Aeronautical Insanity: switching to secondary tolerances

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bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Phanatic posted:

They combine the luxury of a cruise ship with the speed of a slightly faster ship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq-N3_plNq8

# ¿ Mar 4, 2014 14:55

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 21:40

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

My dad used to fly a lot for business and he told me that one airline (can't remember which one) actually had all the radio chatter on one of the headphone channels and he would listen to it all the time.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 20:26

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Caught a 2 hour documentary about the 747 on the Smithsonian Channel last night. I guess it's fairly new, premiered on the 22nd.

What's funny is I just got done reading the 747 Wikipedia page earlier that afternoon, so it was interesting to see how the documentary lined up with the stuff written there.

They also did a bit about accidents on the plane, Pan Am Flight 845 sounded horrific. I think I would lose my poo poo if a plane I was on suddenly was filled with steel beams upon takeoff. It's even more amazing that they repaired that plane.

There was a bit of whitewashing though. They kept stressing that the majority of the accidents on 747's were due to people error (which is true for the vast majority of planes) and they didn't even MENTION TWA Flight 800.

I don't fly much as my job doesn't require it and most of my vacations have involved beaches on the east coast that are drivable. But I did manage to fly on a 747 once back in the late 90s (can't remember if it was '98 or '99.) It was actually a college trip for the swim team, we would spend 10 days in Puerto Rico for winter break to train. It was a flight from NY to Puerto Rico and the airline (can't remember which at the time) used a mostly empty 747 for the 4 hour flight for reasons I don't quite understand. The one thing that struck me was how much the center overhead bins would rock back and forth during turbulence.

Searching around, it seems like that route is mostly serviced by 737's, A320s, and 757s which seem a lot more reasonable.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 19:55

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Airbus wants to get rid of the traditional cockpit so they can shape the noses of planes more aerodynamically by not having to worry about glass or visibility.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/07/airbus-submits-patent-application-for-windowless-jet-cockpit/

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 21:06

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

wdarkk posted:

I would be really, really nervous about that as a regulatory agency.

The thing is though, most modern planes have no physical linkage between control surfaces and the cockpit anyways. So, I'm not really sure how moving to virtual displays really hurts things. You already have the critical control aspect of the play relying on electrical signals and computers, surely the display aspect could be made just as robust.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 21:44

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

FrozenVent posted:

Were they doing an intentional belly landing? They look singularly unconcerned about it.

Alarm beepers drive me absolutely nuts, I have to find a way to make them stop before I can do anything else. Of course in the marine world, all you need to do for 90% of them is find the right "ALAM ACK" button. (There's a lot of stupid alarms you don't need to worry about, which is dangerous because it makes the important ones that much more likely to be ignored.)

Watch a few episodes of Air Disasters on Smithsonian. It's amazing how many of those accidents could be avoided if people actually paid attention to the alarms they heard. A lot of time they intentionally ignore them or get fixated on something else and they are pushed out of the consciousness.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 17:06

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Legroom wasn't the issue for me on my last flight and I'm 6'3"

Shoulder room was the real problem. I had to fly 4.5 hours from Phoenix to Pittsburgh rotated sideways because there literally wasn't physical room for my shoulders and the shoulders of the person next to me. It was, without hyperbole, the most uncomfortable 4 hours of my entire 35 year old life.

I'm generally a calm person and stuff like flying doesn't phase me, but I seriously almost had a panic attack until we got to altitude and the plane cooled off. I just focused on reading as much as I could and spent the next 3 days sore from the contortions necessary to fit.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2014 17:29

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

The Ferret King posted:

Of course, though hypoxia at the accident flight's cruise altitude of 19,000ft is a very plausible theory, the pilot was 67. He may very well have just died in the plane from other health problems.

One of the articles on Reuters said that the windows were frosted over on the inside.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2014 18:06

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

This sure is one way to beat the traffic downtown to the footbal game.

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2014/09/07/Float-plane-s-arrival-causes-a-stir-in-Downtown-Pittsburgh/stories/201409070284

# ¿ Sep 7, 2014 18:00

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

The thing that fascinates me about early air warfare is that it feels as if we all just took to the air to shoot at each other up there instead of on the ground, sort of a zero sum game.

I know this was the early stages of air to ground warfare or recon which gave some reasons to send planes up to shoot down other planes, but in the early days I can't imagine those two things were too much of a threat so it feels as if mankind just upped the ante for fighting for no other reason than we could.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 00:09

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

meltie posted:

When one deices, one removed the ice. When one deplanes, one removes... the plane?

Well, from the perspective of the passenger, that's exactly what happens!

# ¿ Nov 24, 2014 22:04

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Psion posted:

In line with, yes, but almost always at the bottom end of that range. I think that's fair to call "low cost" given the minimum price floor of providing an airplane to actually go from A to B without crashing (usually)

As a comparison, I looked up a flight from Seattle to the DC area, a flight I've done before / will do again, went for lowest fares:

United: $414 (1 stop)
Frontier: $373 total (1 stop)
Alaska: $310 (to BWI, nonstop) or $436 (to DCA, nonstop) - I can't find a 1-stop to compare 1:1
American: $270 (1 stop)
Southwest: $269 total (1 stop)

If anything, it shows the "ULCC" model is disingenuous naming - it's more like they're an "everything a la carte" airline, not necessarily 'low cost.' Southwest though? Low cost is a lot closer to an actual description of their model.

Just this summer, I flew from Pittsburgh to Las Vegas and Southwest beat the nearest competitor by over $200 round trip on top of not having to fly extremely early in the morning or late at night. I was meeting a friend there and he flew Frontier out of DC. His prices for the flight were pretty similar, but he got got dinged on checking his bag and wasn't given anything but water for free on the flight (Southwest gave snacks and soda both of the legs I was on.)

Beyond that though, both of our flights were a clusterfuck of delays. My flight was nearly an hour late leaving Pittsburgh that afternoon, his was 40 minutes late leaving DC. We both had a layover in Denver around the same time and we were both over two hours late leaving that airport. Some thunderstorms rolled in right after I touched down and basically shut everything down.

I kind of like the way southwest does seating, but that's probably because I managed to get into the early boarding groups on all my legs. I did choose poorly on the way home though. The flight from Las Vegas to Phoenix was fine. But I chose a bad seat in Phoenix that didn't give me enough shoulder room and someone huge sat next to me. I think that was the most miserable 4 hours of my entire life. I'm glad we weren't delayed taking off because until the cabin cooled off at altitude, I think I was the closest I've ever been to having a panic attack.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 00:54

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Geoj posted:

The same system bites you in the rear end flying west to east - I don't think I ever had a boarding position that was better than the end of the B group or start of the C coming home.

Actually, my boarding position was better flying west to east. I just really chose poorly on seat because I wasn't thinking logically about it.

I don't fly much so I'm a sucker for the window seat and the one I chose at random had the window slightly forward of the seat. As a result, I got robbed of a precious inch of shoulder room by the bulkhead that I would have otherwise gotten by the inset window.

This guy who sat in the center seat was actually the last boarder. I was initially elated because I thought that the center seat would remain empty the whole flight and that got crushed in the most brutal way possible.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 20:47

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

The mind blowing thing isn't that this was done 50 years ago, the mind blowing thing is thinking about what might not be declassified at this point that has been building for 50 years on that technology.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 20:50

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

I made it out to Udvar-Hazy less than a year after it opened in September of 2004. Took quite a few pictures with my point and shoot 4mp canon digital camera. I would love to go back to there now with a better camera and see all the stuff added.

You can get so freaking close to the SR-71 (see the Enterprise in the background, section wasn't open yet.)

Business end of the J58

Enterprise off to the side. It was a section that wasn't open yet. You can see on the wing where they removed a section to test after the Columbia disaster.

Bad digital zoom in on the section of the wing they took out to test.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 06:46

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

It looks like a Gronckle from How to Train your Dragon.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2014 20:27

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

The video says that the plane was enroute to Las Vegas. So, there must have been some sort of warning about the gear shortly after takeoff that then prevented it from coming back down?

# ¿ Dec 29, 2014 21:02

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

DJI pushed out a firmware update that disables their drones within a 15.5 mile radius of Washington, DC.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/28/dji-drone-update-bars-washington-flights/?ncid=rss_truncated

# ¿ Jan 28, 2015 16:47

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

quote:

The actor was stabilized and taken to a local hospital. Sources said he sustained cuts to head. There was no word on other injuries or what caused the plane to crash. It appeared he was flying solo.

Really? Trying to figure out of that's an unfortunate pun or intentional.

Edit:

Oh man, the LAFD tweet is even better.

quote:

*UPDATE: 1233 Rose Ave* 1 small aircraft down on Penmar Golf Course near the Santa Monica airport. Solo occupant, an adult male being...

bull3964 fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Mar 6, 2015

# ¿ Mar 6, 2015 01:01

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

The Locator posted:

That thing flys a lot slower than I was expecting at the beginning. I'm guessing based on the speed and some visual clues (the seams top and bottom, and some rippling especially along the bottom seam) that the fuselage is actually inflatable and filled with helium?

Yeah, it's mostly balloon.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2015 07:26

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

hobbesmaster posted:

You're right the real problem is knee room not leg room.

Yeah, I've been in 737 configs where the distance from my seat to the seatback in front is shorter than the distance from my hip to my knee. I don't have any other choice than to sit sideways.

Also have broad shoulders. I don't fly often so I love to get a window seat, but if I don't choose properly and I have someone big sitting next to me, I can be miserable (as my most recent flight from Phoenix to Pittsburgh where I thought I was going to have a panic attack because of the lack of room.)

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 19:06

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

I haven't seen anyone mention F-15 Strike Eagle II. I spent so many hours playing that.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 22:46

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

After reading the wikipedia entry for the Starship, they said a few were stored at Marana Regional Airport.

Well, I fired up google maps to take a look.

https://goo.gl/maps/TkOEq

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 02:52

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Can't a lot of that be attributed to the cold war and the Soviets? As the USSR iterated and improved the MiG, the US had to iterate fighters as well with each generation getting more complex and trying to one up the rival.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 04:02

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

The Locator posted:

The next time that part of google maps updates, you won't see those anymore, they are gone now. That's the lot that the Border Region SCCA autocrosses on, and it's completely empty of aircraft now. They were completely non-flight worthy (no engines and pretty run down), so not sure if they were moved into a hanger, or finally just stripped down and scrapped.

Edit:

Screenshot from my GoPro from an event back in 2011 -

You can see that they don't have vertical stabilizers, and there are 6 of them back then.

If you are really bored, you can watch the video for a few different angles of them during my run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53VVjSmQxZs

Only on SA can you post a Google maps sat view of some random airport and have someone post ground level pictures a few posts later.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 05:12

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

JingleBells posted:

They've released a photo of the crash site:

How the hell do you even start to investigate if the plane's broken up that much

I actually binged a bunch of "Air Disasters" (or Mayday) over the weekend and it's amazing what they can work with.

One of the ones I watched was for Swissair Flight 111 and it was in tiny tiny pieces. They collected several million fragments of airplane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111

Yet they still managed to find the individual wire that likely started the fire that brought the flight down.

bull3964 fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Mar 24, 2015

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 17:46

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

dietcokefiend posted:

Never underestimate the resources of a multinational effort in both the amount of money (near unlimited) and amount of people (near unlimited) that can be brought in to help.

Yeah, usually these things have no limit to the money spent finding out the cause because the fallout could be loss in confidence of air travel which would basically tank the worldwide economy.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 18:02

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Regnevelc posted:

Sounds like the pilot committed suicide, well it reads that way.

So, I'm not fully versed on how the doors to the cockpit are locked. If someone leaves the cockpit, do they have a key to get in and out and there's an additional deadbolt to fully bar entry or do they leave the door unlocked for the time it takes them to go to the bathroom or something?

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 01:12

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Solkanar512 posted:

My understanding is that if the airlines is based in the US or the aircraft, aeronautics or engine manufacturer is based in the US, the NTSB gets involved automatically. I think there are times they'll join up in special circumstances as well.

I think it's up to the country where the accident took place. The regulatory body where the crash happened probably has ultimate authority. I mean, USUALLY you would want the NTSB involved because usually everyone wants to get to the bottom of an accident. But then you have occasions like Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870. It was a DC-9 but the NTSB had no involvement in the investigation because Italian officials didn't seem interested in solving the crash until civilian pressure became too high. Hell, it took them 14 years to recover a significant portion of the debris.

bull3964 fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Mar 27, 2015

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 18:43

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

The best line of that article.

quote:

The Transportation Safety Board was notified but an official told CBC News that aside from noting the incident, it would not be pursuing the investigation any further.

I can just imagine some guy in the office going "Uh huh, uh huh, un huh. Ok, bye." and then just bursting out laughing.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2015 19:17

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Airships as home base 'warehouses' for Amazon drones.

We are through the looking glass people.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2015 19:21

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

I was wondering if there might be a market for blimps for regional mass transit since high speed trains seem like a thing that will never happen in the US.

I mean, there are regional airlines as well, but those are priced more for business customers.

Basically, I'm looking for some way that it's more economical (in time and money) to move people in the 200-300 miles range without driving.

For example, it takes me 4 hours to drive to my friend's place in DC from Pittsburgh. A 100 mph airship could do that in 2 hours. Granted, I could fly to DC in 1 hour, but it would also cost me upwards of $200 to do so whereas gas for a round trip is only like $40. Not to mention by the time I got to the Pittsburgh airport, go through security, have the inevitable flight delays, and then fight my way out of Dulles to get to my friend's house in Alexandria, I'm probably looking at close to 4 hours anyways.

It would really depend on how economical they could make them and if they could streamline the departure and arrival process to make it more mass transit like.

It would be far simpler to have trains, but I don't see anyone making that capital investment anytime soon.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2015 17:01

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

drgitlin posted:

If your friend lives in Alexandria why wouldn't you fly into National?

Doesn't really matter either way. Flights are over $400 so it's a non-starter.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 00:19

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Negligent posted:

Korea is a hilariously Confucian society with age being a marker of the utmost respect. I can only imagine how that plays for CRM.

There are many Air Disasters episodes that have the root cause of the crash be that very thing (not just for Korea, but any culture that places that much overriding emphasis on age earning respect.)

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 19:15

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Remember to reboot your 787 daily!

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/01/boeing-787-dreamliners-contain-a-potentially-catastrophic-software-bug/

quote:

"This AD was prompted by the determination that a Model 787 airplane that has been powered continuously for 248 days can lose all alternating current (AC) electrical power due to the generator control units (GCUs) simultaneously going into failsafe mode," the memo stated. "This condition is caused by a software counter internal to the GCUs that will overflow after 248 days of continuous power. We are issuing this AD to prevent loss of all AC electrical power, which could result in loss of control of the airplane."

# ¿ May 1, 2015 19:10

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

What's amusing is it's the exact same type of bug that affected our Equallogic SAN. Int overflow after 248 days of continuous operation.

# ¿ May 1, 2015 19:18

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Plinkey posted:

Probably has to do with max (signed) int of 2,147,483,647 ~= 2,142,720,000 (ms in 284 days) which gives you about 4,763,647 ms or ~13.23 hours before an overflow.

Of course assuming the LSB is ms since boot.

Yeah, in the case of our SAN, the bug was specifically with the uptime counter that counted in ms.

# ¿ May 1, 2015 20:01

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

hobbesmaster posted:

But it says that the generators would have to be running for that time, not the rest of the aircraft. So if the engines were off this wouldn't be an issue, right?

Not the generators themselves, the generator control units. So, the brains controlling the generators. So, it's much more plausible that those could be kept running if the plane itself was never fully unpowered.

# ¿ May 1, 2015 23:15

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Mortabis posted:

Oh yeah, saw this flying out of LaGuardia yesterday:

I couldn't help but laugh at the fact that he's got his name painted in big loving letters on his jet. What an egomaniac.

edit: if you can't read the lettering in my terrible cell phone pic, that's Donald Trump's plane.

There's an episode of Mighty Planes that aired on Smithsonian Channel that will make you hate him even more.

http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/mighty-planes/trump-757/1003002/3398551

The way that everyone just walks on eggshells around him the whole drat time is infuriating.

# ¿ May 18, 2015 22:07

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 21:40

bull3964: Nov 18, 2000; DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.

Nerobro posted:

Every time I look into the shuttle, I'm amazed it ever worked.

Did it?

I mean, getting people in and out of space with only a 1 in 67.5 chance of getting killed isn't exactly a lofty bar.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2015 21:46

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Automotive Insanity > Aeronautical Insanity: switching to secondary tolerances

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