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Some amazing work here.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2019/oct/01/the-fantasy-figures-of-txema-yeste-in-pictures

The B-52 employs eight degrees of positive incidence on the wing specifically to aid in takeoff. Its main landing gear trucks have a very unique arrangement, with the aft sets so far back as to preclude the aircraft from rotating for takeoff in the traditional sense. They have no traditional "nose gear", and all four "mains" are steerable. The positive incidence is needed to overcome the extreme aft placement of the rear set of mains. They are so far back that the aircraft simply cannot rotate on them in the traditional sense, so the engineers had to add that eight degrees of positive incidence just so the darn thing can get off the ground. While the trailing main gear trucks do sometimes break ground first, they typically take off "level", with the forward and aft sets breaking ground at about the same time. Sometimes they kinda sorta "rotate", but they really can't do it very much. The wing itself wants to fly level, of course, resulting in its characteristic nose down attitude in flight.

My dad started his career working on B-52's. He absolutely loved that airplane. Just for something to do on a Saturday, we would sometimes drive all the way across the state from Seattle to Spokane, home of Fairchild AFB, just to spend a day watching them take off and land. Pretty cool stuff for us little kids.

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8 seconds into that video:

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Jeff, I think I see what they did with the doors moving laterally to let the horizontal stabilizers pass through, but can't figure out how they got the vertical stabilizer in and out with the bottom of that roof line being so low... unless they could raise/retract it like a garage door.

I suspect that the bird goes in the hangar for some midlife (well in case of the Buff it's more like geriatric life) update program, and probably they already took the wings off first, then park it inside for the fuselage program ??

or not.. the video is from 5th bomber wing, they are at Minot AFB

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Those hangers look big enough for wings to stay attached.
But those left hangers, looks like they have a movable half that goes over the plane , after it is parked with nose in front half

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The local AFB in Oklahoma City area is Tinker, AFB. They refurbish lots of aircraft there, even the B-52. Back in the good ol days we were allowed to autocross on a ramp and it was always great. Like an all day air show. They opened up one of the repair hangars for us to have access to the bathrooms. I still remember the shock of walking into one of the hangars and a B-52 was stripped to the aluminum airframe. All the electronics and other systems had been removed and they were checking every inch for cracks or corrosion. It is astonishing they could ever get it back together better than new, but that is their job.

That area where e autocrossed because super high security when they started refurbishing the F-117A Nighthawk. Their engines were super secret and one of the guys in the club that worked out there said if someone was just walking around on that ramp they would be face down on the concrete, and dogs would be ready to chew you up if you did not comply with all the orders for the armed guards. I still miss that autocross area.

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The things you don't know. I had no idea.

When I was actually playing golf, my civilian friend loved golfing at Cedar Point, the gold course on the Pax River Naval Air Station. The course is nice but they loved watching all the various aircraft take off and land, work the pattern, etc. RW 24 is right along side one of the fairways, as is the taxi way.


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My dad was stationed on Misawa Air Base from '78-80 and again, I think '83-85. As a kid, I enjoyed watching the planes (pretty much constant). There were lots of P3 Orions and, I think, some AWACs. I don't really remember what else was there the first time we were there. The second time we were there, the AF brought in a wing of F16s.

I do miss the military life in a lot of ways.

The first time I was old enough to really understand airplanes and I saw a C-130 I wondered why the tail was so cut off on the rear. Then I saw one rotate for takeoff, and I understood. As an airshow at Maxwell AFB in 1976 for the bicentennial they had a C-130 do a full rocket assisted takeoff. And takeoff it did, wow that thing got moving fast.

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It is neat to watch. I have seen the Blue Angels a few times and the JATO take-off by Fat Albert is great.

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I flew from Pt. Mugu NAS to New Zealand in a C-130. A friend of mine was a pilot at VXE-6 and I took some leave to hopefully get on the Antarctic ice.

A bit about VXE-6: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/vxe-6.htm

As much as I loved the C-130, that is a long way to go at around 300kts!

We made it to Christchurch, NZ but the weather was awful on the ice so I flew back to San Diego commercially.

Even steerage felt great!

Paul, imagine a C-54 ride from California to Hawaii!. It was 12 hours long! Unpressurized, just waves to look at, and you face the tail of the airplane while seated.

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A coat sale in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1936. The store, Troelstrup, which still exists, had overstocked with winter coats. A scaffolding was erected around the building and covered with the coats. This attracted so many people that police were summoned and ordered it down. All coats were still sold.

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I worked on a program where we mounted a laser in a C-130. I was the engineer responsible for the design of the turret retraction system. We would lower the laser turret out of the bottom of the C-130, blast things with the laser, and then retract it back into the fuselage. The problem was the turret, when lowered, extended below the point where the landing gear would be so in the event the retraction system failed, the plane would have an interesting landing. I came up with a manual method of retracting the turret that used an existing speed wrench included in the C-130 for manual lowering of the landing gear.

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