On Mon, Aug 02, 2010 at 01:59:38PM +0100, Bob W wrote: > > > > If you want a noisy Vulcan, try the flying testbed for the Olympus II > engine > > developed for the Concorde. Just one of those engines was fitted > > underneath the belly of the aircraft. When they lit that one up it was > louder > > than all four of the regular engines. And Concorde had four of those ... > > > > Concorde was incredibly loud. It's no wonder it didn't get permission to > overflow land. It used to fly over here twice a day and was completely > unmistakable. Beautiful plan(e), but too loud.
Oh, I know. In those days I was working in Reading, on the top floors of the Butts centre. That's right underneath the flight path from Heathrow if, as was customary, take-off was to the west. So we used to hear the Concorde with the engines set on full after-take-off climb. There was no mistaking it for anything else. After a while it was so ingrained in our consciousness that we noticed it more if it didn't happen. > We get a lot of Chinook helicopters flying over here too, and they are also > unmistable and very loud. You can feel the pounding in your chest long > before you can see them, or even hear them for that matter - some sort of > subsonic vibration seems to precede them. I've heard them, too. Contemporary reports suggested that sound of the big Chinook was a significant part of the impact of the helicopter gunships in Vietnam. Of course "Puff the Magic Dragon" (a military version of the DC3, the C-47, fitted with a pair of 7.62 mini guns with a rate of fire of up to 6000 rounds per minute) could deliver greater firepower, for a longer period, but it didn't have that big throbbing backbeat. Neither played Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", either, but that's a whole different movie. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
