Introduce Yourself

Hi, Tankersteve, retired from the U.S. Army and still work for the Army. Bumped into the site while searching for some data for work. Look forward to doing some reading here.
 
Hello, my name is Hunter. I am a student at my local high school. Some of my favorite planes are SR-71, the XB-70, and SR-91 Aurora (if that counts). My favorite hobby is cars, and in second is WWII, and 3rd is secret military projects. My favorite game is Forza Motorsport.
Fun fact: I only joined to look at a picture of a bomber, but now that I'm here, I'll probably be browsing a bit more.
 
Hello guys, I am writing a science fiction short story. I came looking for someone who could draw schematics / diagrams (or whatever they are called in English, it's not my first language so) for vehicles for said story and also knows about them, primarily airplanes and helicopters. I hope if for you guys is not a problem if I look and ask around:)
 
Hello, I introduce myself as usual.
I was born in 1952 in Bergamo, Italy Emigrated to Switzerland in 1952.
Primary school Secondary school Studies (6-year course) as a mechanical engineer, graduated in 1974.
Naturalized Switzerland in 1979.
Then builder of automatic assembly machines (line) until my retirement, when I was 63 years old.
Legal age in Switzerland is 65 years old.
Plus a technical director cap.
Becoming Swiss forced me to do my military service, something I escaped by being Italian
. I was able to choose my assignment, and saw my good test results during recruitment.
In Switzerland we have a militia army. I was a militiaman, 3 weeks a year in the flag, salary guaranteed by the loss of earnings.
A real vacation!!! I chose aviation out of laziness because I knew that we took it easy.
No grueling walk, a bit anyway, but the instructors were demanding, zero accident is the absolute rule, again and again. Above all, we were asked to prepare the planes very well for the missions and to receive the plane on the way back.
Checking the machine, refueling, etc. It was nice, the pilots were nice. In short, it was interesting.
Ah yes, the planes were Mirage IIIS and RS. Great machines it must be said.
Pilots loved these machines. We were told that airplanes were flying machines, not airplanes.
Problem of understanding (perhaps) because our senior officers were very often German speaking.
The only flaw of these Mirages was the complicated maintenance.
This has been demonstrated with the F5. Plane (machine) less nice than the Mirage, says a pilot.
I left military service when the F5 tiger was introduced.
I discovered xplane by chance. As I am curious by nature, I saw by dismantling xplane planes that I could also make them. I have been making planes for 7 years.


Pizzagalli.ch

I am a builder aircraft.






Reply

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pizzagalli said:
Hello, I introduce myself as usual.
I was born in 1952 in Bergamo, Italy Emigrated to Switzerland in 1952.
Primary school Secondary school Studies (6-year course) as a mechanical engineer, graduated in 1974.
Naturalized Switzerland in 1979.
Then builder of automatic assembly machines (line) until my retirement, when I was 63 years old.
Legal age in Switzerland is 65 years old.
Plus a technical director cap.
Becoming Swiss forced me to do my military service, something I escaped by being Italian
. I was able to choose my assignment, and saw my good test results during recruitment.
In Switzerland we have a militia army. I was a militiaman, 3 weeks a year in the flag, salary guaranteed by the loss of earnings.
A real vacation!!! I chose aviation out of laziness because I knew that we took it easy.
No grueling walk, a bit anyway, but the instructors were demanding, zero accident is the absolute rule, again and again. Above all, we were asked to prepare the planes very well for the missions and to receive the plane on the way back.
Checking the machine, refueling, etc. It was nice, the pilots were nice. In short, it was interesting.
Ah yes, the planes were Mirage IIIS and RS. Great machines it must be said.
Pilots loved these machines. We were told that airplanes were flying machines, not airplanes.
Problem of understanding (perhaps) because our senior officers were very often German speaking.
The only flaw of these Mirages was the complicated maintenance.
This has been demonstrated with the F5. Plane (machine) less nice than the Mirage, says a pilot.
I left military service when the F5 tiger was introduced.
I discovered xplane by chance. As I am curious by nature, I saw by dismantling xplane planes that I could also make them. I have been making planes for 7 years.


Pizzagalli.ch

I am a builder aircraft.






Reply

Report Edit
Click to expand...
It's nice to see another Italian here !
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
I am the owner and first moderator of this site. My name is Paul Martell-Mead, I am 32, and live in London, England. I work in IT, but I am very interested in military aviation technology and have built up a large database of knowledge on this subject. I post as "overscan" or "aerospacetech" on various aviation forums.

I recently got married in New Zealand and plan to move there eventually with my New Zealand wife, Vanessa.

[note this information is 14 years out of date - see this post - Admin]
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Dear paul i thank you for letting join your site i am a sixty two years aiplane nut who loves strange and usual air raft and the leads to their development.
Lyon
 
Hello All. In spite of being 75 years old, I am today "unretired" and working for a US military think tank specializing on PLA air forces. If you are interested in probably the most detailed air orders of battle on them - including even elusive unmanned aircraft organizations - let me know.
 

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I do! Welcome (back) aboard. Lot of orphaned Keypubber here that have vowed to let the trash there out.
 
Sorry to hear such. Wish you the best fun here. Enjoy the bottomless honey pot of researched material.
 
Nicolas10 said:
Hello everyone, I'm Nicolas, 46, from La Ciotat, France, working in sales in the automotive industry. People from keypub forums may remember the obnoxious frenchman who used to post there for 10 to 15 years.

Regards,

Nic
Click to expand...

I briefly posted on Key Punishing (ha ha ha) in 2005-2006 before running away... and landing right here.
Welcome !
 
'Aye up,
James, fifty-something physicist.
Used to work at BAe Stevenage in the Future Projects department alongside Steve Kemble, and under Bob Parkinson. Half the time I was in the Spacecraft Operations dept working under Jehangir Pocha and Mick Burton on a variety of commsats.
Then went on to work on Cassini/Huygens, Rosetta, Mars Express and the like.
 
Hello Peter here. Now coming up to 67 and retired.
Started out at a flight school pumping gas and scraping paint off airplanes during the summers.
Went to Air Traffic Control school as a trainee in one of the first direct entry to IFR centers, bypassing the tower experience. Unfortunately too young, and didn't have my head in the game, and washed out due to separation loss while training. Went back to the flying side, and got my commercial, instructor, float, multi and IFR ratings in the mid 70's. Eventually got on with an Arctic operator, and flew Twin Otters on skis and tundra tires in the eastern Arctic (no trees). Got my ATR licence, and eventually became captain. Flew char, soapstone, caribou meat, dogs, and snowmobiles to name some of the cargo. Covered most of the eastern Arctic, with a campout stay on the ice at LOREX 79 near the true North Pole, and FRAM II based out of Nord, Greenland the next year. When flying south, flew C-402, and C-421 on charters including radioactive medical isotopes to the U.S. Left them and flew Saunders ST-27 on a sked for a year, before becoming an operations manager/charter pilot for a flight school.
After a downturn in aviation, (which almost included a tour in Libya flying for an oil company) went back to college to become an electro-mechanical draftsman. (now a CAD "driver"). In that industry I worked with Transport Canada (AIr) being the CAD guru in my small department for a few years, followed by a company specializing in military truck fleets and shelters, for 5 years. Left them to join a big international defence contractor where I worked on multiple projects with NATO AWACS, M777 Light Weight Howitzer, M1A1 electronic boxes, and MHP helicopter to name a few. (Lots of other stuff in between, but there is only so much room.)
I now live on our 50 acre farm with horses, and have lots of farm equipment to play with.
In short I like it all!
 
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Hello everyone, i'm Michael. I am 18 years old, from austria and currently finishing my education as aviation mechanic/technician. I'm very interested in everything related to aviation, especially into military projects and space exploration.

Hobbies include building model vehicles, flying RC helis/planes and playing military/aviation games. Have done some internships and holiday works in aircraft maintenance as well as the background paperwork involved in it.

I obviously don't have the experiences that many other people here have, so i'm looking forward to learning new stuff.

If anyone reads this, have a good one!
 
Hi everyone, this looks like my kind of forum! I'm a professional electronics engineer and a complete petrol head, both cars and planes. My engineering degree included thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, and I love aircraft for the mastery of these subjects that they demonstrate.
 
Hello everyone, I am a civil aviation design engineer. I work in the Russian Civil Aircraft Design Bureau in Russia. I am interested in civil aviation. I recently wrote a reference book on the history of changing the Boeing 737 (changing the standard design, it was interesting how they were able to keep the type certificate with radical changes, it was interesting).
 

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Hi everyone, I'm thrilled to be part of this forum! Thanks to @overscan (PaulMM) for founding it, I really like the niche interest here of this corner of aviation and I look forward to meeting the members. I met overscan at The Admin Zone, a great site for us forum admins and that's how I found out about this site.

I have an interest in aviation and like to watch documentaries about aircraft. I'm much more interested in the technical side rather than the commercial side.

I avidly watch the Air Crash Investigation documentaries on National Geographic and other programs. They're a fascinating insight into what can happen when flying goes wrong and most incidents are due to human error one way or another. Unfortunately, most episodes are tinged with sadness though as so many of the incidents portrayed feature great loss of life.

My favourite episode so far is the one about the Gimli Glider. Imagine unexpectedly running out of fuel at 41000 feet! In this instance they managed to land the plane in the most amazing manner, with no loss of life and only a minor injury or two. Read all about it, here:

en.wikipedia.org

Gimli Glider - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

I'm glad to say that recent series have featured much smaller aircraft and have much less episodes - a sure sign that aviation continues to get safer. Ideally, a series like this wouldn't exist at all.


Finally, I'm the founder of NerdZone Forums where you're welcome to have a look around and join if you like. I currently have a competition running which you might like to take part in.

NerdZone Forums - discussions for the modern nerd

Discussions for the modern nerd
nerdzone.uk nerdzone.uk
 
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That glider crew did not too shabby as the airframe did not retire until 2008.

Welcome to the site, btw.
 
Thanks Foo Fighter. I saw this episode on Air Crash Investigation and it was nothing short of epic. The pilot was ex military and had the presence of mind to try a sideways crabbing procedure used on military aircraft to try and scrub speed without crashing the plane and it actually worked. Truly awesome and I've watched that episode several times now.
 
Though I'm not one to watch Air Crash Investigation, I've certainly read about the Gimli Glider at a very early age as it's a somewhat celebrated example of airmanship.

That story really has it all - human error, chance, suspense, seat of the pants flying and a happy ending for everyone and everything concerned. Sometimes everything comes together beautifully, sometimes not. Wikipedia seems to have a list of "airline flights that required gliding" if these outlier incidents and stories thereof are your thing.

A different subset of incidents would be military aircraft that have been flown w/o power. On the flipside there's at least one instance of a jet (F-106) that has flown under its own power and (sort of) landed after the pilot had already ditched it, see "The Cornfield Bomber".
 
robunos said:
Try Air Transat 236 . . .
Click to expand...

Somewhat lost to history perhaps, this one as it preceded September 11th by little over a week. Oddly I have some more readily accessible recollections (hazy as those are) of perhaps coming across Dr. McKinnon's work (mentioned in the Wikipedia article) on PTSD, perhaps even due to that highly unusual origin story of one of her studies.
 
Well, a lot has changed since I joined this forum about 7 years ago. I've been fascinated with aviation ever since I was a toddler in Shifang, China (about an hour drive away from Chengdu), during which my dad, who worked in Manhattan at the time, would bring home VHS copies of movies such as Top Gun and Independence Day (incidentally, this was when I first became obsessed with the F-14 and F/A-18). And I still remember one of the first questions after emigrating to the US in 2000, when I asked my dad "what is the best fighter jet in the world?" His nonchalant answer was the then-new F-22 and showed me the old Novalogic F-22 game he had on his PC.

I first became aware of this site when going down the rabbit hole of researching the YF-23, back when I was just a freshman at UCLA in 2011. I eventually joined the forum in 2015, when I felt inclined to add some of my thoughts on aircraft designs, motivated by my newfound academic knowledge from my aerospace engineering major. I also made some inquiries for my senior capstone project; fun times. Some highlights during my time in college include being the project manager and one of the lead engineers in the DBF team in 2016 (that year's competition was unique in that it required two distinct aircraft, which meant more design opportunities to go around), and Tau Beta Pi cardboard boat racing (I eventually foundered…oh well).

Since graduating with an aerospace engineering degree, I'm now an engineer for an aerospace defense contractor (which shall be unnamed, PERSEC and all). Some of my weekends involve USPSA and also enjoying the outdoors as a reserve officer in the Marine Corps (okay, perhaps "enjoy" isn't the right word here...).

I've thoroughly enjoyed discussing aerospace topics on this forum. It's quite rewarding to soak up knowledge from some of the more experienced fellows here, and even challenge certain things I thought I knew. I've also lurked around various other aviation forums, but this is the one that I've always gravitated back to.

A little note on the pictures: that is me in front of F-22 aircraft 91-4006 in spring of 2016, when UCLA AIAA students were given a tour of Edwards AFB. This was before 4006’s refurbishment and return to the test fleet, hence why it looked rather tired and dusty. Not pictured but also in the hanger was aircraft 4009, but since it was an active airframe performing some kind of ground test, we couldn't take pictures with it. One thing I immediately noticed was the different skin texture and finish between the two; unlike 4009, I'm guessing that 4006 never had any RAM applied to it.
 

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Well, here is one since we just passed the anniversary of its sinking; I remember when my dad brought home a VHS copy of Titanic in the summer of 1998. Before I moved to the US in 2000, I was also obsessed with ships, and as such, my favorite character in the movie was the ship itself, human characters be damned. Funny thing, that still holds true today with regards to the film.
 
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Hello, I've been lurking here for around a year and I've decided to dip in. I am primarily interested in naval and aircraft projects :)
 
I don’t know if I have ever posted anything about myself here. I used to live very near the Birmingham Alabama airport as a young child…born in 1966…there until a move in 1977. Flat feet and color blindness among other spates of bad luck and I’ll health kept me grounded…but I always had an interest in aerospace.
 
Hello everyone,

my name is Nils (username is Mustang Mk.X, as "Nils" was apparently already taken) and im from West-Flanders, Belgium.
it took me 5 days to get my registration here in order, as apparently i couldnt get my confirmation e-mail on my hotmail adress, but im here :)
i am an avid scale modeller (some might know me from Beyond The Sprues and Whatifmodelers) and aviation enthousiast.
my interests lie in historic aviation and future aviation concepts and developments.

im also recently started (as a side project, still a work in progress) a series of new informative aviation video's under the name "Belgium's Flying Past" on youtube, and im hoping to get a first video in the series up soon, and i concider the Secret projects forums a prime source for information and archive pictures (will be noted in the credits).
im really hoping to learn more here about projects that never were and also to pitch in if i can.
 
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