Forum: Civil and General Aviation

I live about 10 miles north of the Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base and the LM plant. Yesterday at about 8 am I saw an airplane I'd never seen before, flying west-southwest directly overhead at about 2000 ft. I'm guessing it had taken off from Fort Worth Alliance, about 10 miles east.

It had the layout similar to a Cessna 337, push/pull engines on a fuselage pod with twin boom vertical tails joined by a horizontal tail at boom level. The engines were turbo-props. The fuselage pod looked like it could seat 10 or 12 people. However the most distinguishing feature was the wing, which had an extremely long span and high aspect ratio. I would estimate the span at about 70 or 80 ft.

The vertical tails were somewhat rounded, reminding me of a Dehavilland tail. With all that wing, it wasn't moving very fast, no more than 200mph. I'm attaching a crude sketch, forgive my lack of computer graphic skills.

Anyone know what it is? Question

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It's probably an Adam A500.

regards, OL

(or possibly the F-35D, Coast Guard version)

I guess it's possible, as the Adam 500 has a similar layout. The airplane I saw seemed larger, had what sounded like turboprops, and had the horizontal tail mounted low instead of atop the verticals.

The A600 is a turboprop, but I'm not sure of the tail configuration. I don't think it caught on with buyers. They've got a VLJ now.

Maybe he was inverted?

regards, OL

Looks like an O-2 Skymaster. Wink

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-2_Skymaster

Forum Veteran Joined: Dec 15, 2006 - 12:28 AM Posts: 760

Could it have been a UAV? Perhaps you are mistaken that it was a pusher puller?

Pushers:
RQ-2 Pioneer
IAI Heron
RQ-7 Shadow
NASA Mini-Sniffer

Pusher-puller:
RQ-5 Hunter
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... ing%29.png

At 8 am I'm not certain about anything, except is wasn't a Skymaster. I tried to find information on A600, no luck. Adam is out of business now, assets bought by a Russian company. I'll go out early more often, maybe I'll get lucky and see it again. Thanks for the suggestions.

Those crazy Russians have come up with a prop version of the Mystic!!!

ATFS_Crash wrote:

Could it have been a UAV? Perhaps you are mistaken that it was a pusher puller?

Pushers:
RQ-2 Pioneer
IAI Heron
RQ-7 Shadow
NASA Mini-Sniffer

Pusher-puller:
RQ-5 Hunter
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... ing%29.png

I fly the RQ-7 Shadow, and it's far too small to be seen from the ground unless it's in the pattern, so it's most likely not that. Pioneer and Hunter are also rather small, and at 2000ft, you're not likely to see them either. We're also not allowed to fly in civilian airspace yet, so unless you were inside of a Restricted airspace area, I'd rule out UAVs.

It kinda reminds me of a Burt Rutan design.

The Adam was a Rutan design, I do believe.

Forum: Civil and General Aviation

Anyone know what this is?