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I love the sound of those Globemaster turbines.
That is a great sound, but I personally prefer how the C-5's sound when they fly over the house. Before I was on SS a C-5 was either coming into or leaving (can't remember which) Travis AFB and flew no more than 3000 feet over the house. Windows rattled, dogs went crazy, and the sound was deafening.
The new C-5M (modified C-5B) are a lot quieter. I understand they use the same engines as the KC-10 Tanker. I had a chance to chat with the USAF group from Travis when they toured the C-17 facility a few years back. They were at the factory for the start of production of their first C-17 Globemaster 3. Start of production is when we load the forward, center, aft fuselage, and wing on the Nicholson tool in Dept. 17J major join. They were happy to be getting some new aircraft as their C-5As had a dispatch reliability rate of about 50%. Travis also maintained and operated the only C-5C in USAF inventory. This was a C5-A modified to carry the solid rocket boosters for the space shuttle program.
That was purdy darn quiet!
It has California mandated Hush Kit.
C-5's and C-17's are part of our daily life here as well, rarely does a day go by where you don't see or hear one, whenever the war in the Middle East picked up you would know without having to watch the news as flights increased and different flight patterns were taken due to increased traffic.
As long as the re-fueling is always from KC-10's and NOT motorcycles, the numbers say everything should be fine:
Guyfang, this freshly rebuilt C-5M crashed at Dover AFB in 2006. The entire crew survived, and the investigation revealed that errors were made by the Pilot & Flight Engineer. The only C-17 lost was ship 63 that crashed with the loss of crew, at Elmendorf AFB while practicing for an upcoming airshow. The investigation revealed pilot error. To my knowledge no KC-10 Extender aircraft have been lost.
Some article I read years ago (like 10-15 years back) suggested that as good as commercial flight safety is (or was, at that time), that it could be improved dramatically by automating all flights.
Brother Ahab. Take a look at where the world is going. They want to do away with Airline & Military Pilots, Train Engineers, Truck Drivers, Cabbies and Ships Captains. How many jobs do you think are going the way of the DoDo bird due to automation. And no, I don't think these companies are concerned that much with safety, I think as usual all they care about is the bottom line. If these companies really want to save money they should automate CEO, CFO, COO positions, and the technology exists to do it. Research has shown that CEOs make the wrong decisions almost 50% of the time.Some article I read years ago (like 10-15 years back) suggested that as good as commercial flight safety is (or was, at that time), that it could be improved dramatically by automating all flights.
It was a scientific article (in Scientific American I believe it was), and it had statistics to back up the suggestion.
I'm writing this now , because one major point of the article was that nearly ALL commercial flight accidents were due to a single criterion:
- Pilot Error
The article was saying that if you take the pilot (the human component) out of the equation that flight safety would improve dramatically.
The conclusion of the article pointed out the psychological problem with this proposal:
- Almost nobody wants to sit inside a plane that doesn't have a pilot (all safety statistics aside).
The article pointed out how it was proven that people are hesitant to even get on an automated train (without a "driver"). The chances of getting them on an automated plane (until the reliability is proven), is almost nil.
The End
