Model Airplane News 01/2014

When Model Airplane News was first published in 1929, it was the Golden Age of aviation, with record-setting flights and breakthroughs in aircraft design. Our magazine cost 15 cents back then, but the inspiration it provided to generations of modelers is priceless. Issues from those early days are filled with free-flight airplanes built from pieces of balsa and tissue paper and, when radio control arrived in 1938, we were the first to tell builders how to equip their aircraft with the new technology. Fast forward to today, and we regularly cover radio-controlled turbine-powered jets, multi-rotor machines, and sport aircraft that are ready to fly out of the box. Like the model aircraft hobby, our magazine has evolved and, after 85 years of continuous publication, we continue to thrive. We've expanded into multimedia with a website, videos, e-mail newsletters, social media, and a paid Premium Site, along with a library full of books and DVDs. We are proud of our iconic place in U.S. journalism history, and we will continue to build on that legacy to inspire and educate aircraft modelers as they reach for the skies. On this historic anniversary, we salute you, our readers, and thank you for your loyalty and enthusiastic support.

download

Aeroplane Monthly Winter/2013

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was the fastest manned service aircraft in history. Its role was strategic reconnaissance (hence the "SR" designation). Technically, it was a conventional aircraft, taking off and landing and having air-breathing engines with conventional controls. There are machines faster than the Blackbird (a nickname also used as the callsign), but they were either "dash" types like the mid-air launched X-15, or spacecraft like the Space Shuttle Orbiter (see Aircrew May and September 2013). The SR-71 was able not only to travel faster than a speeding bullet, as the cliché has it, but was able to fly at Mach 3+ for significant times, transiting huge swathes of the Earth's surface, either to get to a photographic target or to pass over a large target and (not least) to egress from danger zones, usually simply outrunning any missile attacks. The official top speed was Mach 3.2, but Blackbirds could be flown to Mach 3.3 as long as the engine compressor inlet temperature did not exceed 801°F (427°C). SR-71s hold the world record for the fastest air-breathing manned aircraft, a record previously held by the YF-12, the type's predecessor.

download

Gun World - Handgun Buyer's Guide 2013

I stopped testing when I discovered the first bulged case out of the M22.1 got mad when I noticed that all of the cases were bulged. Then I got in touch with an engineer at ISSC's headquarters in Austria, who explained that the bulged cases are completely normal for the M22. Bulged cases are not normal in general, I told him. Yes, he said, but in this case, they are within safe parameters and are a harmless result of thefeedramp's design...and no one reloads .22 LR brass anyway, so there's really nothing to worry about. I had my doubts, so I put on the thickest leather gloves I have, hauled out the hottest .22 LR ammunition we had, and went back to the range with trepidation...and determination. The M22 ate (and bulged) more than 200 rounds of CCI Mini Mag, 100 rounds of CCI Stinger, 100 rounds of Velocitor, and we have no idea how many hundreds of Remington Golden Bullet, Federal Champion, Winchester Super-X, and other high-velocity ammunition......without a single case failure. No bulges ever burst. No cases ever split. The M22 kept going, just like the engineer said it would, and I eventually took off the gloves and went back to having a fun time shooting.

download

Jets 08/2012

Looking at pictures of the various aircraft labelled 'fifth generation stealth fighters' from Russia, China and the United States, one might conclude that their respective design teams have been comparing notes: the shapes and sizes of the aircraft are remarkably similar. Perhaps that should not come as a surprise. In the past the West has had the advantage of super-computers to model the aerodynamics of the designs in great detail. As that technology has spread, so Russia and China and eventually other countries will come to develop similar designs. After all, aerodynamics is the same the world over. The progress that Iran, for example, is making in its indigenous aircraft programme is testament to the speed of this growing trend. As knowledge becomes democratised - as academics term its spread across the Internet, it is axiomatic that stealth designs for aircraft will proliferate. Anyone with a reasonably sized computer and more than a casual understanding of the laws of physics and aerodynamics can design a fighter with a low radar-cross section. Where things get interesting and more difficult to assess is the operation of the sensor equipment carried within the aircraft and how advanced the stealth coatings are on the surface. These are areas where one side can gain a brief advantage over another.

download