Author: jsf5460

Last week I spoke about a specific aircraft, the SR-71 Blackbird. We looked at its significance and role in American history. I enjoyed writing about the Blackbird, and I hope you guys enjoyed reading it. I decided to do somewhat of a similar blog this week but instead focus on the F-22 Raptor.
The F-22 is the U.S. military’s 5th-generation fighter (the 5th generation is the most advanced type of fighter). The aircraft was designed and built in the late 1990s, and the first deliveries of the F-22 were in 2005. Built in the 1900s, one would think the technology would be outdated, but the exact opposite is true. The Raptor is still the industry standard of technological advancements, and no one else has caught it yet.

Oh, and speaking of advanced technology, the F-22 is “stealth.” It is still wild to me that a 64-foot long, 44,000-pound piece of metal can be virtually undetectable to radar equipment. Funny enough, President Trump was under the impression that “stealth” meant it was impossible to see with human eyes. He loved to boast about our ability to make “invisible planes” that the enemy could not see. I like his attempt to understand the concept, but the plane is very much visible, as you can see here:

The geometric shape of the F-22, paired with special radar-reflective coating, gives the Raptor the ability to disappear from radar or at least go unnoticed. The aircraft’s cross-section is estimated to appear as small as an insect on the radar. Along with this, the Raptor is one of the only aircraft able to super-cruise. Super-cruising is the ability to fly above the speed of Mach one without engaging afterburners. This gives the plane fantastic fuel efficiency when going fast. Along with this efficiency, the Raptor’s top speed is estimated to be Mach 2.2.

You may have noticed that I often use estimations when I talk about the F-22. This is because the U.S. government is very secretive about the aircraft’s capabilities. The Raptor is the only aircraft not allowed to be sold to allied countries, bound by federal legislation. That’s right; the Raptor is so good that capitalistic America isn’t even willing to sell it to its friends to turn a profit. The United States is more than willing to export the newer F-35 to allies because it is simply not as advanced.

Thankfully, the F-22 has never been used in combat. So how do we know the effectiveness of the aircraft? Well, the short answer is simulations and training. During simulated missions against American F-15s, the Raptor has a win-to-loss ratio of 40:1. To put this into perspective, the F-15 has been involved in many air-to-air battles and has downed 104 enemy aircraft. The F-15 has never been downed by another airplane. The undefeated F-15 does not even stand a chance against the F-22. Pictured below are an F-22 (top) and an F-15 (bottom) flying in formation.

The downside of the F-22? The cost, of course. As we all know, the government is the best in the world at spending money. The cost of one F-22 is upwards of 330 million dollars, and it costs around $30,000 per hour to fly. Yikes!

Hey, I’m excited to have you all come back! Again, I’m sorry if you don’t want to be here and would rather watch TV right now, but let’s make the most of it. The past few weeks, I have mainly addressed broad topics, my love for aviation, environmental impacts, etc. This week I would like to cover a much more specific part of aviation history- the SR-71 Blackbird.
The SR-71 Blackbird’s origins can be traced back to the late 1950s. The famous Lockheed Skunkworks designed the plan for the aircraft. Skunkworks is responsible for many of the military’s secret projects, but most projects have been declassified. The A-12 Oxcart, the original version of this plane, first flew in 1964.

In case you are wondering, 1964 was 58 years ago; also the year my father was born. It is just hard for me to believe that something built that long ago has never been surpassed by another piece of machinery. The SR-71 Blackbird is most well-known for its speed, but just saying this plane was fast does not do it justice. The Blackbird could cruise at a max speed of Mach 3.2. That is 3.2 times the speed of sound, approximately 2,200 mph. A bullet exits a hunting rifle at about 3,200 feet per second. The SR-71 could climb at 3,300 feet per second.

If a missile was fired at a Blackbird, the pilot only needed to nudge the throttle forwards, and the missile would have no chance of catching it. As I said above, the reported max speed of the SR-71 was around Mach 3.2. However, most pilots who have flown the airplane say that they exceeded that speed on many occasions, and pilot Brian Shul reported exceeding Mach 3.5 during an operation. Brian Shul took this picture below during one of his flights in the Blackbird.

Now, if you can’t tell, the SR-71 is my favorite aircraft of all time. I have a picture of the aircraft right above my desk where I am typing this very blog post. I received my first model airplane -a SR-71- when I was just two years old. I liked it for its sleek looks and jet-black paint then. Now, I love the story behind it. The SR-71 was truly a weapon of war. But it did not have any guns, it could not drop any bombs, and it did not carry any missiles. It only brought two things to the table: a camera and speed.

The Blackbird would fly over or around countries (mainly the Soviet Union) and take pictures of military bases while flying at 85,000 feet. But after years of flying, what could be left to be accomplished with the aircraft? Surely everything had been captured by its cameras.

President Ronald Reagan found a way to use the airplane to invoke fear in the enemy. Communist leaders from around the world hosted a meeting in North Korea. Of course, the United States couldn’t join the meeting, as there is hostility between ideologies. President Ronald Reagan decided to send 2 SR-71 Blackbirds to fly over the meeting location in a figure-eight pattern. The meeting could hear the deafening sonic boom about every 6 minutes. The country could not do anything about it because no missile could catch the airplane. It must be so powerful to say, “I know you are here, and you know I am here, but you cannot do anything about it.”

I recommend watching Brian Shul’s speech from 2016 about the SR-71 Blackbird, but also human resilience:

 

If you read my last passion blog, you received just about the most transparent view into my mind without cutting it open. You can already tell I love airplanes, but I must admit that my thoughts can run adrift. Therefore, before diving deeper into the black hole of aviation, I want to talk about environmental effects and misconceptions.

At the end of the last post, I left you all to appreciate a picture of the legendary Aubrey Drake Graham (I don’t think he is a legend, but it would be impossible to deny his worshippers that status). The last segment demonstrated a toxic part of luxury in the modern world. Airplanes are still powered using non-renewable fuels. Sadly, this may not change in the near future due to the amount of power it takes to propel an airframe. However, this directly coincides with the main benefactor of airplanes and their capabilities.

When aircraft are used to their full potential, they are incredibly efficient machines. One flight with 200 people would use approximately 100 miles per gallon for every person on the flight for the standard Boeing 737. Now when do these numbers get skewed? They get ruined by the rich, privileged CEO of a company that decides to take joy rides all over the world, providing no meaningful transportation or purpose.

Airplanes have been engineered, built, modified, and perfected many times to be the most efficient, quick, safe, and comfortable type of transport ever seen. It just irks me when I see influencers hopping inside a jet for the cool factor, and I hope it does the same to you too.

Oh, you know what is always fun! Conspiracy theories! I’m glad we agree on that; now, let’s talk about the conspiracy behind contrails. Some people in the world believe that the government and/or the “deep state” is intentionally releasing chemicals from airplanes into the environment. These trails of what theorists deem chemicals are referred to as “chemtrails.” These chemtrails are supposedly being used to control peoples’ minds/political beliefs and lower life expectancy. I mean, I’m not going to draw any irrational conclusions here, but that sounds an awful lot like the vaccination conspiracies.

If there is one thing I want you to leave with today, it is knowledge about what contrails actually are. Airplanes move incredibly fast in the atmosphere, with their engine(s) running at extremely high temperatures. After the hot air in the engines is expelled into the atmosphere, it flash-freezes and creates a trail of ice behind the aircraft. These contrails are nontoxic to the environment and eventually condense into water, which is why we see the contrails disappear behind the plane.

However, just like anything in life, there is still a negative aspect. In places where air travel is frequent, these contrails can envelop a large portion of the sky and trap heat in the atmosphere. This is not much of a problem during the daytime because they reflect an equal amount of heat away from the Earth as they absorb. During the night, the contrails only absorb heat and do not reflect heat from the sun (TLDR: no sun = more heat trapped). We can help with this problem, thankfully, and it’s actually a pretty simple fix. This effect could be greatly reduced if people booked more morning and afternoon flights. Tell your family, tell your friends, and tell that one guy you always pass on the way to your classes to not book night flights. Oh, and tell them to read the world’s most cursed blog. See you all next week, peace.

When I tell you that aviation can be seen everywhere in society, I am not joking. Sure, if I asked you to look for an aircraft and you looked down, I would be seriously worried for your health and would probably take you to the emergency room. My point is that even though humans outnumber aircraft by about 300,000 to one, nearly every person in the world interacts with an aircraft daily, whether they know it or not. I don’t know if you want me to elaborate any further, so I am going anyway. Overnight shipping? A truck driver may drive like mad for 8 hours to get to one location and deliver a pair of shoes or whatever. OR, one of Amazon’s 75 Boeing aircraft can transport 23 tons of whatever shit we may buy from San Francisco to Philadelphia in 6 hours.

Ok, ok, I’ll forget about the business side of aviation and leave that for the Smeal kids. Let’s go on a trip to California (not actually, just in our minds). The climate is undeniably changing, and the land is being engulfed in flames. I would love to throw in a Billy Joel “We Didn’t Start the Fire” joke right here, but I’d be lying. Gender reveal parties setting off fires has somehow become a little trend. Nonetheless, the problem has got to be fixed. But it’s an impossible job for land-based firefighters. The blaze can be thousands of acres wide, progressing at swift paces. When fires get this wild, we call to our friends in the sky. Over 60 airplanes and helicopters are in the air daily, extinguishing fires and stopping the spread.

Sorry sorry, I ranted there for a minute; why is this cool? Because some BATSHIT engineer decided to strap 163,500 pounds of water to the bottom of an airplane and send it over a fire. How do I explain this using anything but the metric system? I guess we don’t do that here in America. Imagine an airplane flying with TWO Sperm Whales strapped to it. These marvels of engineering are saving the homes of Californians every day, the animals, and the people.

ART! I love art, you love art, we all love art. Aviation has encapsulated the art community for centuries, even millennia. Just the other day, I was eating in Pollock commons and looking at all of the photographs in the dining area. Lo and behold, there were two photographs of a sleek silver engine, complete with matte black propellors. I pointed it out to my friend and asked her to explain why she thought it was beautiful or ugly. She commented on the symmetry, the complexity, and the possible stories behind the aircraft. Of course, being an aviation nerd, I had to snowball into analyzing the picture and identifying the airplane as a B-17.

This is the sad one, the not-so-cool part- the luxury that comes with aviation. We’ve all seen it- the first step to every celebrity’s stardom- a private jet. Airplanes and helicopters have become the quintessential “I’m richer than you, so I’m better than you” symbol in the modern day. Now don’t get me wrong, I love aviation, but I know the environmental impacts it can have. But chances are your favorite singer, favorite social- media influencer, or favorite sports superstar has their own private jet or charter plane. We’ll review the environmental effects in a later episode. But right now, I hear an airplane flying overhead, and I need to go look at it.

Thank you so much for this picture, Aubrey Graham. We really needed to see this.

Hello all, and welcome to the world of aviation! This website may become your first stop for an exciting read or to put you asleep. Either way, it is doing good. You probably are all asking the same question right now: who is this weirdo making a random blog about airplanes? Well, my name is Joseph Foradora, and I am a freshman at Pennsylvania State University. Why an aviation blog? No, I am not studying aerospace engineering or anything of the sort; it is because airplanes are dope as shit, and my opinion is not being changed on that one. Now come on, and let’s dive into the (not so flat) world of aviation.