The biggest balls in the sky are back!

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger returns to active duty tomorrow as he and his First Officer Jeffrey Skiles once again board US Airways flight 1549 from New York’s La Guardia airport to Charlotte North Carolina.  This will be Sully’s first revenue flight since landing his A320 in the Hudson River back in January.

This clip from the Jimmy Kimmel show suggests that any Canadian geese in the area better beware.

Welcome back Captain!

Today in aviation history – September 29, 1964

LTV XC-142

The Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) XC-142 experimental tiltwing aircraft completes its first flight.

The project never developed commericall but NASA used it for research testing from May 1966 to May 1970.

Canadair in Canada developed something along the same lines, the CL-84 “Dynavert”

Canadair CL-84This one is on display at the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa.  Like the XC-142, the CL-84 could not attract much interest and was quietly shelved.

Today in aviation history – September 27, 1922

image

Dr. Albert Taylor and Leo Young, scientists at the US Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory, make the 1st successful detections of objects by "radio observation". They use wireless waves to detect objects not visible due to weather or darkness. This insight leads to the advent of radar.

The theory behind radar was first put forward by Christian Hulsmeyer in 1904 and famed inventory Nikola Tesla worked to develop a system of detection in 1917.

The British were the first to fully exploit radar as a defence against aircraft.  Robert Watson-Watt demonstrated a working prototype in 1935.

That’s a lot of dust

Sydney and parts of Australia have been hit with horrible dust storms over the last few days.  Some incredible images show exactly how bad things were at the height of the storms.

First up, a YouTube video of the sky going completely black as the dust blocks out the sun.

And this shot of the iconic Sydney Opera House almost completely obscured in the eerie red glow of the storm.

(REUTERS/Tim Wimborne)

See this and other pictures at Boston.com’s Big Picture.

(thanks to J-Walk for pointing me to the YouTube video)