Narhay

Something a little different. Looks like a drillium 50.4 bcd TA crankset. Also in the training scenes he has some kind of bike with barcons. They also change from recumbent to upright in the gossamer.

Bianchigirll 

Fabulous story on the Condor. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of these but I am familiar with the group that tried to to or from Crete.

The scene where it just floats to ground and the right wing crumbles is heartbreaking

thumpism 

I remember both and I believe I was on a transatlantic flight when I heard about the Albatross flight. Have a poster from seeing one when it was at the Smithsonian or our Science Museum. I need to dig that up.

steelbikeguy

This, to some degree, is a sign that they were building it as light as possible, and that is critical to winning the prize.

Both I and Bianchigirl worked with the military jet known as the A-4 Skyhawk. It was designed in the early 50's, in the days of slide rules and educated guesses.
The chief engineer at Douglas Aircraft, Ed Heinmann, was concerned that aircraft were getting too big, heavy, and expensive, so he did everything he could to take weight out of the design. He felt that it was better to build it extra light and then reinforce whatever broke than to take a heavy design and just shave some weight off here and there. Until something breaks, you don't know that it was as light as it could be.

The customer, i.e. the US Navy, actually made him add some stuff back into the aircraft, but the final design was still remarkable for how light and small it was! Fortunately for the Gossamer Condor, it's not so dangerous if something breaks when you are only 5 feet off the ground and moving 10 mph!

Steve in Peoria

Jeff Wills

The group that flew from Crete to (almost) Santorini was from MIT and about 10 years after the Gossamer aircraft. Google the NOVA episode "The Light Stuff" for the whole story.

Human-powered aircraft has been an interest (aka obsession) since the '70's. Once upon a time I had a t-shirt autographed by Gossamer Condor/Albatross pilot/engine Bryon Allen. Long since lost, I'm afraid. I attended a couple talks by Paul MacCready (Paul MacCready - Wikipedia) when I lived in the Pasadena area.

When I was visiting the Washington D.C. area regularly, I tracked down the big three human-powered-aircraft. The Gossamer Condor is at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on the Mall (and I hope they dust it occasionally!), the Gossamer Albatross is at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles, and the MIT Daedalus 87 (the backup plane for the Crete to Santorini flight) hangs in Terminal B at Dulles Airport.

Darth Lefty 

Did any of those guys go on to the Pathfinder or Helios solar plane programs? It’s a similar look. The Helios had a problem familiar to airships, it was big enough that different parts of it could be in different weather and wimpy enough not to withstand that.

One of my favorite things watching Top Gun is how the Skyhawks nip and dip so fast and the big Tomcats strive so hard to follow

Bianchigirll 

To Ed Heinmann‘s credit the superlative A-4 served, in many forms, for well into 60 years and dozens of countries. I believe Argentina retired there last A-4s in the 2010s. There are still a few serving in somewhat military capacity with Draken International who, among other services, provides aggressor training to countries that operate their own units.



I believe these are mostly reworked former New Zealand A-4K Skyhawks

Bianchigirll 

The Tomcat wasn’t really built for dog fighting so much as an interceptor for fleet defense. It needed to get to a bogey fast and hopefully shoot it down beyond visual range

Darth Lefty 

I was working for the navy (civilian) at the time they were retiring Tomcats and putting in Super Hornets. The conops for the Phoenix made it a huge missile, and then the Tomcat was like its own little AWACS for up to six of them, so it had to be huge too. AMRAAMs make up for their tiny size being much more clever. NASA got a bunch of the Phoenix airframes and rocket motors to use for hypersonics but I don't know what they ever did with them. All the Tomcats went up on pylons in front of Navy bases