Flying

I'm no flyer, but I'll have guess at the question.
You start sliding, with the nose angled to the left.

Stomp it, You sorta go against the flow, leading to turbulant flight.

my 2 cents anyway.

 

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All true, and what it comes down to is how to precisely position the aircraft in the windsock- That is, how to move it laterally, up, down forward back within the windsock, in predictable increments. You can even orient the yaw and bank differently from the flightpath/relative wind, and still travel precisely along it. Once you have mastered the controls and their responses with total awareness of the relative wind, you're ready for formation flight, which involves several aircraft moving through and being positioned within a changing but mostly common flight path/relative wind, in order to keep exact position with the leader.

During turns, the inside of the formation has less air-distance to travel... outside has more, and both are easy to compensate for with maneuvering by keen reference to the flight path/relative wind. I'm talking about visceral awareness of how your ship and flight are moving through the air.

 

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Woohoo- I'm shortly heading to Oshkosh in the 210!

 

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nico was sure something else

ah
what a bird

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Whatever became of nico?

VC-10s are so beautiful. BA's used to come into Beirut right over my apartment every day, and they too were something else.

I had only the briefest of Oshkosh visits this year, getting a friend all checked-out and headed for home in his new Glastar:

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​

After a fast pass through Oshkosh, I headed down south with the 210 to visit some family.

The new Glastar we took delivery of has a beautiful AFS EFIS complemented by Dual Garmin 430Ws and an MX-20 display. The airplane is a joy to fly, and the cutting-edge avionics take navigation and communications to a higher level, too. I'm looking forward to some backwoods adventures with this amazing airplane.

 

banned
he was also undecided whose posts at top of thread that prompted my pic
shit
i saw the armrest in the boac vc-10 and knew it intimately

hype
the headphones for the inflight entertainment were hollow rubber tubes. are they still like that? what was that about?

 

Lately airline inflight audio is electronic, with tricky banana-plugs in an apparent attempt to discourage everyday ipod/walkman earplugs. Without an adapter, you can usually get stereo earphones to work in mono mode with a little fiddling. I liked how the old audio tubes harked back to the old Gosport Tube of the 1930s and 40s, but those plastic tube airline headsets were uncomfortable on the ear canal after a while. It's crossed my mind while improvising with such jacks, how there was a tragic episode in airline history involving a poorly-installed inflight entertainment system aboard Swissair 111.

 

I snapped this image climbing out from home this morning, and thought it worth sharing.

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Welcome Aboard: It's a clickable thumbnail ​

 

awesome pic Hype

Passed my Instrument Rating Test a couple of weeks ago so now i'm not limited to CAVOK days... well thats kinda not true... i was just limited to days when VMC was remotely possible.

Hopefully seeing as i've got the rating i'll be able to take happy snaps like that... nothing makes you feel more like a pilot than shooting through clouds. I've got a question for ya regarding ILS approaches. Here in Australia we've only got CAT I ILS approaches across the country which proposes a dilemma for pilots in particular long haul pilots to the west coast who ultimately cannot plan an alternate aerodrome because of the lack of strips capable of supporting larger aircraft. (I remember a story about a QANTAS jet who couldn't land at Perth due to cloud (or was it fog?) below the DA and the couldn't divert due lack of fuel, so they ended up shooting the ILS again but using CAT III minima's). My question to you is

1. Have you shot an CAT III ILS approach?
2. Do you think it stupid of CASA and Airservices Australia for not implementing CAT III's at some of our larger airfields?

 

its also a bit scary
imagine if it was nighttime
all alone
up there

/shiver

 

/eek

hype, you came up thru the clouds

 

No, the clouds came up through him!

 

jesus christ!
pitch black and nothing but incomprehensible instrumentation

/paroxysms of fear

 

Gustav

Its actually not that bad, you just have to trust your instruments no matter how you feel. I did a bit of night flying recently and started to get the leans during a departure. First thing i did was stare at the instruments in particular my artificial horizon so i could recage my brain. Then from there it was just a case of making sure that my brain doesn't get the better of me.

There are alot of illusions at night that can seriously detriment a pilots ability to safely fly the aircraft. The one i fear the most is somatogravic effect. Essentially the feeling of acceleration is interpretted as a pitching up motion. This can result in the pilot pushing down on the control column and inadvertantly spearing the aircraft into the ground. I've been put through this illusion in a simulator and its quite scary.

To be honest night flying is probably my favourite, simply because the air is usually quite smooth with little or no turbulance and i'm always one who loves to see city lights

 

Anyone watched the Red bull Air race this year ?

Man, The worlds no. 2 (I can't remember his name), clipped a gate.. just as he was looking soo good. Guess he got overconfident.

 

i'd like to hear more
you did somatogravic effect but did not explain the "leans"

 

Gustav

Essentially your semicircular canals (inner ear balance thingy) do not detect the small movement that you undergo so when you quickly snap back to the normal profile you are flying (which they detect) it convinces your brain that you are no longer upright but are on an angle. Contrary to reality. Normally you correct this by "leaning" over to the perceived upright position. Hence the nickname

I regularly get the leans when flying instruments but like i mentioned before you just have to trust your instruments are telling the truth and convince yourself that your brain is not. Its not easy but with experience you get used to it

 

spacemansteve: "Passed my Instrument Rating Test a couple of weeks ago"

Congratulations! The instrument rating opens up a whole new world to aviators, and by it's potentially unforgiving nature, it's an advancement we are compelled to really earn.

"nothing makes you feel more like a pilot than shooting through clouds."

That's so true- also learning the ATC system sufficiently to really put it to work for you. I often lament to non-instrument pilots that they are missing out on the best scenery by allowing a little visible moisture to block their path.

"Here in Australia we've only got CAT I ILS approaches across the country which proposes a dilemma for pilots in particular long haul pilots to the west coast who ultimately cannot plan an alternate aerodrome because of the lack of strips capable of supporting larger aircraft. (I remember a story about a QANTAS jet who couldn't land at Perth due to cloud (or was it fog?) below the DA and the couldn't divert due lack of fuel, so they ended up shooting the ILS again but using CAT III minima's). My question to you is

1. Have you shot an CAT III ILS approach?"

Only in a Level III simulator (CAT III B), during recurrent training for air charter- and that was "extra-curricular". I've never flown with the requisite equipment and crew to conduct them routinely.

"2. Do you think it stupid of CASA and Airservices Australia for not implementing CAT III's at some of our larger airfields?"

I doubt that the diversions that result from the policy significantly reduce the risk to the public. Large aircraft with the requisite equipment and crew training have long demonstrated the consistent safety of CAT III (a, b, & c) approaches.

With large aircraft landing with low minimums, the safety margins for touchdown and deceleration are much more critical than for small aircraft landing on huge runways. In non-precision approaches, landing minima acknowledge the very different physics of maneuvering and landing large and fast versus small and slow aircraft. But when it comes to precision approaches, there's no official recognition of the reality that a light airplane with precision guidance to a wide runway with a length of a mile or more has considerable room for touchdown and deceleration.

Since I don't teach in anything weighing hundreds of tons, I try and instill an appreciation for the distinction between jet culture and light airplane reality. On the occasions when I've been caught out in widespread clag, I've never found it scary to descend a light airplane even to a zero-zero landing, and I encourage the practice of the same for emergency use: This is the basic and consistently-executable combination of a well-flown ILS and the seaplane pilots' glassy-water landing. In light airplanes, I've been able to consistently teach my Instrument students to land safely and confidently without outside reference (on large runways) closely tracking the runway centerline to a stop. If you haven't done this, I encourage you to get with an Instrument Instructor who is so inclined to hone and maintain these skills for the day when you (both of you) will need them if you fly long enough.

The IFR culture often discourages realistic IFR emergency training, because that culture has become (by necessity) highly standardized and conservative. But by setting safe parameters with your instructor, there are important skills and experience to acquire that typical training neglects.

The majority of my IFR students fly single-engine airplanes, we practice engine failure scenarios in the airplane that include intercepting and flying partial-panel power-off approaches (also vectors/GPS/Ded Reckoning to flat terrain off airport). Most often, our safety margin is provided simply by elevating the altitudes of an approach procedure by several thousand feet (how high depends on performance, terrain, and traffic considerations). Critiquing the result begins with a look below at "touchdown" with the touchdown zone expected to be aligned and directly below the airplane by however many feet we have elevated the procedure. Where I've been conducting training (all around the USA) I've learned that in non-congested (non-terminal) environments, controllers can be very accommodating of approach procedures flown much higher than published- for them, it's like issuing a block altitude clearance with the added specificity of the an approach procedure's lateral navigation. Like any collaborations with ATC, if you can clearly explain to them what you want to do, they are most often eager to accommodate something so long as it does not present separation difficulties. By making special requests of ATC, there is the added benefit to both student and instructor of learning how to collaborate efficiently under more trying circumstances than training, such as unforeseen flight conditions and emergencies.

SpacemanSteve (answering Gustav, who cracks me up): "Its actually not that bad, you just have to trust your instruments no matter how you feel. I did a bit of night flying recently and started to get the leans during a departure. First thing i did was stare at the instruments in particular my artificial horizon so i could recage my brain. Then from there it was just a case of making sure that my brain doesn't get the better of me."

Absolutely right. With time, the leans do disappear with familiar instrument presentations. I find that I still experience it sometimes partial panel, or adapting to a new aircraft display- Here in the dawn of glass cockpits, we're all adapting to various presentations, and to radically-different scans during primary instrument failure, such as EFIS shutdown. It's like US President Ronald Reagan said: "Trust but Verify".

"There are alot of illusions at night that can seriously detriment a pilots ability to safely fly the aircraft. The one i fear the most is somatogravic effect. Essentially the feeling of acceleration is interpretted as a pitching up motion. This can result in the pilot pushing down on the control column and inadvertantly spearing the aircraft into the ground. I've been put through this illusion in a simulator and its quite scary."

Yes, it can be. We do learn to adapt, and to evaluate conditions. Flight visibility is something aviators should learn to evaluate in much more detail than is officially encouraged. At night, there is a world of difference between a "Bomber's Moon" and a new moon, or no moon. Ground contrast varies dramatically. In winter, I sometimes land on frozen lakes at night. Depending on conditions, it can be visually astounding- or confounding.

"To be honest night flying is probably my favourite, simply because the air is usually quite smooth with little or no turbulance and i'm always one who loves to see city lights"

I think it's the best time to introduce people to flying- It can be astoundingly beautiful, is (as you say) usually smoother, and passengers and novice pilots are not usually aware of the dangers of the dark and how we manage them.

Again, congratulations on your Instrument Rating. Clouds are intrinsic to our great ocean of air, and those unfortunate pilots who must avoid them are so much less free. Keep learning! Giving recurrent training, I often find rated Instrument Pilots who drone through the clag much like neophyte night passengers- In blissful ignorance of what can go wrong, and what must be done about it. Keep developing the habit of thinking through what can go wrong, and what should be done in what sequence to deal with it. The only way that boredom creeps into the cockpit is by complacency.

 

Sort of unrelated to the current topic, but - a few days ago I saw a C-5 Galaxy fly over our house. That's not common for us, so I prob. won't see another one for a while. I think it's the biggest plane I've actually seen in our area. (I've heard big ones at night but of course I don't have IR eyes). That's a cool plane.

I also am going to build an RC C-130, "almost scale". I drew up the plans yesterday and have some EPP foam coming in the mail for the fuse, and will be getting probably some of that blue styrofoam from Lowe's for the wings.

 

hype quoting reagan?

/harrumph!

gotta be the leans
poor ole hype
all addled and shit

/sorrow