What's cooler than a P-51?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Todays not so random aircraft sighting today is a P-51D. How cool is that? Well, not as cool as a P-51D being chased by 4 Harriers!  This beauty belongs to an Aggie who was in town for a meeting on campus and we knew he was coming in. So, working at the airport and having the wind tunnel take a huge dump this morning meant we had time to pile out onto the flight line for front row seats to see him come in. As we were watching him peel off from making a high speed pass down the runway, we heard quite the roar coming up behind us. Turned out to be four Harriers coming in to participate in the flyby this Saturday at the football game featuring the local sports franchise. Be sure to look over the tail of the P-51 in the video for the harrier making his landing.

 No sooner had we settled down to climbing all over the P-51 and we heard more noise as four more Harriers came in.

Click Click Boom

When things go wrong in the wind tunnel, they go wrong quickly. Like at 200+MPH it takes all of about 0.3 seconds to get from test section to the prop. At that point, all bets are off.
BEFORE:

AFTER:BEFORE:


AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
When stuff up to and including Aluminum go through a B-29 prop spinning 1200RPM, there is not much left on the other side. I used a broom to sweep up the white bits of housing and the remains of the cooling fan that was inside the housing.