I recall an episode of the show where something similar happened...related?

I realize painting terrain specific camo is not cost effective for a force that moves assets all over the world, but damn that paint job is sexy and I want it on our helos.

Ballistics trajectory is fairly basic physics.

Tyler said the line is winched from side to side, so I would think the wire is spooled on both ships and can be let out or drawn in from either side as necessary to maintain tension and keep the cargo moving in the desired direction. Still must be one hell of a balancing act though.

A bit more hair-raising without the basket.

Normally blades in a coax configuration generate more noise, because the airflow going into one rotor disk is already greatly disrupted by the first. A laminar flow going into a rotor or prop disk produces less noise. That said, my forte is fixed wing aircraft and I am certainly not an acoustics engineer. I would…

I thought each carrier would normally have 1 or 2 Marine squadrons in addition to Navy squadrons? Or would this be a 'wartime' deployment configuration?

Some aircraft have their canopies designed to be blown apart as the pilot ejects, to save time as you said. I believe the prevailing reason is for 0-0 point ejecting, that is ejecting at 0 forward airspeed and/or zero altitude. At 0 airspeed, there is nothing to pull the canopy away (hence Goose). In Harriers and even…

Flew an SR-22 a couple times for a college class. Beautiful and fairly powerful airplane. Never cared much to see how the CAPS worked first hand though :) Seeing the whole deployment on video is pretty cool, good to see it worked out well for the pilot.

That's cool, never saw a pic of how its done before.

But an F-117 was shot down 15 years ago o_0

The balsa is probably sandwiched between carbon fiber (and maybe other composites) sheets to increase its strength to weight ratio. Never done it with balsa before, but I've seen and done similar techniques for aircraft. It is amazingly strong for the weight.

The purpose is to concentrate essential information in the pilot's primary viewing space. If the information is spread out in a wide arc, the pilot has to look around for pieces of information and could still loose situational awareness with what is in front of them. It is only an issue if the pilot has a need to look…

Fuel/air density and proximity to a hot enough ignition source must be just right for it to actually ignite. Note John's video of a F-111. As it passes you can see the fuel stream out below the engine nozzles and travel a bit behind the aircraft and diffuse into the exhaust before it ignites.

Fuel/air density and proximity to a hot enough ignition source must be just right for it to actually ignite. Note John's video of a F-111. As it passes you can see the fuel stream out below the engine nozzles and travel a bit behind the aircraft and diffuse into the exhaust before it ignites.

Almost looks like they "shot it down" by ramming it.

God forbid someone paints something too warlike on their flying death machine, right?

Even the 'tame' artwork is interesting. It is cool to see how pilots, crews, and even squadrons can add personal touches to their equipment to make it "theirs".

That looks awesome, really classy.

I for one would love more information about regulations for 'nose art' and otherwise decorating combat aircraft. I think the art that adorned WWII aircraft (on all sides) was awesome, and the modern Tiger Association produces sweet paint jobs.