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Ooh a new thread. Please add me to the list! KSQL PPL ASEL
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Oct 8, 2023 15:36
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 14:37 |
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Bob A Feet posted:It’s hilarious instructing new navy/usmc flight students in primary flight training because you will have the guy that went to ERAU struggle to complete and end up with his last choice (often helicopters) and the guy that went to online university with 0 prior flight experience end up flying a fighter jet. What is the decision factor here, incidentally? I'd heard that fighter pilots were basically golden boys all the way through -- top notch flying, academy graduates, straight-A students, engineering degree, captain of the football team, yada yada. That it's just such a small field with such a giant pool of applicants that they can pick the cream of the crop going back to high school and earlier. Is it that straightforward or is there something else at work?
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Oct 11, 2023 07:41
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Kwolok posted:I guess a follow up question: within the cessna family that I could easily jump to attempt much other certifications, how fast can they go? And then comparing that to the same question for Piper's. Eventually once I've learned I'd love to take small trips to LA, so I imagine having access to whatever cruises a little fast is best. Cessnas and Pipers both go from teeny little slow trainers up to sleek fast twins. Cruise speed is directly proportional to how much money you're willing to spend. To cruise at more than maybe 150 knots you're going to want to be making tech worker money, and to get above 200 you probably need to be a millionaire.
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Dec 17, 2023 18:33
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I would just not worry about it. How far away are you from Los Angeles? Because the difference between an everyday 172 at 120 knots and a turbo 182 at 160 is only 20 minutes per hour of flight -- and only in cruise flight! -- but you'll be paying a whole lot more than a 30% premium for the faster plane. There's plenty to do when you're PIC and you might even appreciate things happening at a slower pace when you start getting into dense airspace. In any case, as noted above, it doesn't really matter what you learn in. Airmanship is far more important than the specific layout or performance quirks of any given airplane. You'll be doing some transition training for any new model you fly, and anything that cruises fast is going to be a complex category as well so you'll need that training too. The factors in choosing a primary trainer I'd say are availability, cost, and comfort. My flight school only had two pipers but like 16 cessnas, so a high wing was the obvious choice for scheduling purposes. The 152s were noticeably cheaper than the 172s and I fit them just fine so that's what I went with. Plus they were mostly used by the high school kids on scholarships so they also had better availability. But choosing the 152 limited my choice of instructors, because a couple of them didn't fly that airframe because they literally didn't fit inside. There are further factors to consider, like if you're at an airport where you have to fly a while to get to the training area, maybe you do pick something a little faster (i.e. 172 vs 152, not trying to learn in a bonanza or something) so you spend more time training and less time commuting. Or how the Cessnas are cooler on hot days if you live in a hot place. But that's really kind of getting into the weeds. Pick a plane you'll be able to fly regularly that fits your budget and your rear end. That's it Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 20:19
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Squawk 7500 and pull out your FFDO piece
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Dec 23, 2023 07:35
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I'm not concerned, no. The entire country's annual consumption of avgas is equal to about six hours of the country's motor fuel use. Obviously the lead in the exhaust is bad but it's a miniscule amount unless you live right under the pattern I guess. Just don't be the old fogie who checks his tank levels by how many knuckles of fuel he can feel. The biggest reason to get rid of leaded avgas is that NIMBYs will use it as a reason to get small airports shut down.
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Dec 24, 2023 06:32
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:From what I remember of it, it worked so well that they had to detune the F-18s implementation because the hook would hit the same spot on deck every single time, causing extremely accelerated wear. rad. i wonder what "detuning" means in that situation. apply a little offset to the aim point that changes with every approach? deliberately add a bit of random noise to the flight controls? knock off the last digit in the calculations? Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 21:59
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Kwolok posted:Right I watched the video, maybe I missed something, but it seemed to only show the approach to landing, then go around procedure, then a visual full stop landing. Maybe I missed it but I don't think the video shows a full ifr landing with no visual element, only how you do the ifr approach. (I don't have an instrument rating fyi) As noted by many posters above, there are different categories of instrument approaches and landings. Most of the time you will be flying the approach by instruments until you have the airport and runway in sight, at which point you switch to flying visually. The category is defined by how close you can get to the airport/ground before this switchover happens. A "full IFR landing with no visual element," where I guess you're landing in a pea-soup fog and you never see the runway until the wheels hit the ground, would be CAT IIIc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#ILS_categories These are very rare. On the other hand, at CAT I you might pop out of the clouds and have the runway in sight at 300 feet AGL and still a mile away, which is enough space (assuming you flew the approach well!) to correct any misalignment. The IFR landing is not very different from the IFR approach itself, because until the last few seconds, landing is really just flying the approach right down onto the ground. You're just keeping the needles centered (or the autopilot is) in the same manner all the way in, until you are able to see outside and you swap to flying visually, and sometimes that happens later and sometimes sooner. As the professional pilots have noted, for CAT III you'll have some additional cues to help you flare but it is also very rare that you get literally right onto the runway without ever seeing the ground. e: even for VFR pilots there are landing minimums. Where an IFR pilot on a CAT I approach might need to have the runway in sight by 300 feet AGL, a VFR pilot needs to have three miles of visibility all-around (1 mile in some circumstances) to land. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 22:52
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Also another little distinction that I didn't quite realize until I started flying: "instrument landing" does not mean "autopilot landing." You can fly an instrument approach and landing -- instrument flight in general, for that matter -- entirely by hand, just tuning in the radios and watching the needles and gauges move around and steering the plane to keep them all centered. This takes a huge amount of focus, which is why the instruments are usually coupled to the autopilot, and single-pilot IFR without an autopilot is highly discouraged. But an autopilot is not required equipment (at least not for all approaches; again idk the regs exactly). This also really frustrated me when I was trying to get the Microsoft Flight Simulator achievement for flying an ILS approach "without assistance," so I took a Cessna 152 and successfully flew it from SCK to LVK totally socked in with only the steam gauge CDI, and I did it like four times and it never popped, so I looked it up and turns out "without assistance" just meant the fake virtual pilot thing and you had to fly it in a plane with an autopilot because the cheevo was linked to slaving the autopilot to the ILS. <  >
Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 23:29
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Arson Daily posted:Called off Christmas because of terrible norovirus which is apparently going around where I'm at but if you're sick you're sick and don't go giving whatever you've got to others. You made the right choice! as did you. did you know that a norovirus infection can be transmitted with as little as *three individual viruses*? there is a famous case from new york where an infected person dining at a restaurant vomited at her table -- aerosolizing the virus -- and within a week 75% of the other people who were at the restaurant that night were sick. that's all it takes, just breathing the air in the same room  on that note has anyone ever had a, uh, bathroom emergency in the cockpit? i have peed in a bottle but that's it
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Jan 2, 2024 05:49
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PT6A posted:One of my former co-workers once landed at a tiny, uncontrolled airport, took an urgent poo poo on the runway, and then left. What's the code for that in the runway METAR?
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Jan 3, 2024 04:29
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yeah i thought the new minimums came out of the colgan air crash, where the pilots just stalled the plane and held the yoke back all the way into the ground, something that you generally learn not to do in the first 3 hours or so of training
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Jan 6, 2024 05:43
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Getting lost while you're still in sight of the departure airport is a hell of a thing. Absolutely zero sense of situational awareness. Just turn to 092 and hold it there for 20 minutes! That's your flight! You don't need two GPS units and an iPad and your cell phone to do this!! I agree that this is mostly about her instructors (and her DPE! Jesus, I hope that guy gets the third degree) failing horribly in their jobs, but I don't understand how after 400 hours she didn't even accidentally pick up concepts like "if I need to fly east, that compass in the windscreen should have the E at the top." Perhaps some people are really just that dumb. The comments on the YouTube video say that she also posted vlogs of her driving around town, and she regularly blew through stop signs and nearly hit other cars and pedestrians. What was her goal for flying I wonder? It sure doesn't seem like she was all that interested in aviation as a skill. Just wanted to become an influencer and decided that this was the way? Flying as a means to a completely unrelated end? Sad that she died, and tragic that she took a passenger with her. But I'm reminded of a safety seminar I took at the flight school once. The presenter asked: "How many of you have known a pilot who was involved in some sort of flying accident or incident?" About a dozen people, maybe a quarter of the room, put up their hands. The presenter continued: "When you heard that there had been an accident, and you heard who it was, how many of you were surprised to hear it was *that* guy?" One or two hands tentatively wavered up and down. The other 10 stayed down. E: the NTSB says in the wreckage of her fatal flight they found "two intact digital video recording devices" (GoPros). I dread what those videos are going to show. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jan 12, 2024 |
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Jan 12, 2024 16:21
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yellowD posted:Yep. Part of ppl requirements is a xc flight navigating by pilotage and dead reckoning - that is, identify landmarks, time the segments between them, without the aid of gps or vor. Which isn't needed when the airport is like... right over there And even if her compass exploded right after takeoff, the airport is right next to the interstate. All she needed to do was follow it.
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Jan 12, 2024 20:23
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yeah a year or two ago i had a high schooler ask me "what did people do before they had google maps?" i said "they used maps" "no, before there was Maps." "they used paper...maps."
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Jan 13, 2024 00:49
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PT6A posted:or that you shouldn't sniff gasoline, speak for yourself! 
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Jan 13, 2024 01:48
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How old are you and what's your ultimate goal in learning to fly
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Jan 14, 2024 09:03
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Kwolok posted:Realistically, if I'm just a basic GA pilot who isn't allowed to receive payment from my passengers, do you ever get in trouble for things like, "yeah I didn't accept payment from my passengers but they bought me lunch and dinner" kinda thing? There are clearly stated rules about exactly how much compensation is allowable. As a private pilot you cannot accept compensation for a flight except for a pro-rata share of the expenses of the flight, whether paid in cash or in kind. So if you and two other people fly out for a weekend trip, you add up the cost of rental, fuel, oil, etc. and they can each give you up to one-third of that amount. Buying you dinner instead is fine as long as it doesn't end up costing each of them more than their fair share of the flight. That's what my pilot friends and I usually do -- whoever's in the left seat pays for the flight, and whoever's in the right pays for lunch, and it evens out over time. There are also dozens of FAA letters of interpretation for every possible situation that people have used to try to weasel around the rules. For instance, you can't include the cost of the hotel and the rental car at the airport in the costs of the flight, since those would have happened whether you flew or drove or walked or whatever. So if your passengers say "I'll get the hotel since you got the flight" and the value doesn't work out as described above, that's breaking the regs. And you can't take passengers on a flight that you wouldn't have gone on yourself, even for free, because that's functioning as an unlicensed air taxi service. The classic example is a case where a pilot wanted to fly all the members of his kayaking team to a meet he was going to, but there weren't enough seats in the plane to take everyone at once, so he wanted to shuttle back and forth. The FAA determined that only one flight out and back would be legal, since that's all he needed to get himself to the meet, and the rest would be air taxi operations. (Though ironically he could fly himself back and forth as many times as he liked -- it's just the passenger carrying part that would make the repeated operations illegal) This is stuff that you'll cover as you do ground school and get closer to your checkride. But to answer your question directly, no, nobody's ramp checking receipts as you walk out of the airport restaurant. Nobody's checking whether you're charging your passengers for rides, either, unless you do it enough to get reported to the FSDO. A whole heck of a lot of aviation is based on the honor system. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Jan 14, 2024 |
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Jan 14, 2024 21:15
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A Ziploc bag is fine.
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Jan 18, 2024 02:19
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Kwolok posted:OK cool. A part of my brain was like "Won't jet fuel just eat through that plastic?" but the dip gauge is plastic as well sooo You aren't gonna be flying anything with jet fuel for a while I think 
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Jan 18, 2024 02:59
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Kwolok posted:For sure but we do also know it can be absorbed through the skin, even if at a much lower rate. Obviously zero lead exposure is the safest level. That said, There is a huge difference between occasionally getting a few drops of 0.5% leaded gasoline on your fingertips, and living in an environment where each of the millions of cars on the road is spewing vaporized lead freely into the air. Into the playgrounds, into your yard, along the sidewalks, into your garage, directly into your air intakes as you drive down the highway...and even at that level, it wasn't enough to cause acute lead poisoning, just Boomer-brain-level brain damage.  Furthermore, while anybody can get lead poisoning, it is far more dangerous to children with developing brains than it is to adults. Once you're older than about 25, you're out of that danger zone and trace amounts no longer have the same effect. I personally try not to get 100LL on my hands, and I'm certainly not the old boomer pilot who told me he checks his fuel levels by how many knuckles are covered when he sticks his finger into the gas hole, but I'm not bothered if I touch a few drops while I'm sumping fuel. I probably get just as much lead exposure from soldering anyway. I just wash my hands. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jan 24, 2024 |
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Jan 24, 2024 22:24
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I'm not trying to convince you to do anything. I'm just pointing out that the health risk to a sometime GA pilot is pretty negligible, so you don't need to feel like accidentally touching the fuel (which will happen from time to time) is a deadly danger.
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Jan 24, 2024 23:00
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yellowD posted:there's a grounded placard in the seat pocket in each of ours pff. what you really need is a handful of pre-printed INOP sticky labels 
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Jan 28, 2024 07:52
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It's just getting started here. There is a one-to-one unleaded replacement for 100LL that reportedly about half of the GA fleet can use with no aircraft modifications, just a $100 STC. My local flight school has switched over entirely. But it certainly isn't available everywhere and I don't think it's being taken up very quickly.
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Feb 2, 2024 03:59
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do unmute https://i.imgur.com/4GprogG.mp4
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Feb 9, 2024 06:31
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MrYenko posted:Skytyping is actually relatively tame. The aircraft fly a very stable formation and the computers do the rest. Did you watch the video? That isn't skytyping. Classic all-manual skywriting.
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Feb 13, 2024 03:43
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it's fuckin wacky to me that most GA planes just have the engine oil system plumbed directly into the instrument panel.
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Mar 31, 2024 01:14
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Making a squawk is the right call. Especially as a student. If the mechanic comes to you and tells you the aerodynamics of the aircraft in slow flight will cause this and it's not a MX issue, then that's learning for everyone. I used to feel self-conscious about squawking dumb little things like a loose window hinge or a finicky radio knob. Like, it's stuff that is objectively broken, and with my background and experience it bothers me when mechanical things aren't working properly and I will go out of my way to put them back the way they're supposed to be. For instance, right now I am casting a bunch of custom shaped silicone bushings in a 3D printed mold because some of the fairing mounts on my motorcycle are dried out and you can't get the original part anymore. Most people just use a stack of generic rubber washers to approximate the right shape and it works fine. But that's not right. So here we are  Anyway, I saw these small things that bothered me, but I didn't know whether I was clogging up the mechanics' inbox with stuff I should just ignore. As a result I wrote some of the squawks apologetically. The MX chief found me eventually and said no, please absolutely report everything that you notice if you even suspect it might be wrong, because we'd much rather replace a 5 cent locknut on the window hinge right now than the entire window when it falls out in flight a month from now. Squawk all day erryday Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 01:49
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It was a video from the cockpit of an airliner flying at 30,000 ft (as indicated by the pressure altimeter), while the terrain map (drawing from the GPS) was showing red all around them and the GPWS was screaming that they were about to hit the ground.
Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 18:37
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Well, back to INS I suppose.
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Apr 14, 2024 19:29
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The two things that helped me a lot were: 1) The chief pilot telling me "look at the top of the trees at the end of the runway" rather than "look down the runway." Like other people, it seems that having a specific point to focus on makes a big difference. 2) Stopping thinking about the flare as putting the plane on the ground, and instead as flying the plane a foot above the ground. Your goal in the flare is not to perform a little bounce and plunk or whatever, but to gently transition from a descent to level flight in the proper attitude just above the runway. Just hold it there, flying the plane level and nose-high just like you do in slow flight, and as you float along, the plane will land like magic as airspeed falls off. Later on when you start to do short-field stuff you can get more firm about touchdown points. But for now, yeah, just focus on floating along level with the ground and let the plane land when it wants to. It's cliché but true: you fly the plane right until it stops moving. e: fyi i didn't solo until nearly 30 hours and my landings were real crap while learning -- I even landed with the brakes held a couple of times  -- to the point that one instructor chewed me out and expressed just how unready I was to fly by myself. It hurt. But when I did my checkride, I drew the most notorious hardass DPE in the area, and at the end of the exam? He said I had aced every maneuver and told my instructor "I'd fly checkrides with guys like him any day." It was one of the best days of my life. You will learn!vvvvvv Yeah absolutely put your gaze in the distance and let your peripheral vision steer the plane. If you focus too close you weave all over the place. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 05:25
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azflyboy posted:you'll eventually get to a point where landings "click" for you. This is cliche too but it's accurate. I was struggling, struggling, struggling, couldn't figure it out, and then one day something in my brain and body clicked and was like "ohhhhhhhh" and I went from 20% decent landings to 80% basically overnight.i don't know what changed. But that's how it works
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Apr 16, 2024 17:08
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PT6A posted:Now try a 152. The 152 fits my 5'11" frame perfectly. And it's so light you can fly it with two fingers. I love it The seats don't go up and down though so I have an Ikea chair cushion that adds about an inch and a half to get juuuust the right sight picture.
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Apr 17, 2024 21:16
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epswing posted:Why don't pilots have access to parachutes? The first obvious answer that comes to mind is you don't really want the pilots of an airliner to jump ship at the first sign of trouble. Whether at the first sign of trouble or in a desperate and hopeless situation, it's considered rude for the captain of the plane to bail out and leave 150 other people to a certain death. So that's why it doesn't happen on commercial airliners, mostly. More importantly, though, those desperate and hopeless situations are extremely rare. Planes don't just unexpectedly fall out of the sky -- usually it takes something like being shot with a surface-to-air missile, or an engine fire that burns through the wing, or the situation on Alaska 261, for that to happen. Even if the fuel runs out or the engines fail, the plane will keep on flying in a slow descent, giving you anywhere from a few minutes to the better part of an hour to figure things out. Most in-flight emergencies just mean that you have to divert to the nearest airport, or at worst perform an emergency landing in a field or a highway. As a private pilot you are certainly entitled to buy and wear a parachute while flying if you want. But every pilot also has a duty to not cause an undue hazard to people on the ground. By bailing out at the first sign of trouble you might improve your chance of surviving a little, but your airplane is now guaranteed to crash into something in a less controlled manner than if you tried to put it down safely. As that idiot youtuber guy discovered, if you use your chute you'll still have to explain to the FAA why you thought that was a better idea than doing an emergency landing in a field as every private pilot is trained to do. Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 22:39
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Why not just make the parachute twice as big and put it on the whole plane
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Apr 29, 2024 21:44
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 14:37 |
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ADSB exchange is also better though.
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May 14, 2024 16:04
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