> Ever wondered how the US Air Force cleans its planes? Here's one way: They use a giant shower on a runway—or a planewash if you must. Here you can see it cleaning the salt accumulated on a Lockheed Martin WC-130 Hercules after flying through storms over the Gulf of Mexico. (Gizmodo)
@SentryRaven Apparently the international coverage is "spotty" aside from major fields that airlines use - something about ADDS not having all of the minor/GA airports around the world. @PatoSáinz gripes about it all the time 'cuz he's a whiner :-)
@egid aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/986/… has me wondering, do you still do the "tennis ball in the exhaust" or other simple preflight sabotage items to see if students are actually checking stuff on a preflight? I only know one instructor at NFI who does that stuff.
@voretaq7 I do not. Crap like that seems risky unless the aircraft is going into an inspection right after (which is how UND does preflight competitions).
Anyway, I got out of the primary instruction game as much as I could... I'm a better instrument instructor mostly because it's the stuff that I enjoy teaching more.
I do get the reasons behind it, but I just think that seeing what a student does is as simple as watching them
@egid See I'm a fan of it but only if you know what you've sabotaged - as the instructor you walk out to the plane and go right to the taped-over static port or the tennis ball in the cooling fins, or whatever. It seems like a great way to empirically show the student "This is why you look!"
of course the most dangerous things I had to deal with in preflight were a flat nosewheel (new tube too. Grr. Argh.) and a bird that decided my tailcone was a good nesting site (and was none-too-happy about me trying to evict her)
A bird tried to build a nest inside the pitot tube of an airplane I was going to fly. Though, the likelihood of successfully completing a nest inside the tube seems so infinitesimal that I suspect it was deliberate avian sabotage.
@egid, sorry for letting @voretaq7 win, I was not aware of the close draw. For the 100k race you'll start at an equal 3002 points. Congrats on the 3k mark :-)
@voretaq7 The funny thing is, one of her students came in after a flight and said "Hey, what's this bolt?" "I don't know, where did you find it?" "Under the engine after I parked."
Turned out to be an engine mount bold that had fallen off after he parked.
my instructor actually had the tail tiedown of a Cessna depart the aircraft in flight - presumably because it was overloaded at some point while performing its normal duties as a tiedown point, and the trauma and vibration of flying around was just all too much for it.
@voretaq7 at my old flight school, we had to stick curved steel strips around the tiedowns because so many students would tail strike on soft field takeoffs
at least one of the guard strips got shaved off within the next, oh, 1000 hours
hopefully it made its suicide leap while the plane was over one of the local practice areas (over water) rather than into someone's back yard - though to my knowledge they never heard from said tiedown again....
I'm trying to envision tail-striking in the cherokee, and I can't come up with a situation in which I would do so that wouldn't be immediately followed by a stall and a thud....
that initial hop off the ground into ground effect is very much at a "NO! NO! I DON'T WANNA FLY! LEAVE ME ALONE!" point in the wing's generation of lift :P
@egid yeah, they're bent a little, but they don't have the spring-lock that goes UNDER the two points on the strut so it pops out any time you try to turn it
<clicky-clicky> $45 bucks later :P
meh, ok there's no way I'm getting this order up over $500 unless I order my shiny new horizon gyro now, and I'll bite that bullet at annual as originally planned :P
@egid the worst are the two-piece towbars. The stupid lock pin doesn't always seat, and then you go to pull the plane forward and the tow bar comes apart and you land on your ass :P
@voretaq7 Yeah, after the flight. The instructor didn't know what it was either, so she took it to the mechanic. "Where did you find that?" "Under the airplane." "Hmm... c'mon."
@voretaq7 Turns out that the wrong bolts had been installed (they were slightly too long) so when they were torqued down they had been bottomed out and weren't tight against the engine. Vibration took care of the rest.
@voretaq7 Scary.. Mechanic said that it was 1-2 flights from having the entire engine depart the airframe.... And the CG kind of sucks after that happens!
@lnafziger A condition in which I would seriously consider jumping out of an airplane (it is no longer "perfectly good", or even "remotely serviceable as a glider" at that point)
@egid I commented on your flight aware post for ya. :)
@voretaq7 Ummm...
@voretaq7 "as long as you stay in visual contact with the airport and within the protected airspace ... you're unlikely to hit anything," I don't like the "unlikely" bit... You have guaranteed obstacle clearance under those conditions.
(I missed that before I gave you the up-vote, lol.)
A "circle-to-land" maneuver is basically a low-altitude traffic pattern - albeit one that you arrived at by being guided in on some instrument approach. The magic that makes this low (and possibly abbreviated) pattern possible is that the runway ends at airports with circling approaches have prot...
@lnafziger true, but I don't like to make definitive statements with known holes (engineer :) - the FAA is guaranteeing you that nothing (they know of) will be in that protected area, but that's all they can guarantee you. You're on your own for the "not running into things" bit :)
@voretaq7 Well, that is true for every chart in existence though.... Seems an odd disclaimer in this situation. If there is a new tower, it should be NOTAM'd and then the minimums raised.
@lnafziger "there's that word again, 'should'...." :-) I won't object to you editing it if you want though
I live in a world where everything that should be done rarely is, and all the things that MUST NOT be done frequently are - some people say I'm a pessimist, I say "Nobody can read and follow simple directions!"
@lnafziger we just hate the TSA and anything that mentions them :P
I still have mixed feelings about trying to maintain that list personally - it seems like it changes hourly depending on who your screener is and whether the "threat level" is polka-dot, pinstripe, or plaid
@voretaq7 True, but we could have notes about particular items that seem to cause problems... That some airlines allow it and some don't, etc.... It would grow over time and keep getting better and better as people contributed to it.
@voretaq7 That's what I was envisioning anyway... Reality might be different, lol.
@voretaq7 I just added an answer to the meta post on it though and deleted the question.
A question in the sense of a post? Or in the sense of "What the heck is he trying to ask?"
I think he's trying to ask "In the real world, if my flying deathtrap's helicopter's engine fails and I have to do an autorotation am I likely to survive?"
@DannyBeckett I'll go you one better - I tried to educate someone on SuperUser. No matter how bad the client is they can't be worse than trying that :P
Can aircraft be modified to have an enormous audio system, like the ones in cars? Has the FAA got any regulations on this (or maybe on in-cabin maximum noise volume?), would power be a limitation for the audio system?
@PatoSáinz If you ask one about putting airbags into the landing gear so you can bounce the plane with the bass I'll downvote you into SuperUser territory :)