@DanHulme I meant aerodynamic advantages and disadvantages. Sorry didn't clarify very well.

@Ethan I've yet to meet a snow gun I like. I've skied all over CO, NM, PA, MI, a few places in CA and BC and even OH and yet to find artificial snow I really like. Some come pretty close (more in the east where it is more important to have) but close doesn't cut it.

@Ethan nah, they often don't. An engineers job is to shatter the dreams of an artist with harsh reality.

upvotes? for this? aviation.stackexchange.com/q/21125/1467

@Ethan israel and isis have not met yet. and no, gun violence is well under control in most countries, only in the us there is this idea that the answer to violence is more violence (and then they claim to be christians)

@Federico To be fair, fighting violence with violence is the Christian way if you read the bible, and has been throughout history. Fighting anything with violence really, not just violence. ;)

I'm betting a theistic discussion is a bit off topic here, but you'll find your fair share of violence in the new testament as well. Saying "that's the old testament" is a cop-out.

But I can see how that is often overlooked

;)

I agree it is off topic, so I'll end here. I was not aiming for a cop-out, but for a simple explanation of my statement above that would not require 4 pages of discussion.

And I'm saying that I think you're wrong, without 4 pages of discussion. Even if we drop the bible (I'm not conceding it's benign -- it isn't -- but for the sake of argument), Christians have traditionally been quite violent, undeniably so. To say "and then they claim to be Christians" as if to suggest that it's incompatible with Christianity is simply false. "Yes but modern Christians!!!1" Sure, let's refine it some more shall we? What about Rwanda? "They're not modern"? :)

My point is not that you're wrong that the US has a gun violence problem, it has, but why drag Christanity into it?

the USA officially isn't a christian country

incidentally, pretty much the only country in the world which is secular

free exercise of religion and all that

freedom from religion as well, at least in theory, according to the consitution

yet I don't think there has been a president that wasn't christian

(correct me if I'm wrong)

there has been one that didn't swear into office on the bible though

@Federico We disagree on that point. Either you define Christianity by it's holy book, or by its teaching (the people teaching it), in the latter case violence is abundant. The former case we dropped, but I'd argue it's still abundant. What are the "original" teachings? It's very hard to define.

and the media seems to think that you have to be christian to be a good anything

@falstro I think Jezus' preaches

@ratchetfreak no one knows what he said, the bible was written decades after he died (assuming he lived in the first place), so they're officially hearsay

@Federico But if they were elected democratically then the country can still be secular

@ratchetfreak nope, not elected, they tell the elected people what to do

Not having an official religion doesn't make it secular

and separation of church and state and all that, yes, it is in the constitution

interesting

I'll have to go and read it

it is also in the list of secular states according to wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_state#Europe

@Federico well they didn't put germany on that list, so there might be something to it :)

(germany, quite clearly, is not secular; most germans think so however)

yeah, I noticed when I arrived. first thing I did was not to register on any religious list at the town hall.

I paid church tax for years without knowing it.

To finally get out of it, I had to go to city hall, have an entire page read out to me to make sure I understood what I was doing, sign stuff, have it countersigned, stamped, all kinds of ****.

I know, I had a colleague in the same situation.

did you also had the private talk with the priest?

hah, no, that'd been fun though

@falstro I have never heard of church tax before. Here in the u.s. oure taxes goes to schools snd the military. We give the schools our money, but they don't spend it on important stuff like air conditioning. The only de-froster our bus has is a very loud fan that when it touches a window it sounds like a scene from the movie saw.

Schools are very cheap here

until you decide to go to college, then you're in debt for life.

@ratchetfreak not officially, but the republicans pander to them for their votes. If you polled americans you would probably find that many interpret "religious liberty" as only protecting christians. Look at our fiasco with kim davis the county clerk in KY who is refusing to sign marriage licenses because her religious beliefs prevent her from letting homosexuals marry and cites separation of church and state and her religious freedom as her right to do so

all the while neglecting to realize that in this case she is the state and her actions she is causing the state to limit religious freedoms of others.

and if you further polled those that define religious liberty as specifically protecting christians you might also find a large subset where they thing that all muslims are extremists, catholisism and mormonism is a cult, and a few other things like that the american protestants seem to believe

@Federico depends on how you go about it, but yes it is quite easy to end up in huge debt

sensationalist mass media and politics shouldn't mix

@ratchetfreak I agree completely but that is pretty much how the GOP goes about getting their votes

if you watch their debates (and it is hard to sit through them) that encompasses most of their talking points. At one point the last one devolved into the few congressmen among them arguing over how to "stop obama" completely losing sight of the presidential debate...

a few of them have platforms that are pretty much "on day 1 I'll executive order the reversal of <list of obama policies>"

was it like yesterday or 2 days ago that one of the rep. candidates said that "a muslim should not be president" (or something along those lines)?

There was a debate last week. You are probably thinking of an interview with Trump

unfortunately getting the media to report correctly is "censure"

he was asked about having a muslim president in the future and he said "some would argue that has already happened, but you wouldn't agree, would you"

i would be for a complete overhaul of american politics

but for starters i'd like to see a change from electoral to popular vote. its inane the way state lines get in the way and shape how candidates campaign.

@casey no, Ben Carson: bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34308716

@Federico hadn't see that...

he is probably right that the republican base would probably not vote for a Muslim but that speaks to that groups biases

they had a hard enough time rallying behind a Mormon

heh, the Kim Davies case is funny. By that logic, she wouldn't get a marriage license for all her marriages (it is adultery after all).

Not to mention that they're actually asking for religious law, something that they're so afraid of as soon as it's not labeled as 'Christian'.

there should be a candidate that doesn't reveal his religion while he's running. And stays fully secular during his term

@falstro yea, I shake my head when in the same breath one of them will rant against the danger of sharia law and then propose legislating christian beliefs

@casey brilliant, innit? :)

quite

I am baffled that someone is actually defending the "sure, take your carry-on" position.

@voretaq7 on the evacuation question?

ah yes, I see it now

@voretaq7 "everyone has the right to an opinion" is unfortunately often confused with "every opinion is equally valid"

actually, you hinted at that in your first comment; ignore me :)

@falstro "Everyone is entitled to be fucking wrong. But I am going to BURY their asses under safety board studies and incident reports!"

and I'll fight for their right to be wrong!

... they're still wrong though :)

meh, their right to be wrong ends when I get burned to death in an airplane crash because they NEEDED their carry-on.

well ok, and I'll fight for their right to have the wrong opinion

as long as they don't live by that opinion, I'm fine with it

I don't mind them living by their opinion, I mind other people dying by it.

right

If we book all the "Let me take my damn bag!" and "I'm too important to pay attention to the safety briefing!" people on their own flight, with no flight attendants and a cockpit door so the pilots don't have to deal with their chaos getting off, I'm content to let them do as they want :-)

... with ejection seats for the pilots? :)

@falstro Nah just a nice external door with their own slide would be fine.

ok, fair enough

I still think that pilots should stop a couple of feet short of the gate for a few moments, and then roll forward and stop abruptly.

maybe an automated recording when their slide pops, Southwest comedy-briefing style: "The pilots have left the aircraft. Y'all may want to think about whether or not YOU want to still be here."

that ought to get a few people to heed the seatbelt sign... ;)

@falstro I know a NYC bus driver who used to do that when he had rowdy school kids on the bus. He'd get on the PA and announce a "Brake Check" then show people just how well those articulated buses can stop

(pretty damn well, for the record)

heh, nice

@falstro I just show people this video

that's a good jolt! :) To be fair, that crj is parked isn't it? maybe the seatbelt sign is already off

@falstro I don't think it was actually at a gate, but yeah it was supposedly "parked" - beacon was still on though. Seatbelts don't come off until the beacon does :)

yeah, it's on. Though it's never illegal to have it on as far as I know, only to have it off. Don't know enough about airline SOPs, so I'm sure you're correct.

@falstro that plane wasn't parked, and it still had engines running (beacons on). probably waiting for rampers to guide it into gate

@falstro airline SOP is generally beacon on->engine on, engine off->beacon off.

@casey I believe that's what's in the AIM too.

@voretaq7 i think so too

yeah, it's in the FARs too I believe, but there's nothing keeping you from doing engine off->seatbelt sign off->beacon off. The beacon just has to be on when the/an engine is. It doesn't have to be off when the engine is off (that'd force you to break the rule)

not saying it was parked, doesn't seem very likely in this case.

@falstro the beacon is generally turned off as soon as the engines are off to give visible indications to the ramp crew that the engines are off so they can approach the aircraft and occupy the intake/exhaust danger areas.

i generally turned the seat belt sign off indepent of that as soon as we were parked, brakes were set and we were chocked.

we didn't start the APU on taxi-in so one of the engines (and the beacon) stayed on until ground power was hooked up.

I just want to reply "because statistics..."

to be fair, there have been Kim-Davis-alikes in the UK too

a few were allowed to just work days when there were no gay marriages, but one council deemed that unacceptable and sacked the offender

our problem is she is an elected official so she has to be impeached rather than sacked

the sacked registrar sued for wrongful dismissal, claiming that it interfered with her right to religious freedom

and eventually the Supreme Court ruled that even the compromise position of arranging shifts to suit registrars with religious objections was illegal, and they should all do their job or be sacked

im in agreement with that. if your beliefs prevent you from doing a job, get a different job.

@casey In Germany they're obligated to tell you what the chances of winning are, so whenever there's a commercial for the state lotto jackpot or whatever it is, they always end with like "chance of winning 1 in 140 million". There are between 80 and 90 million people in Germany.

@casey Lies, Damn Lies, and "Odds of winning Mathematically Insignificant!" ?

@falstro . . . but apparently people buy 2 tickets? :P

@falstro lotteries and contests here do the same

@casey ...in very tiny print that flashes for 2 frames at the end of the commercial :)

but people in general don't understand statistics and expected value

@casey All odds should be compared to being struck by lightning.

yeah, I know. Who said that lotto is a tax for people who are bad at maths?

I actually aced my undergrad statistics class and stochastic processes class. To this day I have no idea how that happened. :)

@voretaq7 NEW YORK, NY Today a man was struck by lightning while holding a 20 foot metal pole into the air during a thunder storm. Friends tell the Times that he was attempting to raise his odds at winning the Powerball jackpot this weekend by being struck by lightning.

:D

@casey . . . if it was a 4 foot graphite pole (while wearing metal shoes) it could just have been Yet Another Tragic Golfing Accident

@voretaq7 fun fact: the fuselage of an American/Grumman is a Faraday cage

(tested out the stratux this weekend)

@egid Most aluminum airplanes are pretty shit for getting RF through the skin, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Grummans are worse with that honeycomb skin

flickr.com/photos/thatguyeric/3748332970

you have that nice big bubble canopy though

yeah, lifted the antenna up to look out the rear window and throughput went crazy

@egid . . . did....did you gnaw through a skin panel?!

haha, no, scrap at the shop

we do our annuals at the west coast's grumman specialist

he's got bits everywhere

flew from seattle down to sacramento, then drove over to Reno for the races

pretty crazy that we only had maybe 10 minutes without ADS-B for the whole 10 hour flight

@egid what do you mean without ADS-B?

yeah you get spoiled with it really quick especially up here - I don't think I've ever been out of ADS-B (IN) coverage as long as I was either at an airport or in the air.

isn't the point of ADS-B that it's not interrogated from the ground, thus there's no clear definition of "coverage"?

or did I miss something?

@falstro You missed the other half of the system that broadcasts traffic & weather information

Also apparently someone hit the approach lights at Miami.... on takeoff :-/

@falstro I mean that I was only outside range of ground stations for a short period

ADS-B is both traffic and data (weather, TFRs)

some traffic is broadcast in the blind from ground stations, and all data is.

@voretaq7 oh, hey, really? I actually missed that :)

other traffic is peer-peer

my airplane isn't ADS-B Out equipped, meaning I'm on an old Mode C transponder and don't interrogate other ADS-B aircraft. I only get ground-based traffic, and occasionally ADS-B peers if some other aircraft interrogates them.

@voretaq7 on an intersection departure no less.

@casey yeah, when I started reading I was like "How the fuck do you hit the approach lights on TAKEOFF?!" then I got to that and went "Oh. Yeah. That'll do it."

someone underestimated their takeoff run and climb gradient, did they? 0_o

@voretaq7 yeah, I stopped reading at "midfield intersection takeoff"

I like how the stock photo they used is of a delivery flight at KPAE

i'd recognize that tree/tarmac/rain combo anywhere

Probably the only Quatar photo they had rights to that was handy :)

if you haven't donated to avherald yet, now's the time

@voretaq7, yeah, probably grabbed it from a spotter on Flickr with cc-by-sa

;|

heh, VW stock dropped another 20% today

@falstro well that's what happens when you cheat the EPA! :P

yeah. They ship 11 million cars, and they thought no one would ever notice? dimwits.

@falstro what happened?

@DanHulme VW diesels had an "EPA MODE" when being emissions-tested, and when not in EPA mode they kind of pollute like crazy.

fairly certain that the other companies do something similar

not to mention that those test are (nearly) literally lab conditions

@voretaq7 did that trigger during yearly emission testing some states mandate?

@casey yeah, I believe it did

For example the mileage test requires accuracy a human foot can never reach and a 0-60 time of several minutes (like doing hypermiling with that acceleration would get you driven off the road)

@falstro that is devious

yup, and you'd think all this "executives get a higher salary because they have a more responsibility", would mean that some would end up in jail. Yet I somehow doubt that'll happen, like with the banks. :P

they'll get to walk with a massive bonus once this is all blown over

ah, like compilers

@DanHulme compilers? you mean graphics card drivers?

both

detecting which game is running and optimizing for that game

the reason why the driver is so massive

but I used to write GPU drivers so it would be impolitic of me to bring that up

:D

which one?

By the way, if anyone of you guys have facebook accounts and feel like helping us to get some more funding, feel free to drop a vote for "clipchamp" here: apps.facebook.com/my-polls/innovation-challenge

@falstro Intel's C compiler got them sued by AMD a while back for purposely producing inferior code for AMD CPUs

all the more reason to go open source

@falstro well, I'm not going to say now, am I?

hmm... I vaguely recall us talking about this before...

to the search bar :)

@ratchetfreak that's what I thought, but I'm drawing a blank :P

@casey Yeah it was triggered by recognizing the OBD cable being active.

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/…

@falstro if that happened it would awesome to see content providers be non-neutral themselves and cease providing free services to politicians. "welcome to google! you voted net-non-neutrality so please enter a credit card to perform this search. The first result is only $1.00 and every additional result is a greater power of 2 dollars from the previous result. "

hope dies last, I suppose :)

avherald.com/h?article=48ca9210&opt=1 the aviation version of driving away with the gas pump nozzle still attached?

indeed

@falstro <applause>

@falstro It's untenable. The cost and effort prioritizing the traffic exceeds the cost of more infrastructure.

I say we just bill consumers the same way we bill other ISPs for transit: Buy 10Mbps of bandwidth, burstable to 1Gbps, and pay for whatever your 95th percentile utilization is.

(via Reddit)

@egid "What's that beeping noise?"

does your Cherokee have the visual-only stall 'horn'?

just the red light in the middle of the panel

or is it 70s?

@egid Yeah I have the stall light

it's actually very attention-grabbing, though I am considering talking to the shop about wiring in a buzzer. (This will happen only if they let me build a buzzer that they then install - I ain't spending no $1600 for the Safe-Flight part! :P)

@falstro and yes, that's the video I was thinking of :)

"Haaaaaaaaaalp! He's going to dent me!"

incidentally, had he put the gear down, perhaps he wouldn't have had to do all that slipping

it does look very much like a no-go-around airport too

but perhaps the fov of the camera is fooling me

> So i can give you the following advice: Check your gear twice or use a plane with a fixed gear.

I can give him the following advice: "When you're flying down final and a warning horn/light is going off if you don't know why you abort the damn approach!"

I don't know if it's a "no-go-around" field, but that warning was going off high enough to push the throttle back in and figure out what was making the airplane angry :P

"gear: down and welded"

I usually go with "bolted"... :)

@voretaq7 oh yeah, that's for sure, I was thinking more if they discovered it in the flare or something

@falstro Mine are technically "screwed" :P

heh

well...

It's either 4 or 5 AN screws per side :P

@voretaq7 I bet your passengers appreciate it when you're on short final and you mumble something about being screwed... ;)

@falstro Wouldn't know, I always hit the isolate button on the intercom so I don't have to hear them screaming.

@voretaq7 Yeah, Grummans use the same thing. It's more than an AoA indicator. :|

@egid Yeah, safe-flight makes one that's an ACTUAL AoA indicator now, but it's not certificated to replace the stall warning systems

(it's literally the exact same part in the wing only with a variable resistor attached to the vane instead of a switch)

yep

i bet you could get a field or 337 though

@egid I could install it as a minor alteration, I just can't use it to replace the existing light

i'm thinking more my airplane

with the old safe-flight flapper

sell that one yellow tagged and pay for half of the aoa unit ;|

Yeah the same one I have, little tab on the leading edge of the wing

yep. favorite part of the walkaround

nav light, strobe, landing light, hrrrrrnk, strobe, nav light

you'd have to convince the FSDO it's an acceptable "stall warning device" though - if you can bribe someone into approving that 337 I'd like a copy :)

we have more pressing maintenance plans ;|

. . . I'm a terrible man, I usually lift the flap until I hear the switch click. If it's night I'll check the light otherwise I assume that as I'm not in the habit of making the light blink all the time it must still be OK.

yeah

I need to spend a small fortune on avionics :-/

indeed, 2020 approacheth

I could just recertify the transponder for another 2 years, but... then we're getting up to 2018

yeah. we're doing static/xpdr check now

so we'll spend the next 2 years saving

or just bite the bullet if prices drop

Yeah if I was due this year I'd put it off too

if i see a cheap 430w, we may sell our navcom/gps

but i doubt i will

want a narco or a gps155xl? :\

it's not worth the 430W honestly - installed 650s are about the same price & supported :P

No thanks, I have 2 narcos already :P

hahah

wait, for real?

how much?

They came with the plane :P

no i mean the 650

that's 10.5 uninstalled

add ~2-4k for install

ah, 9.8 at gulf coast for the americas edition

@egid I'm seeing $9,000-11,000 installed at some shops

hm

Figure the 430W is ~ 6000 plus 2-4k to install

yeah, that's probably true

actually... holy assbleeding pricetags over at Bennett the 430W is going for 8k

ebay yellowtag that shit

seriously, that's the cost of a new radio there guys, c'mon!

I'm really torn now though - the 650s interface with Foreflight now (through the Flightstream system)

so it's like... yeah maybe I want to just deal with the touchscreen? I'm keeping a real radio anyway so I'll have knobs and shit...

yeah we'd have our sl40

still no word from Avidyne on whether the IFD440 will talk to foreflight in the immediate future and that's kind of my "Must Have" for panel mount avionics -- "Must be able to load my flight plan without having to type the whole fucking thing in again!"

well it's all just gdl-60 right

yikes 15k for a 440

@egid yeah, that would be the other bit

I have to buy a transponder too and as much as the 440's interface makes me want to have its babies I'm not sure I can afford THAT kind of child support payment

i just want a waas gps with a com, really

i'd be happy giving up ground based nav altogether

and that isn't exactly a thing that exists

I could go GPS/Com but I like having nav radio redundancy. I actually use VORs

@egid Garmin GNC series

hard to find, nobody bought 'em

There's no GTN equivalent with just com is there? Seems like a marketing mistake...

everyone loves navaids

Everyone makes the GNS/GTN their one-and-only radio

@egid speaking of navaids, the SUX VOR is rather prominently visible from I-29 :P

(fucking thing takes a hour to boot up, I would like to be copying the goddamn ATIS please!)

practically speaking our com2 is almost unusable, at least with my headset

i'd just as soon have a single, i guess

low audio?

yeah, something about the bose electronics

but just fuzzy and quiet

sl40 does decent standby

although hard to use when a machine-gun-fast pro is running seattle approach

have your avionics guys check the levels at the radio, guys tweaked the levels pots on my narcos and they worked great.

I wish the SL40 would drive my old narco VOR/DME - it would free up SO MUCH panel space!

so gps155xl is ~$1,500, SL40 is ~$1,500 :\

that's not enough to cover squat

hey my Narcos are worth so little I'm keeping them on the shelf as spares :P

yeah have fun shoehorning them back in there

(actually I may spend money on them and exchange my 720CH one for a 760CH)

Nav/Com 1 is still going to be a Narco when I'm done

our transponder is probably $650 (AT150)

Yeah that's the same as mine

haha you've got new narcos

I'm considering giving it to the avionics tech who has to align the stupid thing, along with a cherry bomb.

we have a Mk12D

which is apparently worth around $750

i would not have guessed

No, I could probably get $1500-1600 for the pair :P

so yeah if we sold everything we'd cover an ads-b Out install

and still need to buy a navcomgps

might lose a few pounds though

I'm debating if I want a remote-mounted transponder in the tail to move the CG back a little bit

yeah our battery is in the tail

along with the ELT

side effect of a 150hp engine upgrade

my ELT is a dinky little thing that weighs all of 1.2 pounds. I keep considering replacing it with a 406MHz ELT but if I make a big enough dent to set it off I don't know that I'll care if I'm found.

yeah we have a 406, it's pretty cool honestly

since, you know, someone listens for it

@egid BAH! What's the fun in being rescued?! :P