Dorito
This futuristic flying wing design is ready to bring in the next generation of carrier-based attack planes-when the Navy and its contractors can agree on a price. The U.S. Government has found a brand new way of debunking the notion of UFOs. It plans to build airplanes that look like UFOs. Admittedly, that's a pretty expensive way to make a point. And in fact the first of these projected UFO look-alikes, the A-12 Avenger, which was originally scheduled to make its first flight in March of 1992, has been canned because of cost and schedule overruns.
3-Km Racers
WHAT'S THE BIG deal about 500 mph, anyway? Look up on any clear day and you stand a fair chance of seeing an airplane flying faster than that. So why has it taken forever for a propeller-driven airplane to break the 500-mph barrier in a simple three-kilometer dash? For that matter, why is the barrier still there, glaring smugly at us all? It took just six and a half years to boost the Absolute World Air Speed Record from 200 mph to 300 mph, and barely half that long to get from 300 to 400 mph. The last of those events happened way back in 1931, and 57 years laters we're still trying to get over the 500-mph hurdle.
Fastest 3-km Racer
A GUY can't even count on his friends. Between the time I wrote the article "3-Km Racers" and its publication in the December 1990 Model Aviation, Unlimited class race pilot Lyle Shelton broke the 500-mph barrier in the 3-km dash-the barrier that I had described as almost impregnable. My guess is that Lyle did it just to make me look bad. The hero who made my face red is a TWA captain and the senior active Unlimited class pilot. Lyle made racing history in a highly modified Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat with a souped-up Wright R-3350 engine in place of the original Pratt & Whitney R-2800. Currently called Rare Bear (race number 77, license N777L), the bronze-and-white Bearcat has carried a variety of names and color schemes over the years.
New in the Sky
THOUGH THE very word stealth has only recently been acknowledged by the Department of Defense and the major aerospace manufacturers, the third generation of stealth warplanes is now flying. (And this isn't counting all sorts of still-secret stuff that's been out there flying for years.) The Northrop/McDonnell-Douglas YF-23A and the Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynamics YF-22A are in the air and getting ready for their competitive fly-off early in 1991, even if everyone insists it won't be a contest.
X-31: New in the Sky
STUDENT PILOTS of the world, rejoice! Flat turns are in. No longer must you concentrate until your eyes bug out, straining to move stick and rudder together for those perfectly coordinated turns that your instructor would have you believe are the key to eternal life. If tests on the hightech X-31 research airplane progress as planned, flat turns will be the new way to change direction in the air. Your journeyman aviator might call this skidding across the horizon with wings level, but the highly paid professionals at the North American Aircraft division of Rockwell International Corporation and MBB (Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm) have taken flat-turning capability a lot further than what mashing a rudder pedal might achieve.
