Talk:Fairchild XC-120 Packplane

Heh

Should have known the Hand of Sparks would be on any idea involving attaching boxes to things. Can't someone just give him an ISO shipping container catalog? We'd never see him again and we'd only have to toss him a box of tissues every couple of days seconds. Herr Gruber (talk) 11:23, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

That only applies if the shipping containers can hold Gavins, of course. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:21, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Question - why no further development?

It'd be great if the article could elaborate on why further development of the plane was not pursued. (The design seems potentially viable, at first glance...)

jasper jon (talk) 06:33, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

In all likelihood, because it's one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but doesn't translate well to reality, because planes are not semi trucks. Loading the containers up would take just as long as loading a conventional aircraft's fuselage (probably more, since they were more awkwardly shaped) and since you have to refuel the aircraft and check it before it can actually take off again (we're using the notoriously maintenance-intensive Wasp Major as our engine here, don't forget), the idea of instant turnarounds wouldn't actually be possible in practice. It would be better to just build several planes and rotate them in service than have one fuselage that you don't service hauling cargo pods until it breaks down. You'd also have to be pretty careful loading and unloading to avoid damaging the underside of the aircraft (you would definitely see aircraft down for the count because someone in a hurry slammed a loaded pod into the landing gear, and it doesn't appear to have anything to protect the underside of the attachment area from accidental impacts during loading), and fatigue on and around the connectors would probably be a problem as the airframe aged. Nevermind that the whole connection system would be cutting into the useful weight the plane could carry, as would the giant landing gear and the integral wheels on the pod. And I wouldn't like to see what happens to this thing if it lands heavily (because of, say, an engine fire; again, Wasp Majors here) or the landing gear fails to extend, particularly since they wanted to put people in the container. It also strikes me that making it that tall would make it handle like a dog in any kind of wind, especially with a light load or no load and full fuel it would be dangerously top-heavy.

That's not even getting into the fact that you'd need to unload the cargo pod to actually move the supplies anywhere (since a container designed to attach to a plane is not going to be strong enough to transport by road, 40-foot ISO containers weigh 3.8 tons for a reason) and so all you've really done is create an extra step of attaching / detaching the pod rather than loading the fuselage directly.

The other other problem would be that the Korean war was showing that the US' existing transports were too small, and a year after this they issued the requirement that led to the C-130. So even if it didn't suffer from fundamental conceptual issues, they still didn't want another transport the size of the C-119. Herr Gruber (talk) 06:34, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

1 or 2?

The main text says a single example was built. The sidebar says two. Which is correct? Sarrica (talk) 16:42, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Individual aircraft

Should the category Individual aircraft be applied; only a single aircraft was built, plus the Antonov An-225 Mriya was able to get into that category for that reason. BeeboMan (talk) 02:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)