HIGH PLANES Drifter Profile picture
Engineer. Creator of the phrase “vibes-based analysis”. In my Chinese Deterrence Era.
Oct 14, 2024 15 tweets 3 min read
On Thursday, October 10, the California Coastal Commission rejected the Department of the Air Force’s plans to give SpaceX permission to launch up increase the number of allowed launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base from 36 rockets per year to as high as 50 rockets per year. Among the justifications for this decision were remarks about the political activities that Elon Musk, majority owner of SpaceX, conducts as a private citizen. But what truly sent me was this howler, uttered by Commissioner Dayna Bochco:
Sep 11, 2024 5 tweets 2 min read
I've told this story before, but I had a smaller audience then.

I was once in a meeting with the lead engineer for the F-35 navigation system. I asked a question I had always wondered about: why are many of the F-35's antennas a different color than the rest of the jet? Context: Northrop Grumman is the contractor responsible for the F-35 Communications/Navigation/Interrogation (CNI) suite. This engineer had worked on the CNI suite for years. So I thought he would know. His answer:

"That's the color the jet was originally supposed to be."
Jun 18, 2024 21 tweets 4 min read
Okay, so in a few replies to people here today, I've said more or less this:

"The F-35 is a great aircraft but it's a terrible program."

I could write some lengthy thread where I cite a bunch of systems engineering stuff, but here's a better way to explain things. One explanation for the problems of the F-35 program has been "There are too many cooks in the kitchen."

Let's take that metaphor farther.

The F-35 program is like a restaurant. But the restaurant is very strange.
Apr 29, 2024 23 tweets 5 min read
Let's put a bookend on the V-22 thread from the other day and tell the story of why I hated the NVH-3A test aircraft. 🧵 This is BuNo 150614 (614 for short). Delivered in 1962, it served as a transport for Presidents Nixon and Ford. It was then sent to the boneyard, where it stayed until 1984. Returned to service, it found its way to NAS Pax River by 1988, where it served as a test aircraft. Image
Apr 27, 2024 11 tweets 4 min read
On June 1, 2009, the VH-71 Presidential Helicopter program was terminated after years of delays and cost overruns. But we still needed a replacement for the NVH-3A as "Marine One".

Here's the story of how I learned that the V-22 wouldn't be that replacement. 🧵

📸 US Navy Image With the VH-71 cancelled, the program began looking for solutions. Maybe an existing platform could be used. So the program decided to do a study to see if any existing platforms would work. Part of that was an acoustic survey to see just how loud existing platforms are.
Apr 26, 2024 13 tweets 5 min read
On April 24, 2024, a CH-53K transported an F-35C, tail number CF-01, from its storage site Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, to to a Navy unit located at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey.

📸 Kyra Helwick Image Some of you had questions: why not fly the jet? Wouldn't it be more economical to just update CF-01 to the latest F-35 configuration?

To shed some light on these questions, let's look at how the F-35 program used its test aircraft.

📸 Kyra Helwick Image
Apr 5, 2024 12 tweets 3 min read
As I've just spent a while riffing on in the replies, being a telemetry engineer on the Sounding Rocket program was...an experience. Read the first few paragraphs of this article.

The scenario being described was literally my job during launch. archive.is/oGqY6 These were the kind of computers being used. Luggable, single board computers. 486s, the "new Dolches" we had were equipped with Pentium 1s @ 66 MHz.

I had to cannibalize three of them to get one working.

I installed Windows 95 on one of these in the year 2013 Image
Mar 27, 2024 12 tweets 4 min read
You go to an air show and see one of these on display. An F-35A! But...what's the deal with the black and white stickers all over it? Let's go down the rabbit hole and talk about weapons separation testing on the F-35 as we did it during the SDD days. A 🧵
📸:@Jack1nthecrack Image Once again, our references are my own experiences and "The F-35 Lightning II: From Concept To Cockpit", specifically Chapter 16, "F-35 Weapons Separation Test and Verification". This chapter is also available standalone if you have AIAA access: arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/6.…
Image
Feb 13, 2024 28 tweets 7 min read
F-35 Flight Test Instrumentation Thread 🧵 F-35 Flight Test Instrumentation Thread Once again, I'm riffing from "The F-35 Lightning II: From Concept to Cockpit". Specifically, Chapter 6, "F-35 System Development and Demonstration Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base and Naval Air Station Patuxent River".

But also, I was an instrumentation engineer at PAX. The F-35 Lightning II: From Concept to Cockpit Edited by Jeffrey W. Hamstra, Lockheed Martin Corporation  Part of AIAA's "Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics" series.
Jan 29, 2024 16 tweets 4 min read
Hell with it, it’s on internet archive

My thoughts as I read. Down the rabbit hole we go Image Normalize the salty, hyper competent engineer. Image
Jan 21, 2024 42 tweets 10 min read
F-35C Tailhook thread 🧵 F-35C CF-03 on approach to USS Nimitz Primary source here is “F-35C Carrier Suitability Testing” by Tony “Brick” Wilson, who gives us one of the greatest flexes in an AIAA paper I’ve ever seen. Image
Dec 27, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
I've been thinking about this tweet all day, because it's hilarious. "S400s don't care if it [the F-35] identifies as invisible." Except, they do, because of the radar range equation, which gives the aircraft engineering team a direct say in how threat radars see the F-35. A 🧵 Image The radar range equation was developed in the late 1940s by a US Navy engineer, Lamont V. Blake, as he was trying to evaluate competing contractor proposals. It's gone through a lot of changes over the years as our knowledge of radars has grown.