The Hangar

12:00 AM

I feel like a lack of communication (other than on the radio) between pilots and controllers does a big disservice to the relationship of the two groups.

egid

I guess it got a bit better, re-reading it, but it's still a tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WallOfText

egid

12:14 AM

answered my own question! with sources!

0

A: Do fly-by-wire flight controls in airliners provide artificial feel?

After some digging, I found an answer for myself: yes, some FBW airliners use artificial feel systems. According to Electronics in the Evolution of Flight (Google Books), The [Boeing] 777 fly-by-wire system employs envelope protection. This feature of the artificial-feel system provides incre...

turns out it's really hard to find documentation on this stuff

egid

12:33 AM

@DannyBeckett i'm not sure i'm interested in having that on my screen at work :|

Danny Beckett

sure, can you delete it? didn't think it was that bad, just liked the punchline

egid

i guess we can just try to move the buffer up

talk a lot :P

!!weather KBFI

Danny Beckett

→ 1 message moved to Aviation Chat Bot Testing

Otto the Autopilot

@egid BFI/KBFI: Boeing Field King County International Airport • Observed: 44 mins ago • Wind: 160°/SSE @ 9kts • Visibility: 3.0mi/4.83km • Clouds: Broken @ 900ft; Broken @ 2,700ft; Overcast @ 3,400ft • Temperature: 7.8°C/46°F • Dewpoint: 5.0°C/41°F • Pressure: 29.79" Hg/1,009mb • Conditions: IFR

Danny Beckett

I can't delete it because I'm out of time, but I moved it

it was along the lines of "in ATC, nobody knows you're a dog"

egid

12:47 AM

heh

Bret Copeland

1:06 AM

0

Q: Can Air Traffic Controllers participate in Q&A?

While asking the question in chat How do we get controllers on the site? @egid suggested there may be FAA or union restrictions on participating in Q&A. That would be sad since pilots and controllers communicating with each other improves safety and efficiency... but certainly doesn't mean it isn...

egid

the airline/payscale question revisions are approved by the user! aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/777/…

nice.

@BretCopeland seems legit.

→ 2 messages moved to Aviation Chat Bot Testing

(probably not really necessary for me to go on about)

anyway, i might reach out to the Get The Flick ex-controller

he certainly wouldn't have any restrictions, and he wrote articles for years (literally... years)

Bret Copeland

@egid ironically, that's the first question I've ever asked on any SE site.

egid

1:24 AM

heh

Undo

@BretCopeland rofl

Danny Beckett

1:39 AM

@BretCopeland Here's a far-fetched idea: it'd probably be relatively cheap to send a few flyers to each tower by post

Undo

Hehe

Not a bad idea.

Danny Beckett

I'd be happy to collate the addresses if the idea has legs

Bret Copeland

Well, it's not just tower controllers, it's also tracon and artcc controllers, but yeah, something could be sent out. I'm not convinced that's the right strategy yet though. I want to find out more information about the legal restrictions before spamming them.

Danny Beckett

I agree on the not being convinced it's the right strategy

let's see how your question goes, like you say, anyway

Anonymous

0

Q: Is there a dedicated emergency frequency?

Coast patrol has a dedicated frequency for emergency that must be watched at almost all hours, and even if I recall, it had a "dead silent period" to prioritise whatever emergency might be reported. Is there a dedicated frequency for aviation? Or shall MAYDAYs just be sent to the standard ATC fre...

emergency radio atc

Anonymous

2:22 AM

Anonymous

WHAT THE FLYING FUCK

Anonymous

@BretCopeland pinging mr. stackexchange ^

Bret Copeland

@PatoSáinz it just means you got a bump in all the other sites because you got enough reputation on one site.

Anonymous

@BretCopeland will i get +100 automagically if i sign up in another site after this magic bonus?

Bret Copeland

@PatoSáinz yes

The point of it is so that users who are established on one site don't have to earn rep on each site to get past the really basic privileges like being able to leave comments.

Anonymous

2:27 AM

yep i see

Anonymous

well thanks bret

Anonymous

@BretCopeland does flagging count as basic priv?

Anonymous

well i can't vote down

Bret Copeland

@PatoSáinz there's nothing special about it. It's just reputation. So if you have x rep, then you have y privileges, which can vary a little per site. aviation.stackexchange.com/help/privileges

Anonymous

@BretCopeland i know the page, i just wanted to use you as my personal google instead of having to ugh, read

Anonymous

2:30 AM

:)

Bret Copeland

Most of the sites use the same rep for each privilege, StackOverflow is a notable exception which requires much higher rep for things. Some of the other big sites may be the same.

Anonymous

i just meant that this +100 boost grants me flag privs and now that i've read, ya it does

Anonymous

why does it need that much?

Bret Copeland

@PatoSáinz you mean, why does SO require more?

voretaq7

@PatoSáinz "Stack overflow is ~~a strange land filled with deranged kittens~~ special" :-)

Anonymous

2:37 AM

^

Anonymous

yes bret

voretaq7

the real reason is Stack Overflow has some....interesting....scale problems, including some serious rep inflation :)

Anonymous

you mean mass rep whoring?

voretaq7

@PatoSáinz not so much rep whoring, but there are ZOMG SO MANY people that each question/answer that's not just "meh" gets O(ZOMG_SO_MANY) votes

Anonymous

big o notation for votes?

Anonymous

2:40 AM

lol

egid

@PatoSáinz nice question :)

i keep trying to reach back into private pilot stuff to come up with typical (or weird) questions

Anonymous

@egid ty

egid

I probably ought to just get up in the air more for the weird ones

voretaq7

O(ZOMG_SO_MANY), Ω(1) - if someone works out the theta for question voting there's probably some serious money in that predictive algorithm :)

egid

ok, how long has skyvector had fuel prices?

that alone puts them far above airnav

voretaq7

2:43 AM

@egid I thought airnav had fuel prices?

egid

they do, but their ux sucks and their prices are often outdated

(not that anybody's are great)

but skyvector feature parity with airnav == skyvector win

just because it's a better platform in general

:)

voretaq7

@egid yeah their prices are totally wrong for FRG. Yes they're going to stick a vacuum in your wallet, but they're not going to turn the suction ALL the way up.

I like skyvector - I think at some point we should Meta up an "official place to link to for airports, flight plans, etc."

just so we're all generally using the same place

(and mainly out of pessimism: When $SERVICE goes away maybe we can just bribe the SE folks to do a mass search-and-replace in the DB to fix all the links :P)

egid

@BretCopeland is Atwood still involved in Stack, or is he fully committed to Discourse now?

oop, never mind, read his bio.

Bret Copeland

@egid definitely not involved in day to day operations.

voretaq7

@egid Getting Don Brown to participate would be awesome BTW

if for no other reason than it's just absolutely hilarious (and informative) to read his articles :)

egid

2:55 AM

yeah, agreed

lnafziger

Oddly enough I find that I get more upvotes per answer (a lot actually) than I do on SO, but I don't participate in the "big" tags over there... More iOS stuff, which has a much smaller following than say "javascript".

egid

@lnafziger yeah I only really contribute to CSS answers because it's the only useful specialty in which I'm truly an expert

and I get a very, very slow trickle of upvotes even for accepted answers

prolly 'cause no one curr

voretaq7

@egid I'm not allowed to CSS. Court order.

egid

ok, whipping up what I think is a good IFR question

it tends to throw students for a loop

hmm is there any way to thumbnail images?

voretaq7

@egid NO AEROBATIC MANEUVERS, INCLUDING SPINS, PERMITTED :-)

@egid tack an "m" or an "s" on the end of the imgur'd filename

e.g. stack.imgur.com/abcdefg.png -> stack.imgur.com/abcdefgs.png

egid

2:58 AM

omg hack

voretaq7

(and remember to [link] to the original so we can embiggen them :)

egid

yeah just rigged that up

i am a markdown professional

(really, we use it at work now)

@voretaq7 I have that placard in the AA-1, actually

voretaq7

Markdown kills kittens.

2

egid

SPINS PROHIBITED in giant white on red

for basic text formatting markdown is quite nice

voretaq7

@egid I have that exact verbiage in my plane, though it's technically the wrong placard (1965 you could still (intentionally) spin the Cherokee.... if you're ~~brave~~ stupid enough)

and if you can get the loading into that postage-stamp sized "Utility Category" box

@egid it's just the Stack Exchange (specifically Chat) implementation of Markdown I dislike. I also disapprove of some auto-formatting choices it makes on the main site WRT nested lists, but that's because I'm a picky bastard...

Danny Beckett

3:06 AM

@voretaq7 It definitely did last night

voretaq7

@DannyBeckett didjya like the magic star wall exception? :-)

Danny Beckett

no I fucking hated it

:)

voretaq7

IIRC it's because the chat is markdown-rendered by magical JavaScript gnomes

Danny Beckett

lol

I bet I could fix it if I had the source code...

voretaq7

@DannyBeckett it's Javascript, you do have it. Check your caches charlie :)

Bret Copeland

3:08 AM

@voretaq7 I've complained about our markdown on the regular sites before, and the answer I got was basically... it doesn't seem to be hurting our traffic, and changing it would be difficult because you don't want to affect the formatting of old posts.

voretaq7

but fair warning:

Danny Beckett

@voretaq7 that's a fair point. It'll be uglified, but I guess I do have the code

voretaq7

@BretCopeland fixing the markdown->HTML rendering to better handle things like nested lists would be terribly complicated - personally I don't think it would affect existing posts negatively, but it would require someone to delve into CSS, and well I just don't hate any of the Stack developers that much :)

egid

@voretaq7 I love CSS

voretaq7

besides, if we didn't have Markdown to focus our hate on we'd all be ranting about how the new top bar put our pet kitten in an industrial blender.

egid

3:10 AM

in fact it's what I spend roughly 1/4 of my dev time working with. if not more.

voretaq7

@egid Yes, but you're also a CFI - it's clear you're insane.

egid

@voretaq7 the GitHub Flavored Markdown engine is pretty nice

Bret Copeland

@voretaq7 the messages are pre-rendered in C# and stored in the db that way. I think the star wall renders things on the fly though.

egid

@voretaq7 yes, but no longer a full-time one, so obviously not too insane

voretaq7

@BretCopeland really? I occasionally get lag before a chat message will render...

Bret Copeland

3:12 AM

@voretaq7 um, yeah, there is actually a separate explanation for that.

voretaq7

@BretCopeland I probably don't want to know, do I? <looks warily at the industrial blender>

Bret Copeland

When you message is first inserted into the chat window, IT'S A LIE.

voretaq7

@BretCopeland It's AJAX, everything is a lie

it's blended kittens and unicorn parts all the way down.

Danny Beckett

@BretCopeland So messages are sent via AJAX to C# and server-side if the message contains a \n, it breaks?

Bret Copeland

When you see the formatting take effect is when it has actually been persisted to the db.

Danny Beckett

3:13 AM

seems like something that'd be glaringly obvious in the C# source

voretaq7

@BretCopeland ..."Eventual consistency" - how very Web2.0 of you :)

Bret Copeland

@DannyBeckett it's just sent through a different code path which doesn't include the normal markdown rendering. The only thing it will do is either put div or pre tags around it.

@voretaq7 same thing with votes on SE sites. You click the up button, and it basically lies to you say, "yeah, sure, I bet that will work"

Danny Beckett

is there a reason it's sent down a different path, do you know?

egid

@lnafziger that was quick :P

Bret Copeland

@DannyBeckett I could ask the guy who built chat, but he's out on parental leave.

voretaq7

3:15 AM

@BretCopeland yeah that sometimes has glaringly obvious (red box) breakage :-)

usually that's when we ping the SAs in the comms room and make fun of the collapsing infrastructure - because that's what sysadmins do, kick each other when things are down :)

"If your friends won't laugh and make fun of you while your environment burns, who will?!"

Danny Beckett

lol!

lnafziger

@egid :-)

voretaq7

ugh. the placards thing reminded me, I need to insert pages into my (digital) AFM...

why does PDF manipulation still suck in 2014?

egid

yours is more complicated to answer than mine ;)

voretaq7

@egid "Bribery!"

Danny Beckett

3:21 AM

@voretaq7 elaborate?

voretaq7

:-)

@DannyBeckett Inserting pages into the middle of a PDF (without paying for Acrobat)

Danny Beckett

send to me? :p

I have Acrobat

no but seriously, get Acrobat

even an old version

voretaq7

@DannyBeckett oh I can do it, I just have to use an Automator script that decomposes the PDF, put the new pages where they belong, and use another Automator script that reassembles it

@DannyBeckett I DESPISE Adobe products

they may not suck on Windows, but on Mac they make a huuuuge mess out of the system

Danny Beckett

really, how so?

I know designers that swear by Photoshop on a Mac

voretaq7

@DannyBeckett inserts shit into startup items, obnoxiously hijacks file associations...

Danny Beckett

3:24 AM

(I use a few products of the suite on Windows)

voretaq7

Photoshop is generally harmless because it's only dealing with its own stuff

egid

newer versions of Adobe CS have gotten pretty out of hand

Undo

@voretaq7 +1

egid

@lnafziger there. i think that sums it up, but i might be missing some details

voretaq7

@egid wouldn't know - I ain't spending that kinda money :)

Danny Beckett

3:25 AM

@voretaq7 I haven't had anything like that on Windows

Undo

GIMP FTW!!!

egid

ugh gimp get out

Danny Beckett

lol

Paint.NET

or Photoshop

egid

if you need to do design work (not photo manipulation) gimp is horrid

Undo

@egid I have made almost every png I have ever created in GIMP.

And you get used to it.

voretaq7

3:26 AM

@egid gimp is pretty gimpy for photo manipulation too

egid

and i guarantee somebody could've done it faster in Photoshop or Illustrator.

Danny Beckett

^

egid

probably by an order of magnitude

voretaq7

doing curves manipulation for gum printing is pain and suffering.

Anonymous

hmm thepiratebay anyone?

voretaq7

3:27 AM

@PatoSáinz steal software? Blasphemy!

Undo

@egid Yes, but how long did it take you to make the money to buy that Adobe CS?

Anonymous

lol but however i still use gimp as my primary editing tool

Undo

Yay for gimp!

egid

@Undo it's my job; the company paid.

but even if I had to buy it myself, it'd be a few hours tops

Undo

Meh, ok

egid

3:28 AM

and if I was that kind of contractor, it'd be tax-exempt anyway ;)

Undo

I don't make that kind of money, being a minor and all :P

Danny Beckett

@egid just for Photoshop maybe, not the Suite

Undo

I make maybe $50 an hour, and that's maybe four hours a week.

Danny Beckett

although I heard about 6 months back they were making a cheap monthly subscription

voretaq7

I wouldn't mind CS but for how often I'd use it I'm not saving enough time to lay out the cash :)

Danny Beckett

3:29 AM

CS is thousands, will look up exactly how much

!!convert 2644.50 GBP USD

Otto the Autopilot

@DannyBeckett 4358.0302USD

Undo

Neato!

!!convert 3000000 dong USD

Otto the Autopilot

@Undo Confuse converter with dong, receive error message

lnafziger

@egid Well, I expanded my answer too. :)

Danny Beckett

@Undo 3 letter code ;)

Undo

3:30 AM

Oh

lnafziger

!!taf kric

Otto the Autopilot

@lnafziger That didn't make much sense. Use the !!/help command to learn more.

lnafziger

wishful thinking. :-)

!!metar kric

Otto the Autopilot

@lnafziger RIC/KRIC: METAR KRIC 100254Z 00000KT 10SM FEW055 OVC180 00/M05 A3057 RMK AO2 SLP359 T00001050 50003

Danny Beckett

@lnafziger lol!

it should include TAFs though

Undo

3:31 AM

!!convert 3000000 DNG USD

Otto the Autopilot

@Undo Confuse converter with DNG, receive error message

voretaq7

@egid You think this is Stack Overflow with that freehand red text on the approach plate? Too good to use the text tool? :-)

Undo

D:

lnafziger

@DannyBeckett Taf's should be about the same code that you have for METAR's.

Undo

!!convert 3000000 VND USD

Otto the Autopilot

3:32 AM

@Undo 142.3538USD

Undo

Aha!

Dong is worthless :P

voretaq7

@Undo "That's what she said"?

Danny Beckett

@lnafziger They should already be included though. I switched on the chk_taf=on parameter (rough guess of the param name)

Anonymous

"is there a dedicated freq is a hot net question"

Undo

!!convert 3000000 IRR USD

Danny Beckett

3:34 AM

@voretaq7 lmao

Otto the Autopilot

@Undo Confuse converter with IRR, receive error message

Undo

;(

egid

@voretaq7 hey, at the moment it's the only image editor i have. and the text tool is annoying ;)

Undo

IRR is real, I swear! Google 'Iran Rial'!

voretaq7

@egid Lazy bastard! :P

Danny Beckett

3:36 AM

@Undo you seem to have found a bug ;) not mine, so I don't care :p

Undo

Hehe

Danny Beckett

I can check who wrote that command though

just Zirak

Undo

Meh, no one cares about IRR anyway :P

Danny Beckett

the data comes from rate-exchange.appspot.com - it's possible they don't list IRR

lnafziger

@DannyBeckett A TAF is completely different than a METAR though.

Danny Beckett

3:38 AM

seems they do

@lnafziger how do they differ?

they look the same to me: aviationweather.gov/adds/tafs/…

egid

a taf is a forecast with a very, very different format

metar is a report of current conditions

Bret Copeland

@DannyBeckett hahahahahahahahaha.... oh

Danny Beckett

sorry guys, I don't know all the intricacies, you'll have to explain

It's a future report?

egid

what do you mean?

a TAF is a forecast; it's a prediction

Danny Beckett

please explain what a TAF is then

egid

3:41 AM

it's not a report at all

Danny Beckett

right, ok. that's what I gathered from "it's a future report"

egid

except that that would require time travel

lnafziger

@DannyBeckett For one (and the most obvious) it is much longer.

voretaq7

@DannyBeckett It's a 30-some-odd hour weather forecast, basically in METAR format :)

lnafziger

It is multi-line

Danny Beckett

3:42 AM

@egid yeah I forgot the word :p

egid

a report is a description of something that has happened :)

lnafziger

with a new line for each forecast period.

Danny Beckett

flux capacitor's broken today :(

egid

yeah. it covers an 18-30 hour period, depending on who provides it

lnafziger

a METAR is an actual observed report while a TAF is a forecast of what will (supposedly) happen in the future.

Danny Beckett

3:43 AM

@voretaq7 ok cool. I'll be able to build it as an addon to weather.js then (both !!metar and !!weather are derived from weather.js @lnafziger - just different params)

= it should be quick to add TAFs

Undo

3

lnafziger

yeah, especially if you don't decode it.

egid

@DannyBeckett aside from the valid periods, it's basically the same syntax

Danny Beckett

@lnafziger definitely, will add the raw form tonight

egid

@DannyBeckett you're also far more likely to not have a TAF for an airport

Danny Beckett

3:45 AM

@egid I don't actually parse the text, it's supplied in XML, like this: aviationweather.gov/adds/dataserver_current/…

egid

oh, hah, right

forgot

Danny Beckett

:)

@egid ok that's useful to know, thanks!

Bret Copeland

I've weirdly never even noticed what P6SM translates to in plain text. I guess I'm about to find out.

egid

greater than 6 statute miles

i think of it as 'plus six'

(spoilers?)

@DannyBeckett aviationweather.gov/adds/dataserver_current/… is an example of a failed TAF request

Bret Copeland

@egid I always do think of it that way, but wasn't sure if the decoded text said "plus" or "greater than"

lnafziger

3:47 AM

I just added what I think is an interesting question for you guys. :-)

egid

the airport has METARs

lnafziger

greater than

egid

@lnafziger ahahaha

Bret Copeland

@egid did you mean to ping @DannyBeckett with that?

egid

what is this i don't even

oops. yes.

Danny Beckett

3:48 AM

@egid Sure, the code's already there actually in weather.js - if(resp.data['@attributes'].num_results === '0')

that's why it'll be easy to add !!taf :)

egid

cool. a lot of resources pull the nearest TAF if one isn't available but that might be scope creep

Danny Beckett

like nearest, geographically?

egid

@lnafziger something like how it will behave or long it might float, right?

Bret Copeland

@DannyBeckett yep

lnafziger

@egid No idea actually, lol.

Danny Beckett

3:50 AM

one of the suggestions in the MA question about the bot was to make a distance calculator for between 2 airports

egid

:D

ok then i found it

it's literally just that FAR reference

Danny Beckett

I could add the "find nearest" to the TAF once that's implemented

voretaq7

aw man my mechanic is gonna hate me :-P

I wonder how old this math error is...

Danny Beckett

@Undo The reason IRR doesn't work is because currencies.js was last updated 9 months ago and it wasn't on the list then

Bret Copeland

@lnafziger the Cirrus manual says "The ability of the airplane to float after a water landing has not been tested and is unknown." I always appreciated their honesty.

4

Undo

3:53 AM

Oh dear.

lnafziger

@BretCopeland Haha, that means more than "Is not certified for ditching...."

Bret Copeland

@lnafziger yeah, I really like your question.

voretaq7

@BretCopeland "It's a low wing. Ditch and GTFO." :-)

egid

@lnafziger boom

Bret Copeland

@voretaq7 It's followed up with "However, since there is the possibility that one or both doors could jam and use of the emergency egress hammer to break out a window could take some time..."

voretaq7

3:56 AM

The Piper manual is eerily silent on this matter -- however some pipers have the air outlet vent on the floor and I imagine those would float like a rock :)

@egid "ZERO FUCKS WERE GIVEN THAT RAINY DAY."

@BretCopeland ...can you open and wedge the Cirrus doors like you can with piper/cessna doors?

Bret Copeland

Then it basically says, hey, you might want to open the door so you can get out.

@voretaq7 well, I mean, they unlatch like a normal door more or less.

Never tried to do it in flight though.

egid

@BretCopeland i think @voretaq7 means the way you can re-latch the cessna doors once opened?

you can push it into the slipstream and latch it

voretaq7

they're held open by gas cylinders right? I mean I imagine the airflow would keep it from opening

@egid right, or throw the top latch on a piper so it won't close again

egid

yeah

lnafziger

@egid I think we should flag your answer as VLQ or NAA... It doesn't answer "Why would someone certify an airplane for ditching? It's probably going to be totaled anyway...." ;-)

egid

3:58 AM

i can't land with my canopy open

Bret Copeland

@voretaq7 the manual basically says the wind won't close the door if it gets unlatched.

lnafziger

I know HOW it gets certified, but why would they do it??

egid

i answered exactly that ;)

> Basically, the aircraft needs to have its hydrodynamic behavior while ditching investigated, and it must then float long enough for the occupants to escape.

voretaq7

@lnafziger selling point :)

lnafziger

@egid Yes, in order to be certified for ditching, it needs exactly that.

@egid By why bother?

But why bother?

voretaq7

3:59 AM

"And you can totally ditch the plane and your passengers will have plenty of time to get out so they won't drown and you won't have to defend wrongful death suits!" :-)

lnafziger

@voretaq7 That's actually more my guess.

(marketing)

egid

@lnafziger information to the crew and liability

/me edits

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