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Old 02-28-2007, 05:40 PM
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82Rigger 82Rigger is offline
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The McKinley Climatic Laboratory encompasses six chambers, each with its own capabilities.

The main chamber, which can handle a C-5 Galaxy, is the largest and busiest section. Able to create any temperature between minus 65 and 165 degrees, its humidity range is from 10 to 100 percent. At 252 feet wide, 201 feet long and 70 feet high, it has 55,000 square feet of useable floor space. And it allows for limited live firing.

The equipment test chamber is the second most used area. Much smaller than the main chamber at 130 feet long, 30 feet wide and 25 feet high, it allows for a broader temperature range ? minus 105 to 170 degrees ? and a quicker rate of cooling and heating rate. Aircraft engines and small vehicles or equipment such as trucks and turbine-driven ground power units are tested here.

The sun, wind, rain and dust chamber is 50 feet long, 50 feet wide and 30 feet high. Built primarily for heat tests, it creates temperatures between 60 and 170 degrees in four to six hours depending on outside ambient conditions.

The all-weather room has its own refrigeration machinery and can create temperatures between minus 80 degrees and 170 degrees. The maximum cooling rate is 60 to minus 80 degrees within 48 hours and a heating rate from 60 to 170 in eight hours. It measures 44 feet long, 22 feet wide and 15 feet high.

The salt fog chamber uses two steam-fed heat exchanges to create temperatures between 70 and 149 degrees. Designed to provide an ambient test site away from the other test rooms because of the corrosive nature of the salt fog conditions, it sits outside McKinley?s main structure. It measures 54 feet long, 16 feet wide and 16 feet high.

The temperature-altitude chamber uses the same refrigeration machinery as the all-weather room, but its extremely small size ? 13 feet long, nine feet wide and six feet high ? allows for rapid condition changes. With precooling, the chamber?s temperature can drop from 70 to minus 70 degrees, with pressure reduction to 50,000 feet, in 12 minutes. Temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees and altitudes as high as 77,000 feet have been reached.


Recent testing was done on the F-22 Raptor.

Here's the Raptor at -65 F
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