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I just wanted to pop in here and point out that 5 KW at 8000' MSL elevation was the rating specification for an MEP-002A. If you're managing to get an actual 5KW out of it at 9000 ft you're doing very well and have a stout example of the beast. And yes, while I normally try to encourage people...

Your Hz meter is overly sensitive and is picking up harmonics from the gen head. If RPM is constant, then frequency is constant, and will be the same for all the windings.

Thanks to decodeme2 for that reminiscence. Habus are not talkative people about their work with the aircraft - they are all aware that talking about the wrong part of what they did could hurt their country, land them in Leavenworth, or both. Even though most of the airframe technology is now...

I haven't heard the term, but I've heard most commonly of fuel dilution of oil resulting in poor lubricity and low oil viscosity, followed by rapid ring and bore wear, followed by the engine running away as it sucks fuel and lube oil past the rings. There's also a variant of badness on blower...

To further that, I always wait until 1) the pumps quiet down in the prime and run position (they clatter when pumping air, not when pumping fuel), and 2) I can hear the fuel trickling back into the tank via the return line. That tells me that everything in the low pressure fuel circuit is fully...

You're doing great work. As I was looking at the driveshaft cover parts, my first thought was 'well, at least there aren't any compound curves' followed by 'but those flanges and the bellhousing cover (or whatever that is) don't look like any fun at all.' Beautiful. I'm guessing there was...

I'm surprised and pleased to see that at least three B-36s missed being turned into sauce pots, city buses and canoes. I knew that the XC-99 had survived, but didn't know about the Pima and Fort Worth B-36s (I would like to hear the story of the Fort Worth airplane, as I lived there in the '70s...

Not according to the nose art or Wikipedia.

That's not 'a' YF-12, that's the YF-12, I believe. There were only three: One was destroyed, one was damaged in a fire and rebuilt as SR-71C 61-7981. The Smithsonian gets the flashiest airplanes, but NMUSAF in Dayton gets most of the coolest ones. The only surviving YF-12, B-36, and XB-70 are...

Well, I was thinking more of changing the game of building the next fighter-interceptor for USAF, and, yes, changing mission profiles. Remember, the B-52 was built as a stratospheric nuclear bomber, but was (and is) famous for being an air truck full of low-level tactical pain of many different...

I've thought about post-derusting preservation a good bit, as I've derusted quite a few things over the years. My answer is: it depends. The good news is that electrolytic derusting does a good job of removing chlorine free radicals from the metal, which means that the metal will rust when it...

Missions were actually pretty similar, which is why a nearly-identical airplane was used for both. CIA provided all the seed money and startup contracts for the U-2 and, when they became vulnerable, project Oxcart. Project Oxcart was an enormous technological risk. The U-2 did exotic things...

Yes, that's the thing about it - it's easy and completely non-damaging to the work item as long as you hook the wires up the right way. The only thing I've had problems with was cooking my current sources with too much load.

Ram cooling basically means that the radiator isn't so buried that there is little/no passive airflow over it. Most older vehicles only need a radiator fan up to about 30 MPH because above that ram air pressure is sufficient to force air over the radiator. I would be surprised if a deuce...

First, nice paint job. I don't know that I would have gone with flat green, but some contrast color with black lower and insets makes it actually look pretty good, which is not something I normally say about the appearance of an MRAP. Second, I don't know why people have so much trouble...

I work on a lot of light alloy stuff, so I also use a bunch of the silver anti-seize. It's probably worth mentioning that silver Permatex anti-seize was originally called 'aviation' anti-seize - my Dad still has his pint can of the stuff from about 1962 when he rebuilt his first car engine with...

**Sigh** I should leave this one alone, but I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. I actually had to do some historical research on this long ago because I had to deal with conflicting answers from the factory manuals about a cylinder head fastener torque, and wanted to know what was right...

Edwards AFB has been the world's epicenter of aviation testing for decades. If it's weird and US military or NASA and it ever had anything to do with aviation or space flight, it probably spent some time at Edwards/Muroc, with the possible exception of some unmanned stuff that was either at...

My bride is wise in many things, but has never experienced the evil that HOAs do. So she used to be a little bemused at my adamant determination to not live under an HOA covenant, and ideally to be outside of as many zoning ordinances as possible. Mind you, we don't have any of the big green...

Yes, I was in the same boat - I have an old (1965) Square D 200A panel with the vertical main breaker and horizontal load breakers. I'd only seen the expensive option until dangier's post. I was thinking about just fabricating my own, but their price is low enough that I'll probably just buy...