NASA Jet flying over my house!

gkamysz wrote:It was up this way yesterday, but I didn't see it. Looks like it flew over town today as well.

You can't miss it!

The roaring of the engines as it is flying overhead at 1,500 feet.
Of course, it was right over my head as I was working in my workshop finishing up a 36 inch Fubar to fly this weekend.
The 1st time it flew overhead it scared the ba-jesus out of me (yesterday).

And here is the 36 inches wingspan Fubar.
With a Hacker A10-15S outrunner motor
Graupner 5x4 Cam Slim prop
2 cell 325mah lipo pack
2 x Hitec HS-35HD Ultra Nano Servos
The new Spektrum AR410 Rx
Covered in Super Monokote orange
As all up weight ready to fly is 8.4 oz.
So, no drone tag is required as it is just under the FAA weigh of 8.8oz requirement.





But of course, being at 36-inch wingspan, it's very small at over 500 feet (or so)?

Quite a sight Mike, and with an important purpose.

About once a month we get one of these flying low directly over my house, I can hear it coming and run outsside to look. Training I would think.

Hi sosam117,

Interesting.  Looks like they are taking 'before' samples...
Incoming smoke Aug4th near here in Toronto too...
https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
This year's  un-precedented spring Canadian wild fires were 10X an average 'fire season'...
BEFORE fire season started ! ! !  It is now fire season...
A Canadair415 and two man crew were lost in Greece. Seems a worldwide problem...
I am dumbfounded why the Canadair615 is not in full production. Surely the best tool firefighters have:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDWMSDN7Jmk
Anyways...
Hope everyone stays safe...
Take care,
Have fun,
Dave

Hi sosam117,
Beauty Fubar ! Good luck on the test flights...
Interesting anhedral tipped stab. Is it a lifting airfoil? Looks 'big'.
Nice light weight. 250g/8.8oz is the limit here too.
Dad's 36in Buzzard Bombshell is 13.5oz. 3c/800mah pack elec rig. Flies great.
His 24in one is 8oz with 2c/800mah rig. Flies great.
I try to avoid thermals with them, spiral dives out, are fun though!
You are going to need a very tight spiral to get your Fubar back !
Take care,
Have fun,
Dave

HalfaDave wrote:Hi sosam117,
Beauty Fubar !   Good luck on the test flights...
Interesting anhedral tipped stab.  Is it a lifting airfoil?  Looks 'big'.
Nice light weight.  250g/8.8oz is the limit here too.
Dad's 36in Buzzard Bombshell is 13.5oz. 3c/800mah pack elec rig.  Flies great.
His 24in one is 8oz with 2c/800mah rig.  Flies great.
I try to avoid thermals with them, spiral dives out, are fun though!  
You are going to need a very tight spiral to get your Fubar back !
Take care,
Have fun,
Dave

Hi Dave,
The wing is flat bottom airfoil same as the stab.
So, the stab is a lifting stab and the Fubar balances at 80% on the wing (from the leading edge of the wing -- back).
The anhedral tips act as additional as rudders.
A fellow club member forgot to do the anhedral tips on his Fubar (sure?) and it seems to wander around and does not fly in a straight line, so he has to use some small control inputs once in a while to fly it in a straight line?

I have a whole bunch of .020 size kits that I have collected over the years.
Now instead of having them as Cox powered .020 FreeFlight planes, I'm making them into R/C assist electric planes.

I won the 36" (.020 size) electric postal contest with my 36" span Baby Buzzard Bombshell with a time of 31 minutes 15 second flight.
It was tough getting that time. One problem was the smoke from the Canadian fires and the other was the size of the plane was just a dot in the sky for the longest time (just a little bigger than a head of a pin.) and of course not a cloud in the sky, except the smokey cloud from the fires up north.
The next guy had a time of only slightly over 15 minutes, and he was out in California.

Below is a photo of my Baby Buzzard Bombshell from an old 4-K models kit.
The Bombshell weighs in at about 10oz ready to fly with a 2 cell 250mah pack.

rsv1cox wrote:Quite a sight Mike, and with an important purpose.  About once a month we get one of these flying low directly over my house,  I can hear it coming and run outsside to look.  Training I would think.

That's a large painting, artist's concept prior to C-17 prototype construction that used to hang in the hallway of Engineering Building #35 / #36 (3 story buildings interconnected by a walkway on the second floor at the Douglas Aircraft manufacturing facility in Long Beach, CA.) I used to occasionally walk by it back in the late 1980's.

All those facilities are now gone, demolished in 2001 when Boeing sold the property and new owner took over. Land was worth more than the buildings. Library of Congress has a few historic photos of the facilities required by historic preservation rules. Only the buildings considered historic were photographed, prior to demolition. The ones I worked in and around were built in the 1960's and thus were not considered historic, so no photos of those exist. The Building 41 Test Hangar and 41A Test Hangar Annex that had the offices, flight test control room and downstairs simulation lab, where also my office and desk were are gone without a trace.

working in Santa Clara, I get to see all sorts of stuff flying out of Moffet Field for the California Air National Guard

There was more till Ames Research stopped flight ops and leased a lot of the space to google.

the Globemasters and Galaxys are kinda my faves, but every so often I see F4s, F16s, and oddly, recently some Ospreys.

its cool to look up and go "what the heck is that today"

usually pilots logging takeoff/landings, so up, circle, down, repeat.

UPDATE

The NASA plane is flying over my house again taking "clean air" samples today after a good 2~4 inches from a storm that came and went.

And as usual, it flew over my home at 1,100 feet at 261mph.

Here is the link to track it:
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/NASA817

The flight path shows that it will fly over my house one more time around 3:30pm (CST)

Dang, it's going home already. It was here Saturday. I checked Sunday, but forgot to check this morning.

Occasionally I have seen military aircraft over our house, but higher up, on approach to Cannon Air Base. Lower are usually the medivac helicopters landing at the hospital heliport. But once I saw a crop duster only a couple hundred feet above my house, spraying a farmer's field near our property.

NASA may have visited us, but we're rural enough that we may not be considered a decent sampling site.

gkamysz wrote:Dang, it's going home already. It was here Saturday. I checked Sunday, but forgot to check this morning.

I'm here in Plainfield (between Joliet and Aurora)

gkamysz where are you at in the Chicago area?

Just flew by at a little after 3:19pm (CST) over my house.
Snapped a few photos as it flew by at 17,000 feet at 270mph.










The 2nd photo happens to have the power line in it.
I'm guessing the air quality pick-up is that thing hanging down on the right wing?

Great Photos. I'm way up north in McHenry County. It looked like it was going to land at 2 something, now I see it did another pass. Oh well.

Amazing photos. Telephoto lens?

Hi sosam117,
Here is the smoke map:
https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
I am guessing they need rare 'clear air', to measure ?
Nice photos...
I bet it sounded great, flying overhead...
Take care,
Have fun,
Dave

rsv1cox wrote:Amazing photos.  Telephoto lens?  

No telephoto lens.
I used my very old Cannon 2.0 mega pixels PowerShot A40 camera.
Though it does have the capability of a zoom lens (3x) which isn't much.

I like using my now 20-year-old PowerShot over my Cannon Rebel as it is easier to tote around over my bulky Rebel camera.
I like taking it to the field for those quick photos of that day's flying and post them to club mates.

I just cropped the original photos to reduce all the other "space" before posting the photos.

Here are the original photos (untouched)

HalfaDave wrote:Hi sosam117,
Here is the smoke map:
https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
I am guessing they need rare 'clear air', to measure ?
Nice photos...
I bet it sounded great, flying overhead...
Take care,
Have fun,
Dave

Thanks, Dave, for the link to the firesmoke link.
We have a few club members that have raspatory problems and this will help them out if they can come out and fly at the field?
They have come out then have to leave early because of the bad smoky conditions.
We've learned this year, after a good rain storm the air is good for a few days.

Mike
sosam117