wrote:

Found this:

"The engines and propellers produced an unforgettable throbbing sound
when the B-36 flew overhead. A friend of mine remembers the sound from
his boyhood as a "captivating drone. The noise went down to your heels,
it was so resonant. It just stopped you in your tracks. You looked up
into the sky to try to find this thing, and it was just a tiny cross,
it was so high." Others remember that it rattled windows on the ground
from 40,000 feet."

w3rv


Thats about how high they would be when they came over our house some
200 miles west of Ft. Worth and the windows would rattle. It was an
unmistakeable sound.

On 15 Jul 2005 03:14:21 -0700, wrote:

I recall fondly a stunt I saw years ago at Moffett AFB in California
during a show there.

Moffitt (note spelling - everyone gets it wrong) was never an Air
Force Base. It was a Naval Air Station (NAS Moffitt Field) until it
was recommissioned as a NASA facility (Moffitt Field Federal
Airport, IIRC) NASA's Ames Research Center and Dryden Flight Test
Facility and others are there and the Navy is gone with the
exception of special flights.

NASA still has their big wind tunned there. An engineering school
classmate of mine worked for them for 30 years, retired, and came
back as a contract employee for another 20......our taxpayers' money
at work.

At the south end of the field was a large building which we
affectionateley dubbed "The Blue Cube". It was offically named
Onizuka Air Force Base after the Challenger disaster. For a long
time it was the home of the National Reconnaissance Office (What
office? What cube? What Building?) but they moved the operation
elsewhere and caused a big layoff at Lockheed which ran it. I did
read/hear that OAFB was decommissioned recently.

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 15:44:01 -0400, Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:

Thats about how high they would be when they came over our house some
200 miles west of Ft. Worth and the windows would rattle. It was an
unmistakeable sound.

Six a'turnin' and four a'burnin.....

A good friend of mine who died too young was an engine mechanic on
the '36 in the 50s, which prepared him for his full-time hobby of
rebuilding the two Jaguar engines that he had - one was in his
wife's "Saloon Car" and the other one was up on the hoist. Then
they would switch. How many folks do YOU know who have a chain
hoist and a full engine rebuilding shop in their 2-car garage?

No wonder I could never interest him in ham radio.....

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

Phil Kane wrote:
On 15 Jul 2005 03:14:21 -0700, wrote:

I recall fondly a stunt I saw years ago at Moffett AFB in
California during a show there.

Moffitt (note spelling - everyone gets it wrong)

Well, not *everyone*.

See:

http://www.moffettfieldmuseum.org/index.html


was never an Air Force Base.

Yep, I was mistaken about that. It was used by the AAF during WW2,
but that was before the Air Force existed as a separate branch of
the US military.

In fact the Navy turned the place over to the Army, then got it back.

It was a Naval Air Station (NAS Moffitt Field) until it
was recommissioned as a NASA facility (Moffitt Field Federal
Airport, IIRC) NASA's Ames Research Center and Dryden Flight Test
Facility and others are there and the Navy is gone with the
exception of special flights.

NASA still has their big wind tunned there. An engineering school
classmate of mine worked for them for 30 years, retired, and came
back as a contract employee for another 20......our
taxpayers' money at work.

Yup.

At the south end of the field was a large building which we
affectionateley dubbed "The Blue Cube". It was offically
named
Onizuka Air Force Base after the Challenger disaster.
For a long
time it was the home of the National Reconnaissance Office
(What
office? What cube? What Building?) but they moved the
operation
elsewhere and caused a big layoff at Lockheed which ran it.
I did read/hear that OAFB was decommissioned recently.

--

Thanks for the info, Phil. The above website has a lot of history on
it.

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

73 de Jim, N2EY

Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:
wrote:

Found this:

"The engines and propellers produced an unforgettable throbbing sound
when the B-36 flew overhead. A friend of mine remembers the sound from
his boyhood as a "captivating drone. The noise went down to your heels,
it was so resonant. It just stopped you in your tracks. You looked up
into the sky to try to find this thing, and it was just a tiny cross,
it was so high." Others remember that it rattled windows on the ground
from 40,000 feet."

w3rv


Thats about how high they would be when they came over our house some
200 miles west of Ft. Worth and the windows would rattle. It was an
unmistakeable sound.

One of the unique features of the B-36 is it's geared-down props, i.e.,
the props turn much slower than it's six big Wasps. The rotational
speed reduction was necessary because given the 19 foot diameter prop
disk the tips of the blades would go supersonic and all hell would
break if loose if they turned at engine RPMs. I don't know of any other
reciprocating engine powered fixed-wing military A/C which had
geared-down props like the B-36 had.

Seems reasonable to me to wonder if the B-36 also churned out an
acoustic signature which was also quite unique in that from the ground
they apparently sounded something like six "down to your heels"
thumping overpowered military helicopters which I'm sure we've all
heard in our neighborhoods. The little speck in the sky does thumps
galore on the ground from miles away. With it's six big, unusually
slow-turning props the B-36 it might very well be that it's acoustics
were helicopter-like. Except a whole lot more so. Acoustics is radio in
a different medium and frequency range. The results of resonance apply
to both. The B-36 probably had an acoustic SWR of 1:1 at ground level.

I never saw a B-36 in flight but I was there when Bell-Boeing V-22
Osprey airframe No. 8 arrived in the pattern over Brandywine airport in
West Chester PA and flew it's last flight before being turned over to
the American Helicopter Museum which is on the airport property. The
V-22 also has monster slow-turning props and can fly like a fixed-wing
A/C at speeds not too disimilar from B-36 speeds. I'm here to tell you
the thing damned near drove all of us who were there that day thru the
tarmac during it's high-speed demo passes. The Apache did not.

w3rv