# The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 23, 2011, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499 "2011-10-23T02:17:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 495
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9883 "2026-05-22T11:52:49Z")
You’re right. Access to that mishap from 1973 works. Showing you the bare database entry without any of the narrative. Probably because it’s so old. At the bottom of the CAROL input form there’s a note that everything in the database prior to 1983 is sorta skeletal. Try looking up N915RC. It was a floatplane accident in 2009. No CVR there. You’re get the usual search results screen showing you the date, where, the aircraft type etc. With links to the docket and to the final PDF report. Those links now both take you to the page I quoted. I discovered this yesterday when I was watching a YouTube collection of aircraft mishaps. That particular N915RC mishap was rather comically colorful, didn’t seem like it should have been fatal, and happened to have a readily visible N number in one frame. So my curiosity prompted me look it up in CAROL. Surprise; no report for me! I also found it sort of interesting that there wasn’t any visible announcement of this change. No news release, no caveat on the pre-search page at **[CAROL](https://carol.ntsb.gov/)**, the search input page **[NTSB Aviation Investigation Search](https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryv2.aspx)**, or the search results page. Just no detailed results available once you’ve jumped through the hoops. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9884 "2026-05-22T11:56:19Z")
That would be my take. Kinda like the time the TSA published a throwaway picture of the magic universal luggage lock keys and the internet promptly reverse-engineered plans so now anyone can 3D-print their own set. There are probably sonograms attached to untold numbers of mishap reports dating back to the 1980s. Until they can find and cull them from the public results they have a problem. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9885 "2026-05-22T16:01:56Z")
Water bomber shooter is out of jail. Bail was set at $75,000, he somehow came up with the $7500 bond. He is being electronically monitored. Due back in court May 26. > **[Man accused of shooting firefighting plane bonds out of jail](https://www.northernnewsnow.com/2026/05/22/man-accused-shooting-firefighting-plane-bonds-out-jail/)** > > Thursday afternoon, Pettit posted a $7,500 bond and was released from jail on conditions that he be electronically monitored and show up to future court proceedings Brian ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9886 "2026-05-22T16:21:23Z")
Ah, so it seems it has come to NTSB attention that outsiders are using digital tools and AI to artificially create “cockpit recordings” from what is contained in the online files? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9887 "2026-05-22T17:02:23Z")
Yes exactly. Or so it seems. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9888 "2026-05-22T19:40:23Z")
It seems someone created a CVR out of a spectrogram of the audio from the UPS accident > **[A PDF let the internet hear the final words in the cockpit of a UPS plane as...](https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/22/us/plane-crash-audio)** > > New technology allowing audio of plane crashes to be extracted from still images has prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to take a rare step of pausing the public release of nearly all information related to its investigations. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9889 "2026-05-22T20:01:48Z")
Well that removes all doubt about the topic. Thanks for a great cite. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9890 "2026-05-22T20:17:50Z")
Interesting. I’m reminded of how, just a few years ago, we realized we had inadvertent “recordings” from _earlier_ than the earliest (c. 1877) wax cylinders: > **[Phonautograph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautograph)** > > The phonautograph is the earliest known device for recording sound. Previously, tracings had been obtained of the sound-producing vibratory motions of tuning forks and other objects by physical contact with them, but not of actual sound waves as they propagated through air or other mediums. Invented by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, it was patented on March 25, 1857. It transcribed sound waves as undulations or other deviations in a line traced on smoke-blackened paper or glass. > Because the phonautogram tracing was an insubstantial two-dimensional line, direct physical playback [before the 21st century] was impossible in any case. However, several phonautograms recorded before 1861 were successfully converted and played as sound in 2008 by optically scanning them and using a computer to process the scans into digital audio files. ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9891 "2026-05-22T21:17:20Z")
I watched that show as a kid, but found the Corsair ugly. Decades later I was reading an account of sailors on a destroyer that was getting hammered by kamikaze attacks off Okinawa. Their AA was depleted and more attacks were inbound when some Corsairs swept the skies clean. Did more reading on the F4U and now I think they look pretty cool. This guy has a lot of great WW2 plane videos, including several about the F4U: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rNcV13uayxw/hqdefault.jpg "F4U Corsair Design Features") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNcV13uayxw) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2026, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9892 "2026-05-22T23:08:40Z")
Long before 2008 we were using lasers to read phonograph and wax cylinder recordings. I was reading about that in college in the early 1980s. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2026, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9893 "2026-05-23T00:42:38Z")
In this video, Scott Manley says that the NTSB did this in response to a tweet he made suggesting it was possible to convert these images to audio, and explains how it works, answering the question I asked above. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/phjRQckjVJc/maxresdefault.jpg "Why The NTSB Shut Down Their Plane Crash Report Archive") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phjRQckjVJc) ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2026, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9894 "2026-05-23T01:14:10Z")
Spotted at the Baltimore airport: [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/j8GtbT4.jpeg "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/j8GtbT4) ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2026, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9895 "2026-05-23T11:00:38Z")
True, but it’s cool we can now go back further and hear things (recreate the sound from a graphic on a page) never meant to be played back. That was my rough analogy with the NTSB issue. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2026, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9896 "2026-05-23T11:39:32Z")
Agree it’s cool. Shame about this particular application of cool. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2026, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9897 "2026-05-24T20:51:50Z")
Paraglider gets [clipped](https://x.com/aviationbrk/status/2058593929646248017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2058593929646248017%7Ctwgr%5E087f77fbdf805fec130c9efe693f851c7f3ca7ff%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnypost.com%2F2026%2F05%2F24%2Fus-news%2Fparaglider-clipped-by-plane-in-heart-pounding-first-person-footage%2F) by a small plane. Splits here chute in two ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2026, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9898 "2026-05-24T21:21:27Z")
You could probably rerun that collision a hundred times and the Cessna would land safely twice, and the paraglider person 4 times. Lucky the both of them. Luckier yet if they’d avoided colliding. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2026, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9899 "2026-05-25T03:08:50Z")
Was there a camera drone following the paraglider? I don’t see any stick holding the camera. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2026, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9900 "2026-05-25T03:13:46Z")
I didn’t watch the video (I don’t allow Twitter to run JavaScript), but software to hide the stick is pretty common. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2026, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9901 "2026-05-25T03:21:42Z")
Interesting. But I don’t think she wasn’t in a position to handle a camera once struck by the plane. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2026, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/9902 "2026-05-25T03:40:05Z")
Again, I didn’t see the vid, but my guess would be that she had it mounted to her in some way. I think the paraglider’s hands would usually be occupied, anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499.md?page=494) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499.md?page=496)