

[brindog]

i thought this was a very unusual hydrofoil.... pretty bloody heavy too

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kRuUtOmMGR0&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kRuUtOmMGR0&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

It didn't work but here it is ( I think)
http://www.youtube.com/v/kRuUtOmMGR0&hl=en&fs=1&

 

[my_bike]

This it's probably the most freaky thing ever created,

Still scares me in my dreams.

 

[smeck]

Hughes Glomar Explorer

The CIA built this ship to recover a sunken Russian submarine in nearly 5km of water. The area it was sunk in was so shithouse there was only a handful of weeks per year with good enough weather to attempt salvage. It cost them US$500million in the early 70s to build the ship using the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes (of Spruce Goose fame) as cover, he was going deep sea mining for mineral nodules. The CIA wanted the code books and the nuclear tipped torpedeos in a very cold war type operation.

Wikipedia has a good account, Eagle speak has this with some good pictures of the parts of the process, but this PDF file is a much better account if you have some free time.

 

[johnny]

Second largest but more traditional looking, Mil Mi-26 : 56,000 kg. Largest flying helicopter today and second largest built. An average size man stands shorter than the side landing gear wheels. The Chinook it's lifting is the eighth largest helicopter in service today, bit of a scale reference.

Yeah, I've done a troop lift in one of these. The wash that comes out of these things is hard to fathom. We asked the Russian pilot how they fly, his answer was "you know house brick, yes?...."

 

[Fixie God]

lol....he wouldn't be lyin either...

 

[JSPhoto]

Yeah, I've done a troop lift in one of these. The wash that comes out of these things is hard to fathom. We asked the Russian pilot how they fly, his answer was "you know house brick, yes?...."

That made me laugh, I can just imagine it all, I'm looking forward to heading to Russia to check out these puppies, its one of my main reasons for visiting to check out all of their aeronautical history. But germany first i'm dying for a ride in a modern day zeplin, just so i can say I have done it haha. which remids me, this thing was mechanical craziness! Truly amazing aircraft, the luxury inside was unparallel even by todays buisness class standards.

 

[AngoXC]

That my feathered friend is a spar buoy, onto which a platform rests. It's designed for extremely deep water. I think the Genesis is in about 2k of water. Heres an image to help explain:

Google 'Brent Spar' and read about the 'shitstorm' between Shell and Greenpeace.

Anyone see the Su-27 at the Airshow in '95 pull the 'Kobra'?

Literally does a mid-air sommersault...

 

[JSPhoto]

Anyone see the Su-27 at the Airshow in '95 pull the 'Kobra'?

Literally does a mid-air sommersault...

I was! i'll admit I hardly remember it, but it was enough for me to decide that teh SU-27 was my favorite aircraft at the time, and it has stuck, as I now enjoy watching the SU-35 and SU-37 get around

 

[24alpha]

Google 'Brent Spar' and read about the 'shitstorm' between Shell and Greenpeace.

Anyone see the Su-27 at the Airshow in '95 pull the 'Kobra'?

Literally does a mid-air sommersault...

Yep, I was there watching that.

Aircraft grave yard is in Arizona. I have a few different clips somewhere on my storage centre, I'll see if I can find them.

 

[johnny]

So what's the advantage to being able to flare the plane up like that?

 

[Spanky_Ham]

So what's the advantage to being able to flare the plane up like that?

like a handbrake turn... just watch your opponent overshoot, followed by you flopping out of the kobra, accelerating with afterburners.... followed by letting your trigger finger drift slightly to the right...

BLAMMO​

well, thats just how spanky see's it.... as he flies round the lab, lab coat flapping wildly, making plane noises and shooting down... well, nothing...

s

 

[wombat]

So what's the advantage to being able to flare the plane up like that?

Scare off predators?

 

[JSPhoto]

So what's the advantage to being able to flare the plane up like that?

no loss of altitude or speed for a reverse aim on a target, it comes out as more of an advantage whilst turning as you can vary your turns angle of attack and stay on a 'normal' turning radius, for example if your in a turn in a dog fight and a aircraft is flying by you can flick the nose long enough to lock and then flick back and fly awya with no more worries about that aircraft haha. The move is more of an airshow one though, much liek the F1-11 dump and burn, they use the same aerodynamic properties in combat to perfom things like i just outlined, to flick the aircraft out and back in again, there is a video on youtube explaining its combat capabilities, i'll try and find it

Sorry lads she's in russian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaUxabw562s&feature=PlayList&p=F286EEC634C9085E&index=0

And heres one for the SU-47 I posted earlier

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyjxqr4O4Ug&feature=related

 

[johnny]

Scare off predators?

This is the answer I'm going with.

 

[Ryan]

So what's the advantage to being able to flare the plane up like that?

Somone hasn't watched enough Top Gun; hit the brakes and they fly right by.

 

[nizai]

The best thing about Hughe's Glomar Explorer is the cover story that it was an ocean research vessel. When clearly it wasn't.

There's a few good books about the race to find that submarine. The US desperately wanted any tactical advantage it could find in the cold war.

The Russians built some bloody huge submarines, not the least of which is the Typhoon, but my favourite is the Oscar...

Its big, ugly and believe it or not, an attack submarine (the Typhoon is a ballistic missile boat). This thing went up against the US Los Angele's class during the cold war and held its own.

Perhaps it's most famous for being the poster child for a dysfunctional and dying navy after the soviet empire crumbled - The Kursk went down in just 100m of water in the Barents taking 118 crew with it after a torpedo ignited its hydrogen peroxide propellant.

N