From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V4 #109 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Thursday, 6 January 1994 Volume 04 : Number 109 In this issue: booms, F-117 Re: Scram-jet engine display Lockheed Sea Shadow and HMB pictures alert! Re: booms, F-117 Re: Scram-jet engine display Re: booms, F-117 Re: booms, F-117 Re: booms, F-117 See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: rschnapp@metaflow.com (Russ Schnapp) Date: Wed, 5 Jan 94 09:14:26 PST Subject: booms, F-117 Around a year and a half ago, Larry Smith and I worked out a scheme by which an array of 3 very simple acoustic detectors hooked to a computer ought to be able to roughly derive the velocity and direction of a supersonic aircraft, as long as it was sufficiently far away. So far as I know, nobody has built such a system. If they did, and if they knew the speed and direction of the SR flights, one could make use of that to verify/calibrate the system. Then again, the "Aurora booms" seem to have stopped shortly after we worked out the scheme, so there's nothing to test against. As for that F-117 at Miramar, I'm really ticked off. My office has a great view of the pattern. That 117 must have flown right by here without my looking up to see it! ...Russ Schnapp Email: netcom!metaflow!rschnapp or rschnapp@Metaflow.com or rschnapp@ACM.org Metaflow Technologies Voice: 619/452-6608x230; FAX: 619/452-0401 La Jolla, California Unless otw specified, I`m speaking only for myself! ------------------------------ From: Tom Ambrose Date: Wed, 05 Jan 1994 11:28:09 PST Subject: Re: Scram-jet engine display I also went to the Air Force Museum while I was visiting my parents. The museum is great...so many cool planes. I agree with Doug about the Hypersonic display. It really wasn't all that great. I almost didn't even see it because it was tucked away a bit. The NASP wind tunnel models were cool and there was some good text, but overall it was a let down. - -tom -------------------------------------------------------------- | Thomas P. Ambrose Gordian, Inc., Santa Ana Heights, CA | | tom@gordian.com phone: 714-850-0205 fax: 714-850-0533 | \____________________________________________________________/ | | | "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes | \ a bit longer." -- Henry Kissinger / \------------------------------------------------------------/ ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 11:53:03 -0800 Subject: Lockheed Sea Shadow and HMB pictures alert! For those of you into The Sea Shadow and HMB (Huge Mutha Barge) there are some nice pictures in the Jan. 1994 Naval Institute Proceedings magazine (Cover shot from inside the HMB of the Sea Shadow, and other neat shots on pgs 55-56). Also don't miss the drawing and Commentary article on pg. 9 of the F-117N catching the 3rd wire with other 117Ns sitting on the deck in the background with wings folded with caption "The Navy needs stealthy aircraft on board ship". Actually, the same drawing as on pg. 183 on the Lockheed 50th anniv book (Oh heck, let's build em the Lockheed A/FX on pg 187 of the 50th Anniv book!). Also possibly interesting article on Navy Space - the final frontier - which I haven't read yet. Larry ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 16:59:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: booms, F-117 The flight before last, the SR-71 boomed an array of seismic stations here in SoCal. We're helping the calibrate their sensors. This is part of the same sensor network that told us about the northbound Mach 5 overflights of the L A basin. Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com On Wed, 5 Jan 1994, Russ Schnapp wrote: > > Around a year and a half ago, Larry Smith and I worked out a scheme by > which an array of 3 very simple acoustic detectors hooked to a computer > ought to be able to roughly derive the velocity and direction of a > supersonic aircraft, as long as it was sufficiently far away. So far > as I know, nobody has built such a system. If they did, and if they > knew the speed and direction of the SR flights, one could make use of > that to verify/calibrate the system. Then again, the "Aurora booms" > seem to have stopped shortly after we worked out the scheme, so there's > nothing to test against. > > As for that F-117 at Miramar, I'm really ticked off. My office has a > great view of the pattern. That 117 must have flown right by here > without my looking up to see it! > > ...Russ Schnapp > Email: netcom!metaflow!rschnapp or rschnapp@Metaflow.com or rschnapp@ACM.org > Metaflow Technologies Voice: 619/452-6608x230; FAX: 619/452-0401 > La Jolla, California Unless otw specified, I`m speaking only for myself! ------------------------------ From: Tom Ambrose Date: Wed, 05 Jan 1994 11:28:09 PST Subject: Re: Scram-jet engine display I also went to the Air Force Museum while I was visiting my parents. The museum is great...so many cool planes. I agree with Doug about the Hypersonic display. It really wasn't all that great. I almost didn't even see it because it was tucked away a bit. The NASP wind tunnel models were cool and there was some good text, but overall it was a let down. - -tom -------------------------------------------------------------- | Thomas P. Ambrose Gordian, Inc., Santa Ana Heights, CA | | tom@gordian.com phone: 714-850-0205 fax: 714-850-0533 | \____________________________________________________________/ | | | "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes | \ a bit longer." -- Henry Kissinger / \------------------------------------------------------------/ ------------------------------ From: rschnapp@metaflow.com (Russ Schnapp) Date: Wed, 5 Jan 94 14:58:27 PST Subject: Re: booms, F-117 > From: Mary Shafer > Subject: Re: booms, F-117 > To: Russ Schnapp > > The flight before last, the SR-71 boomed an array of seismic stations here > in SoCal. We're helping the calibrate their sensors. This is part of the > same sensor network that told us about the northbound Mach 5 overflights > of the L A basin. > > Mary > > Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com Neat, but I wonder how the "Aurora" client(s) might feel about such cooperation between NASA and CalTech (?). The nice thing about the sensor system we were considering is that no big network was necessary. Three sensors in a small (10s of meters) array would do the trick. It wouldn't work well if the flight path was too close to the array, but what do you want for an el cheapo experiment? ...Russ ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 15:38:16 -0800 Subject: Re: booms, F-117 Russ writes: >> Around a year and a half ago, Larry Smith and I worked out a scheme You and Randy Gobbel derived the equations, so you guys get the credit. I merely asked some questions and made some observations. Mary writes: >The flight before last, the SR-71 boomed an array of seismic stations here >in SoCal. We're helping the calibrate their sensors. This is part of the >same sensor network that told us about the northbound Mach 5 overflights >of the L A basin. NEAT! So you're going to use the USGS sensor array to do sonic boom testing? Sounds like a good idea to me! Is this for NASP? Larry ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 20:50:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: booms, F-117 No, you've got it backward--we used sonic booms to test the array. We didn't even get any data; it all went to the seismologists. In addition, they were interested in getting boom signatures to improve their data analysis. This will help them differentiate between booms and temblers. Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com On Wed, 5 Jan 1994 larry@ichips.intel.com wrote: > > > Russ writes: > >> Around a year and a half ago, Larry Smith and I worked out a scheme > > You and Randy Gobbel derived the equations, so you guys get the credit. > > I merely asked some questions and made some observations. > > Mary writes: > >The flight before last, the SR-71 boomed an array of seismic stations here > >in SoCal. We're helping the calibrate their sensors. This is part of the > >same sensor network that told us about the northbound Mach 5 overflights > >of the L A basin. > > NEAT! > > So you're going to use the USGS sensor array to do sonic boom testing? > > Sounds like a good idea to me! > > Is this for NASP? > > Larry > > ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V4 #109 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. Administrative requests, problems, and other non-list mail can be sent to either "skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu" or, if you don't like to type a lot, "prm@ecn.purdue.edu". A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu, in /pub/skunk-works/digest/vNN.nMMM (where "NN" is the volume number, and "MMM" is the issue number).