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.
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.
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.
Bjorn Karlstrom
IF YOU'VE been a regular reader of American aviation magazines during the past three decades, the legend "Scale drawings by Bjorn Karlstrom" is a familiar one. From the hundreds of such publications in which Karlstrom's drawings have appeared over the last 35 years, the distinctive style of this Swedish artist is recognizable on sight. Yet who among us would know Bjorn Karlstrom if he walked through the door? Bill Winter, the venerable former editor of Model Aviation who was probably the first American editor to use Karlstrom's work back around 1950, has never set eyes on him or even spoken with him on the phone.
Hendon: For the serious aviation buff and/or Scale modeler, a visit to Hendon just outside London to see these rare machines is a pilgrimage well worth taking.
IT'S A TOSS-UP which is more packed with history: the displays in the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, or Hendon itself. Like so many places in England, the area is imbued with tales and legends of the early Celts and their Anglo-Saxon successors reaching back to what seems like the beginning of time. To a visitor from a relatively young country like the U.S.A., Hendon feels ancient indeed. One doesn't go back very far, of course, to trace the "beginning of time" for British aviation. In 1908 an American pilot named Samuel Cody made the first recognized flight on English soil, in a craft given the serviceable, if unglamorous, name of "British Army Aeroplane #1."
