| samnavy |
11-23-2019 06:42 PM |
^Just think about every single airplane tire that has ever touched down on a runway. The section of asphalt that initially makes contact with the rubber accelerates that tire from ZERO to the groundspeed of the aircraft within a few feet. Since most airplanes touchdown on the same section of runway... at a major airport, that's thousands of tires a day doing little burnouts on the same spot. A duty runway at a major airport lasts about 10 years.
I'll assume that the contact material of that skid is some sort of very soft sacrificial rubber that wears down quickly and does no damage to the paved surface.
Now for the geeky part... pictured here is a primary duty runway at NAS Lemoore. 98% of the aircraft that land here are FA-18 Hornets. The pilots are trying to be as precise as possible with their touchdown points to mimic carrier landings, plus all the students trained there are required to be precise when learning to fly the aircraft... so all of the tire marks are concentrated in the same area. My calibrated eyeball sees that about 80% of all the landings there happen in the same 200ft section of runway... and likely 60% in the same 100ft section.
If you look at LAX (for example)... the same area of black tire marks is 3000feet long. Aircraft of all shapes and sizes, plus those aircraft are all trying to exit the runway at preferred taxi-ways to make it to the right gate, plus they've got incredibly effective braking systems, enormous spoilers, thrust reversers, etc... which means they don't have to be near as precise with their landing spot. You'll find the same "non-precise" scattering of touchdown points on Air Force base runways. Air Force runways are usually very long for a variety of reasons, so you have a lot of room to slow down... and those fags don't land on carriers.
In the picture I've attached, you can see two distinct sets of touchdowns points. Those are not left and right tires of the aircraft. The smaller blob of black tire marks on the left is centered in the "carrier box" that you can see is painted on the runway and is the same shape and size of the landing area (LA) on a Nimitz class carrier. Pilots flying the meatball make these marks when performing FCLP's (Field Carrier Landing Practice). The larger blob of tire marks that is centered in the middle of the actual runway are normal touchdown points... and are perfectly lateral to the carrier box touchdown points because pilots are still flying the ball even if they aren't landing in the carrier box. You can see the IFLOLS (Improved Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System) "Meatball" off the left side of the runway just past where the bulk of the marks are.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...28078eecd9.jpg |
