New A380 visits Wichita Airbus engineering facility
D.B. Mathews | [email protected]
Thursday, October 4, 2007 — The new Airbus A380 made two low passes over a large crowd at the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport. It was primarily a tribute to the more than 100 engineers at the Airbus facility in Wichita who did most of the design work for the giant's wings.
I set myself up approximately a mile from the edge of the runway to get pictures. The sun was just rising, giving an attractive glint to the left side of the southbound aircraft. I should have stayed home and shot the photos from my front yard; the A380 banked to the right for a second pass and flew almost directly over my home (which is 3 miles west of the airport). Oh well!
The crew could not land the monster on the Wichita runway because of size restrictions. The A380 requires runways that are at least 200 feet wide, and Wichita's are only 150 feet. That's wide enough for 747s and the Concorde, but the A380 would knock off runway markers and lights if it landed there.
The write-up in the Wichita Eagle mentioned that the local air-traffic controllers made sure there was plenty of space between the giant and any other traffic because of the turbulent wake behind the A380. Imagine flying behind this monster in a lightplane! I'll bet the wake turbulence spreads out over miles and miles of airspace.
Claims have been made in the media that the A380 is the largest passenger airplane ever. That got me wondering how it compares to other large aircraft from the past. Checking various Internet sites revealed an interesting comparison:
- A380: wingspan more than 261 feet; passengers 555–853; takeoff weight 1.2 million pounds
- 747: wingspan 211 feet; passengers 416–524; takeoff weight 910,000 pounds
- Hughes H-4: wingspan 319 feet; passengers 750 troops (?); takeoff weight 400,000 pounds
- XC-99: wingspan 230 feet; passengers 400 troops; takeoff weight 320,000 pounds
The "world's largest" claim depends on what you're measuring. Looking at wingspan, the Hughes "Spruce Goose" is the winner, but the A380 wins lifting capacity by a mile. It seems that the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, doesn't need to change the signs on its Hughes H-4.
Convair XC-99
The XC-99 is essentially a double-decked B-36 that was developed in 1948 as a potential cargo/troop transport. Only one was ever built, and it was used for several years as a cargo carrier. The aircraft made a big splash in the various aviation magazines of the period, and then it sort of disappeared.
In April 1958 I was on a tour of duty as a dental officer to Lakeland Air Force Base. Being a lifetime airplane nut, I spent my evenings wandering around Kelly and Randolph Air Force Bases (all three are in San Antonio, Texas).
Shortly after I began snooping around at Kelly, I turned to the side of one of the numerous warehouses, only to be confronted by a huge airplane parked in run-down shape. I immediately identified it as the XC-99.
I waved down the first officer with wings on his tunic and learned that the aircraft had been declared surplus from the Air Force inventory and was going to be restored by a group of local volunteers. That was the last I ever heard of the project, and I have always wondered if the airplane was eventually cut up for scrap or what happened.
While researching on the Internet for XC-99 photos and facts, I found that the airplane still exists and that it is being disassembled into pieces that are small enough to fit in a C-5A Galaxy. The Convair will be transported to the Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio, where it will be restored and placed on display. So that mystery has been solved.
After seeing how the B-36 overwhelms the other aircraft in the museum, one can only wonder where the XC-99 is to be exhibited. Both are massive airplanes!
For a look at some other photos of strange aircraft, visit the Airborne Grafix website. I'll bet you'll see some you didn't know about.
Pet Peeve Revisited: Longtime readers know how hung up I am about the misuse of the term "scratch built." Here we go again.
There are several ways to categorize model-airplane construction, including ARF, kit built, plans built, and scratch built. To label a model constructed from someone else's plans as "scratch built" is an error.
Scratch-built models start with a clean sheet of paper or photographically enlarged or reduced drawings in which all the wood sizes, hardware, etc., have to be re-engineered. The term as used in other interests (cooking, hot rods, homebuilt aircraft, etc.) is clear-cut, but in modeling it is often used incorrectly and can lead to strange problems in identity.
To clarify that last statement, my friend Dick Massey of Wichita has a full-scale Wittman Tailwind he has been flying for years. He built it from Steve Wittman's drawings; therefore, it is plans built.
When Steve Wittman developed the prototype, that project was scratch built. Had Dick bought a kit of precut and welded parts, his project would have been kit built. Had he bought a nearly finished Tailwind with only a few details to complete before flying it, the airplane would have been an ARF.
I'm going to share examples of the four categories, or at least show you pictures of some exciting modeling projects.
Aaron Ashbrook of Fort Worth, Texas, enlarged drawings for his Boeing F4B-2 from a construction article published in the January 1994 MA. It is powered with a 3 W-85 engine, covered in Stits fabric, and painted with Rust-Oleum. It is a marvelous flier, which is proven by the fact that the model is 12 years old and still looks great.
Aaron basically had to re-engineer the construction of the much smaller original model. He created a new design by increasing the wood and hardware dimensions.
Since building from plans is the most common way to create a model that is different or fills a personal need for a particular aircraft for which no kits or ARFs are available, I will present two such airplanes.
Gary Metzger of Wichita purchased plans for his Lazy Ace 84 from Woody Lake. The late Chuck Cunningham designed a series of these popular biplanes in various sizes and kitted a few of them before his untimely death. Woody purchased the rights from the estate and is selling most of the Cunningham-designed plans.
Gary's Lazy Ace is powered with a Zenoah G-62 engine turning a PK 22 x 8 propeller. The model is covered with Super Colortex and painted with Sig dope. The 27-pound airplane performs beautifully.
Walt De Frees of Leavenworth, Kansas, built his L-16 from Wendell Hostetler's plans. It is powered by a Zenoah G-26 engine, covered with Solartex, and painted with Rust-Oleum.
In the last few columns I've mentioned the Aeronca 7AC Champ; the L-16 is a military version of that aircraft. The Champ's considerably wider cabin and vertically hinged door makes it much easier to load more cargo. John Wolf of Bethel, Pennsylvania, informed me that that is probably why bush pilots much prefer the Champ to the Cub.
The militarized Cub was designated "L-4," and the equivalent Aeronca model T, or tandem, was the YO-58 and later the L-3. The latter was not a Champ, but the Aeronca Tandem: the only Aeronca constructed with a box fuselage.
John Dalton of Topeka, Kansas, built his Fokker triplane from a Balsa USA kit. The model is covered with Solartex and painted red with spray-can enamel.
The triplane is powered with an O.S. 1.60 twin engine swinging an 18 x 8 propeller that has been painted to appear laminated. This was done by using a brush over pencil marks and then staining the surface. The technique makes a remarkably realistic propeller from a stock unit.
True to scale, this model (and many other World War I fighters) is a handful to take off and land on a paved runway, but it flies beautifully once it's in the air. The full-scale Fokker triplanes were never flown from pavement—only grass.
The ARF shown is a Great Planes Curtiss P-6E flown by Mark Smith of Overland Park, Kansas. It is powered with a Saito 1.50 four-stroke engine, which seems to be an ideal fit. Flight performance is rock steady and pretty in low passes.
Mark is the District IX AMA vice president, and he attends many district fly-ins. He is affable and a joy with which to visit. He represents the AMA very well to us locals. I've been attending modeling activities for more than 50 years, and Mark and Stan Chilton are the only vice presidents I've ever encountered at a local event.
The P-6E was a special modification of the stock P-6, with its outstanding paint scheme and colorful details. A single squadron of P-6Es was used for exhibition flying, similar to the much later Thunderbird team. Can you visualize a whole group of these flying over a crowd?
Whether you draw it, build it from someone else's plans, build a kit, or buy an ARF, be sure you fly for fun! MA
Sources
- Airborne Grafix
+49 7541 307 630 www.airbornegrafix.com
- Wendell Hostetler's Plans
(330) 682-8896 www.aero-sports.com/whplans
- Woody Lake
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
