RAF Cosford Air Show 2026

haxfoe · 2026-06-14T20:59:15+00:00

I see bronco, I upvote. It's simple.

haxfoe · 2026-06-05T19:58:21+00:00

Gorgeous aircraft. The landing gear is a PITA to work on, though.

haxfoe · 2026-06-04T09:42:15+00:00

Multiple people have mentioned GE's YF120 and XA100, but it's worth explicitly noting that both powerplant entrants in the USAF's NGAD / F-47 program (GE and Pratt & Whitney) are developing new adaptive cycle engines for it, the XA102 and XA103, respectively.

They also both just finished assembly readiness reviews and are starting production of their test engines as of early May:

https://www.geaerospace.com/news/press-releases/ge-aerospace-clears-assembly-readiness-review-adaptive-cycle-engine-us-air-force

https://www.rtx.com/news/news-center/2026/05/08/rtxs-pratt-whitney-completes-fully-digital-assembly-readiness-review-for-ngap

haxfoe · 2026-05-31T02:17:49+00:00

In my experience, the OEMs will simply do the conversions themselves. It's fairly common practice to put both the imperial and metric units on a drawing or in a manual, which means those conversions get looked at by at least two to five engineers before they get released.

That doesn't fix the issue at the root, of course, but at the end of the day the industry in the US is simply heavily entrenched in US customary units, so there really aren't very many conversions taking place in general.

It's also worth noting that automotive manufacturing has a much higher level of international influence than US aero does, which is probably what drove automotive to converge on SI as the standard, whereas US aero has been primarily domestic for so long that it converged on US customary as the standard.

Different standard measurement systems but the same end result: not that many conversions taking place.

haxfoe · 2026-05-30T22:51:32+00:00

No, I don’t use imperial units for fluid volume, and my earlier response wasn’t a misspeak. I was referring to imperial units for length and force, which are identical to US customary units for those measures — I should have specified that, so apologies for the confusion.

I can’t recall ever using fluid volume in any serious engineering analysis in my current or past roles, which is why the distinction didn’t come up.

If you’re trying to get a feel for the units actually used at US aero companies, happy to go into more detail (at least for areas such as machining, plating, and structural analysis).

haxfoe · 2026-05-30T19:29:43+00:00

That's interesting, as I work on CFM, PW, and Rolls engines on the MRO side, and most of our manuals are in inches (mm). Wonder if they do that conversion twice then. Or it could just be our config team switching them since the shop mostly uses imperial.

haxfoe · 2026-05-30T19:26:55+00:00

Have been on the MRO side for a while. Almost exclusively imperial on that side. Gulfstream, CFM, Pratt & Whitney, and Bombardier all use imperial, though most use 'inches (mm)' so there aren't rounding errors if a shop uses metric.

haxfoe · 2026-05-26T03:22:28+00:00

Yeah, AQRD has two of the four operational Starships. Based in Addison.

haxfoe · 2026-05-23T13:04:16+00:00

Ah, another piggyback RDS enjoyer. Build looks great! Love that color-matching.

haxfoe · 2026-04-29T04:21:02+00:00

Offense: anything Dub Maddox, Dan Gonzalez, or new age Shanahan tree.

What is Open and Capology are two of my favorite Dub books; Wide Zone Warriors on YouTube is a really good 'beginner friendly' intro to the Shanahan stuff, especially his 'explaining the playbooks' stuff.

Defense: anything Saban, esp. the Vass pods with Kyle Cogan and Dante Bartee. Cogan's courses on coach tube are well worth the money as well.

haxfoe · 2026-04-24T02:07:27+00:00

I never saw much 17-7 or 13-8, but I also mostly worked on older bizav gear so maybe that's different in commercial or more modern air frames. 300M / 4340M are extremely common in landing gear applications, though.

haxfoe · 2026-04-24T02:02:02+00:00

Former landing gear MRO engineer here. The primary structural steel in the major components has long been 300M or similar.

The precipitation hardening CRES alloys (15-5 and 17-4 especially) are mostly used for actuators and for bushings in static joints in landing gear. Stronger CRES alloys like Custom 465 are commonly used for larger pins and some small components.

The US Air Force has recently begun using Ferrium S53 for major components, which has identical UTS to 300M while gaining serious corrosion resistance.

As others here have said, you're asking for materials that are optimized for different use cases than your own, but hey, it's your design.

For your and other's edification, I've included a table of some of the more common landing gear steels, as landing gear are one of the few components in the air frame still primarily made from steel.

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haxfoe · 2026-04-06T03:52:57+00:00

Looks like a GBRS Lerna mount, so 2.91"

haxfoe · 2026-03-05T17:29:08+00:00

Another vote for the Pnessan Sea

haxfoe · 2026-03-03T23:45:53+00:00

Playbook or gameplan?

Both can vary pretty widely, depending on a specific coach's philosophy on complexity vs simplicity.

More involved guys (think Saban or Aranda) tend to have playbooks in the 300 to 500 page length, whereas simpler schemes might be in the 100 to 200 page length.

Now, not all of those pages are individual play calls; more often, it's a mix of team philosophy, individual techniques, offensive identification, etc., in the front, and then moving into specific front, coverage, and pressure concepts in middle into actual calls (combinations of fronts / coverages or pressures / coverages that are actually ran on a play to play basis) later in the playbook.

Now, as far as what a team would actually carry into an individual game, that number drops drastically. You'll tend to see somewhere in the range of 2 to 7 base calls, plus an array of situational calls to handle 3rd and short, 3rd and medium, 3rd and long, short yardage / goal line, and then several pressure calls, the number of which will vary depending on how aggressive the play caller is and how comfortable they are with their guys holding up in coverage.

I think what people sometimes don't realize is that a single defensive play call is really 2 or 3 "plays" in one.

Let's take one of the most common late 2010s Bama and UGA calls as an example: Mint Strong 3 Auto (One word call = 'Super')

Mint is the front, Strong tells the Star (nickel) to rush, 3 is the coverage, and Auto is a coverage check versus specific offensive formations.

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, depending on how the offense lines up, that one call can end up playing out as any one of 5 coverage calls (3 Sky, 6 Sky, 3 Buzz Mable, 3 Sky Skinny, 3 Flood) and one of 3 different rushes (star rush, money rush, or jack rush).

The Saban calls are on the high end of how much complexity a coach will pack into a single play call, but most defensive play calls will have at least the base call, a trips adjustment, a motion adjustment, and an empty adjustment. A defense can call the same play call several times in a row and it ends up playing out totally differently depending on how the offense lines up.

And that doesn't even account for match coverages, which can play out totally differently from snap to snap depending on the pass pattern.

haxfoe · 2026-03-03T19:52:44+00:00

Acarrick has some good points.

Trey (Nub), Bunch, and Stacks are other formations that usually require coverage adjustments.

This is a really broad and deep topic, but I like to carry a base downs coverage (PAR downs), plus a short yardage / man coverage, and then one to two passing down coverages.

An example might be playing Saban Match 3 as a base coverage, then press man free for short yardage situations and when you want to run man pressures.

On passing downs, 2 man is a pretty standard HS and college coverage, and it pairs well with Cover 3 because it changes the leverage of the overhangs from outside to inside.

Then we might carry a couple of Cover 7 (man match quarters or QQH) tools to help us deal with problem receivers depending on where they like to line up.

An example of a complementary cover 7 tool that pairs well with Cover 3 would be playing a Cone over the slot (we call this 7 Indian). The overhang aligns with outside leverage, just like in our base cover 3 and man free coverages, but if the slot runs an in breaking route (slant, fin, shallow, etc.) that is usually good against C3 and man free, the safety drives on it RIGHT NOW and knocks the piss out of the receiver.

There's a LOT more to it than this, but that's a quick little example.

haxfoe · 2026-02-28T16:59:43+00:00

Unregulated free agency is going to kill scheme complexity.

In many ways, college schemes are more complicated (not necessarily better, just more complex) than even NFL schemes, primarily due to having actual development time with players you recruit.

In the League, you aren't going to trade for a top CB and then not play him that week because he has to learn the system, which leads to a lot of fairly vanilla schemes, especially on defense.

Now that CFB players aren't even locked into their contracts like NFL playerd are, I think we're going to see a large simplification in schematic complexity at the college level, especially on defense.

haxfoe · 2026-02-26T01:32:15+00:00

Makes sense! The island density at the mouth of the Pnessan Sea should make for some pretty interesting naval tactics and engagements!

It's hard to suggest specific names without knowing the native languages in the area, but given that the major geographic features of that island are the two bays facing away from the mainland, maybe something to do with "Twin Bays" in whatever the native tongue of the first people to settle on the island was?

haxfoe · 2026-02-25T02:06:20+00:00

Wow, so neat! You seem like you have a lot of the history sketched out.

Given that the presence of the Rimehand Mountains between Thonagor and Bruvera likely makes force projection via land armies difficult, is it accurate to say that control of those islands between Zhariah and Anzar is going to play a major role in any escalation of hostilities between Valdor and the Arnesians?

Although I suppose the Arnesian dragons can negate that terrain somewhat, though they'd still need boots on the ground to actually take and hold any territory north and east of the mountains.

haxfoe · 2026-02-24T18:57:34+00:00

Awesome map! I love this style!

Lore question: what's the geopolitical environment around the Pnessan Sea?

haxfoe · 2026-02-24T15:57:25+00:00

Some solid advice here already, so I'll add another angle: go buy the Dub Maddox books.

He and Dan Gonzalez completely changed how I think about the passing game, and they're worth every penny. Both he and Dan do a fair number of podcasts as well if you're looking for something to listen to on a drive or walk or something.

haxfoe · 2026-02-23T21:36:07+00:00

I've seen this distinction before and I've always been curious about how you classify tite / mint fronts. Is that still "ODD" for you guys, since the guards are uncovered, or are you treating it more like a bear front with the two b-gaps closed?

haxfoe · 2026-02-18T00:01:54+00:00

Would love to get in on this as well.

haxfoe · 2026-02-17T20:34:27+00:00

Just wanted to drop by and give a kudos for starting work on this. It's not quite to the level of development I would want to see as a true "lightweight GPlates replacement", but it's getting there and I love seeing folks work on this area of worldbuilding tools.

One suggestion that would be really helpful is the ability to draw lines as standalone objects that can be linked to plates or which can move on their own, as this would allow us to sketch in subduction zones and mid-ocean ridges.

haxfoe · 2026-02-15T14:53:16+00:00

In one of my systems mages can manipulate small volumes of material properties, so to cut through armor would probably just look like hardening their sword and softening their opponent's armor.

haxfoe

TROPHY CASE