Plastic_Gargoyle posted:

"What's the best airport code" is a fun game.

I'm partial to KLIT, the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport. Which they renamed as such fully knowing it was coded KLIT. Of course, there's also Sioux Gateway (SUX).

Actually, just as far as names go, I have Wa (DGLW) and Wawa (CYXZ) on my to-visit list, mostly because, well, wouldn't you?

Deeters posted:

hobbesmaster posted:

Yeah flightaware's data is very inconsistent, claims previous flights were 7 minutes long and covered about 800 nmi.

Ola posted:

lumbersexual

Linedance posted:

Just imagine how cool the F35b is gonna be when they're finally finished it!

Psion posted:

in non-WIC news, what's the best way for someone to get from Dulles into downtown DC? Asking for a friend who was not lucky enough to get booked into National. (company booking agents hate you, apparently) -- any particular cab/car services that aren't mad poo poo, etc, or is it just the usual?

drunkill posted:

Nazi Concorde, from New York to San Francisco in two hours.


From the pilot episode of amazons Man in the High Castle adaptation, pro watch:
http://www.amazon.com/pilotseason

MrChips posted:

You see, my issue with the drone business is that it seems the overwhelming opinion coming from them is "we don't want BIG GUBBMINT interfering in our precious business with all their rules, stifling our creativity abloobloobloo "

Everyone in aviation already works within largely the same framework...why should anyone else get an exception?

Nebakenezzer posted:

I'm guessing that they could retract each set of landing gear separately; maybe they only needed both sets on takeoff and landing.

Spaced God posted:

Going through my bookmarks and I found a 400 page PDF on Project OXCART and the U2. I can't remember if I got it from here or not so pardon the repost, but I know some of you guys might be interested in that.

Barnsy posted:

What is even the point of lasers like this? Aside from physics experiments and blinding people, obviously.

Vahakyla posted:

poo poo, the Have Glass Vipers look great.

Ola posted:

There wouldn't be any need for regulation if drones were unavailable to morons.

Fucknag posted:

At some point on the "smallest plane" scale there's probably gains (losses? shrinkage?) to be had by putting the pilot in a pressure suit and filling the fuselage with helium for extra lift.

iyaayas01 posted:

You joke about requirements creep with T-X, but apparently the USAF requested $220.5M in the FY16 FYDP for pursuing a plan to develop a mod kit that would enable T-X to fill a red air aggressor role (it's apparently for the FY18 budget).

Neither the AETC/CC (who has oversight on any trainer aircraft procurement in the USAF) nor the ACC/CC (who would have oversight on any future aggressor plans) has any idea what this $220.5M was for or why it was requested, and both claim that this would be a currently unauthorized increase in scope to T-X as it is currently intended to be procured as only a trainer, with any addition in capability to be occurring after the initial procurement.

So the USAF requested over $200M for an add-on capability that not one but two four-star generals not only could not explain, but both directly questioned why the money was being requested since it was directly contradictory to the intent of the program it was being added to.



(It actually makes some sense for T-X to have some sort of red air capability since the USAF currently uses T-38s as pseudo-aggressors for the Raptor at Langley, it's just really funny to me that this $220.5M got put into the FYDP without anyone apparently having any idea it was there or why it was included, even if it was in the out years of the FYDP as opposed to an actual budget.)

A Handed Missus posted:

oops.

hobbesmaster posted:

If an airline employee is dedicated to a murder-suicide theres not too many options to prevent it.

holocaust bloopers posted:

Any thread in GiP, despite the topic, will eventually be about dogs, Katy Perry's butt, or trans raptors.

Cat Mattress posted:

Another unmanned aerial vehicle crashes

Nebakenezzer posted:

Just on CBC news: "Recent events in Europe raise the question: would the flying public be better off if there was ~no one~ in the cockpit?"

Phanatic posted:

Inaugural Virgin flight from Manchester to Atlanta was supposed to include a ceremony involving a water spray-down from a firetruck.

Instead someone hit the 'FOAM' button instead and got the flight canceled:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/inaugural-manchester-atlanta-flight-grounded-8950095

SybilVimes posted:

Yeah, it's essentially a single runway airport, just with different options for common wind directions.

When you want that to expand to 2 runways, you end up with 1950s heathrow:



e:

It should be noted that 9L and 9R are still as they were then, today:



You can even make out the bits of the old runways that are still used as taxiways, but the rest is filled in with parking/gates mostly, and the huge cargo terminal on the west side of the centre.

Degree posted:

Does a day each at Udvar-Hazy and the Air and Space Museum seem right?

FrozenVent posted:

The one hyping they got right.

Seriously, I'm laying in bed right now and I was just saying to myself that I don't mind going to work so much, I just don't feel like putting on pants.

Duke Chin posted:

Richard "The Reason We All Gotta Take Off Our Goddamn Shoes In The US" Reid's flight was, if you haven't guessed already, a 767

Ed:


I suck at acronyms - what's TDY stand for in this instance?

Nebakenezzer posted:

Let me ask a question that fits into the previous topic seamlessly: how much do you love flying boats?

If the answer is "a hella lot" then this is the site for you. It has a catalog of design plans for flying boats. Reviews of books, entirely about flying boats. Color charts for flying boat painting covering all flying boats during their heyday. A index of out of print articles on flying boats. Walk arounds of flying boats. Another comprehensive index of models of flying boats. A index of flying boat cut-aways. Dare I say it, it's pretty aeronautically insane, and my hat is off to whomever is maintaining this site.

Plinkey posted:

Looks like it might be based on the Sea Ranger, maybe Sunderland? It looks pretty drat generic.

ehnus posted:

I think the Mauler has the Skyraider beat for gross weight.

I was flying to Europe once and this girl next to me was all smug because she had a meal from Whole Foods instead of whatever they were serving on the plane, telling the stewards "No, I don't eat airplane food". Joke was on her though, her meal hadn't been refrigerated for like 8 hours by the time she tucked into it and she spent the rest of the flight vomiting.

monkeytennis posted:

Disk failure do you think?

C.M. Kruger posted:

Cat Mattress posted:

That one?


It's a Mirage III. More precisely, a Mirage IIIO, which means it once flew in the RAAF. There's not much differences between the Mirage III and the Mirage 5, which is funny because the Mirage IV is a completely different beast.

wolrah posted:

The old data thing would be pretty simple to deal with from a technical side. Anything with working GPS knows exactly what time it is, so make it refuse to operate outside of a very limited "toy" profile if the data is more than X amount out of date. Figure out a standard format for the data and make it the FAA's (or other local regulatory authority as appropriate) responsibility to provide it so we can be confident everyone's running on the same information and if a manufacturer disappears the owners of their products will still be able to get the required updates. Add digital signatures to prevent tampering.

As far as the rest, drones should obviously be the ones to yield right-of-way to manned craft in pretty much any situation I can think of because they're almost always going to be more maneuverable and have the least to lose if the avoidance maneuver goes wrong. That said the easiest way to make sure this happens is to mandate ADS-B or something comparable in all GA, so IMO the solution is to tell the "no electronics" crowd to gently caress off.

It's not like small, battery operated, near-1GHz, GPS equipped radio devices are expensive technology these days. There are probably regulatory issues to resolve about what would effectively be a portable transponder, but I see no technical reason why one couldn't have a box that was basically the size of a smartphone with a pair of antenna ports for GPS and transmit, otherwise packed with batteries, which would allow even the lightest of ultralights to add ADS-B with no effort other than attaching the box and antennas somewhere appropriate.

Alereon posted:

Isn't that only true for obsolete receivers that use the legacy signal? I thought the current civilian signal is much more robust and secure.

Alereon posted:

Oh sure, I mean it will always be trivial to just jam the signals and reduce accuracy or prevent use of GPS, but that's immediately detectable so a lot harder to do nefarious things with. The real concern is someone stealing every Amazon Prime package being delivered in a given area.

Also, do other GNSS systems have decent coverage over North America yet? That's another form of redundancy, I'm sure the other systems are similarly vulnerable but requiring a malicious actor to carry 4 sets of equipment makes things a bit tougher.

david_a posted:

Then again, going multiple times is clearly the superior option because it's rad as hell

The Locator posted:

Why would they shoot calipers at a helicopter? Seems like a strange thing to do, and a waste of good calipers. Of course, maybe they had an idea for a new and unique way of measuring things that we'll now never know.

n0tqu1tesane posted:

Hartsfield-Jackson was the most convenient airport

Epiphyte posted:

No Tomcats, no sale