A Piaggio P.180 Avanti awaiting flight on an airport ramp
Among pusher configurated aircraft, the P.180 Avanti represents a unique design on its own. First taking the air in 26 September 1986, it was to become one of Piaggio Aero’s successful designs which spanned its long history of building airplanes, boasting of its foundation date as early as 1884, nine years before the successful flight of the first practical airplane by the Wright Brothers in 1903.
A group of P.180 on formation flying
A highly spirited Burt Rutan watching Space Ship One on launch trials
Image Credit
Among aerospace engineers, there’s no one who could rival what Burt Rutan achieved with his career designing airplanes to the peak of it designing space ships. From successful homebuilt designs to record breaking flights and the recent space projects which successfully attained the first civilian funded space exploration project in history, no company or single person have gone so far to get close to what his ingenuity have allowed him to achieve. I have here are some of Burt Rutan’s cutting edge designs which like the X-planes, he built to venture beyond what accepted and applied science could offer thereby expanding our knowledge as a race of creative beings.
A Britten-Norman BN2A-21 of the Philippine National Police on take-off
The Britten-Norman Islander is a light utility aircraft design that was the brainchild of two British aircraft designers, John Britten and Nigel Desmond Norman back in the early 60s. But unlike other aircraft designs that only proved their worth for the time period of their introduction, this aircraft platform has evolved through the years and remained existent with a little difference from the original with only the engines upgraded and structural changes necessary for the variation in weight. Being a former aircraft mechanic who have logged close to a hundred hours flying with this aircraft as a passenger and crew, let us consider what makes this airplane different from other airplanes still flying out there.
This is a preview of
The Britten-Norman Islander: An Aircraft Design Through the Years
.
Read the full post (757 words, 7 images, estimated 3:02 mins reading time)
The James Bond film Octopussy poster showing the microjet
Image Credit
The BD-5J Micro aside from making a screen debut as James Bond’s flyaway jet in the movie “Octopussy”, the 13th film on the James Bond spy series was a show catcher. The fact remains that it still holds the record as the lightest operational jet in the world (weighing 358.8 lb or 162.7 kg) in the Guinness Book of World Records for the last 25 years.
First Flight Around the World by Group of Aircraft
A Douglas World Cruiser in flight
Novel designs which sent men to the air and just that
A Gossamer Albatross on take off run
A short glimpse at Human Powered Aircraft (HPA)
