Huh. I could have sworn it was 20 hours (1980s). My instructor sent me on an extra cross-country, because we were flying dad’s Skyhawk and earlier cross-countries were accomplished more quickly than in a 150.
Surprising that they would readily admit to this.
Also seems somewhat ironic that a military pilot would have trouble spotting other aircraft in situations where even civilian pilots are expected to do so.
In the realm of ‘Nice idea that probably would be less useful than it seems at first” one could imagine the aircraft to be spotted flashing a random light pattern, with the pilot doing the spotting being required to correctly describe said pattern.
I had an interesting aviation experience over the last two weeks. I flew (as in rode, not steered) from Miami to Antarctica. Then boarded a small expedition cruise ship for a few days slogging along the Antarctic shore. And should have flown back the same way. More later on “should”.
We used an American Airlines 787 to go from Miami to Santiago Chile (SCL), then, due to bad connection times, spent a day & night in Santiago then the next day continued on a LATAM A320 to get to Puerto Natales Chile Puerto Natales - Wikipedia where we met up with the expedition / cruise people.
After a planned overnight there we flew Aerovías DAP - Wikipedia Home - DAP Airlines to get down to King George island in the South Shetlands. This final aircraft was an AVRO RJ-100 near and dear to our own @Richard_Pearse who flew them in Australia for some years.
The flight south across the infamous Drake Passage at ~30K feet was smooth and what we could see of the ocean was fairly calm. The real issue in the Passage is long-wavelength swell which is pretty invisible from altitude. About which more later.
Arrival was interesting in that it was ~1000 foot broken cloud ceiling with good vis below. So they dropped down to ~800 feet, then snaked between a bunch of ~500 foot tall volcanic bare rock islands before finally aligning with the runway for landing into the 25 knot wind. Such fun.
This is the airport in Antarctica, located on an island ~100 miles from the end of the Antarctic peninsula. Teniente Rodolfo Marsh Martin Airport - Wikipedia and IFIS: Internet Flight Information System.
The airport consists of a short compacted rock/gravel/sand runway, a small apron area of the same material, and a tent. And there’s a VOR and a brand new ILS. Plus probably RNAV approaches. But I was unable to locate a source for the approach information. Google’s overhead pix are in austral winter. We were there in the tail end of summer, and the scenery was mostly bare rock with some icy patches in the shade. And small icebergs floating in the bays.
All that travel went exactly to plan. Took a long time, nearly 72 hours from my house to my ship cabin, but worked out as planned.
After the ship expedition was over the intent was to return the same way. But weather intervened. The King George Island airport was socked in with low vis and ground hugging clouds. Which were expected to remain in place for several days. Further, they’d had a bout of heavy rain for a couple days and the field was real muddy. Which means each use of it damages it and needs to be repaired. And they’re getting ready to batten down the hatches for winter there.
So the ship ad-libbed a new plan that worked out great for them and only OKish for their customers.
We sailed the Drake Passage (2.2 hours by air, 40 hours by small ship) to the small town of Puerto Williams - Wikipedia.
The crossing wasn’t bad by Drake standards, but the ~300 foot ship was a rockin’ and a rollin’ the whole way. Probably 20% of passengers got seasick, and GF felt queasy now and again. Most folks were fine (me too), and the crew seemed utterly unperturbed. They laughingly called it “The Drake Lake” in contrast to other crossings called “The Drake Shake”
There we met up with a hastily chartered DAP flight in another Avro RJ-100 that then went back to Puerto Natales to reunite us with a mountain of gear left there at the hotel a week-ish ago, then on to Santiago. Ideally in time for folks to make their originally scheduled evening flights to the USA. 'Twas not to be.
For a combination of badly explained reasons, but probably high gross weight, adverse cruise winds / turbulence, and short runways, there was an unknown to us fuel stop planned partway up the 1300 mile jaunt from Puerto Natales to Santiago.
The fuel stop was interesting. A shiny airport with 2- and 6- jetbridge terminals. (In Google the 6-bridge terminal is under construction. it’s seemingly finished & operational now). And zero cities anywhere nearby. The only sign of life was our airplane and two dudes with a fuel truck. As you can see Balmaceda is kinda near no sign of civilization
In addition to the time-wasting fuel stop, the ship was late getting to Puerto Williams and there was interminable delay w Chilean customs / immigration processing the ~150 passengers. Bottom line was the advertised plan had us getting to Santiago 4 hours before our flight to Miami which would have been a no-stress connection. Instead we trotted up to the baggage check-in counter 10 minutes before departure. Which of course was no hope unless the departure was delayed an hour or more. Instead it left on time without us. Sigh.
So we spent an extra night & day in Santiago then flew home the next overnight via an AA 777 arriving 24 hours later than planned. Just another day in a typical airline traveler’s life.
In all, we spent more days in transit to and fro than we did in Antarctica. But it was a fun adventure, both the aviation part and the ship & shore part.
In all we transited 6 airports across 7 flights and used 4 kinds of airplane on 3 or 4 airlines. (DAP has multiple subdivisions which are kinda separate and kinda not, so you could count our two rides on DAP RJ-100s as being on one airline or two.)
Quite an adventure LSL!
[quoted part] I asked this here close to 20 years ago, never got an answer, can’t find any discussion of it anywhere else. Any time I’ve been in an airliner HIGH (20K or so on up), looking down at the ocean the surface would seem “frozen in time”, any waves not seeming to move at all, looking like ice and not liquid water. Always wondered if this was an optical illusion or something.
Mostly a matter of scale and your speed versus the wave speed. And the small field of view available out a passenger side window.
On days with high surface winds the whitecaps can be seen to be moving and changing even from altitude. On less windy days you can often pick up the overall swell pattern, especially when it’s just one predominant swell and any secondary is tiny by comparison. But you’re right that the swells seem to be stationary. Which they pretty much are relative to each other which is the only background you have to compare to.
It helps to have a large window so you can focus on one area long enough to watch it change. Seeing the ocean through a soda straw what you mostly see is that you’re forever looking at a new bit of it.
My dad flew those late in his career, too. Picked up some of them brand new from the factory.
NTSB preliminary report is out:
A private jet that crashed in Maine in January, killing all six people aboard, remained on the ground 8 minutes longer than it should have after receiving a deicing treatment in a snowstorm, according to a preliminary report issued Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The plane should have waited no more than 9 minutes from the start of when the deicing treatment began before taking off in those cold and snowy conditions, according to Federal Aviation Administration guidelines. But the NTSB report said 17 minutes passed before takeoff.
Report is at:
https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/202338/pdf
Thanks for the update. Sloppy workmanship claims another jet.
For reference, here’s where you posted the original accident news and the convo about that event continued for a dozen posts or so below here:
A few posts later (#9307) I give a primer on de-/anti-icing and holdover times for those interested.
A National Transportation Safety Board member who was a public face of the investigation into last year’s deadly collision of an airliner and an Army helicopter near the nation’s capital said Sunday that he had been fired by the Trump administration without explanation. A National Transportation Safety Board member who was a public face of the investigation into last year’s deadly collision of an airliner and an Army helicopter near the nation’s capital said Sunday that he had been fired by the Trump administration without explanation…
The NTSB has a five-person board but its website on Sunday showed just three members. The board’s vice chair, Alvin Brown, was abruptly removed last year.
Hey, I had no idea you were in “Da ‘hood” … doing skorpio things … (we quite often get those celebrity news like Leonardo DiCaprio spotted in SCL on his way to Antartida) …
You should have hollered ahead, there is always a way to squeeze an asado in there … I do live on the far side of Stgo-airport (airport is at 11 o’clock, me more at 4 o’clock), but in feb (peak holiday season) that’s a 30min cab ride from the airport.
Balmaceda, fwiw is the airport for Punta Arenas Coyhaique, the southernmost big city in Chile - but pretty far out from the city… Quite nice in summer, but quite fierce in winter (they have thick ropes in the town-center, so people can walk against the high winds in winter in the snow, so you figure) … oh… and that’s the part of Chile you cant reach by car from the north - you need to go via argentina.
On the other hand the only way to reach the Falklands, is through a flight from Chile (I “think”, starting en Blamaceda) …
Well, another great story well told from you !!!
Amazing trip! Thanks for sharing it with us.
Had our annual safety seminar on Saturday. One session was on an accident & the presenter was a party to the investigation (manufacturer). He was able to give us a insider’s perspective, including how an investigation unfolds. In this case, he heard about it before the NTSB did
Link to a german language news site (google should be able to translate) … where - in Austria a Ryanair plane was impounded as they owed a passanger 800 euros in (past) indemnation …
(the cookoo that gets mentioned is a funny expression of the imperial eagle you can find on those “impounded stamps” that were once glued on to assets like tv-sets or other equipment that were taken by the state due to non-payment of a duty)
(wondering how much ignoring an 800e verdict, did cost Ryan)
I was at Warbirds on Parade yesterday and had a great time. It was a fairly small airshow, but I enjoyed seeing a few WW1 aircraft like the Albatross D.VA, a Fokker DR1 and a Royal Aircraft Factory BE2. The highlight for many was the Yakovlev Yak-3 “Full Noise”, and we got some good aerobatic displays.
I took some pics and the programme is here if anyone fancies matching up the photos.
A short twenty minute drive with few queues on a sunny morning - just a lovely day out.
Did the RAF BE2 have a 4 bladed wooden propeller? This was an amazing time in early aviation and they were throwing every engineering design at a wall to see what sticks.
I’m not sure, sorry. I’d deliberately set my camera shutter speed at about 1/200s to slightly blur the propellers to get a more dramatic shot. This is maybe the clearest shot of that plane that suggests it might have had four blades.
looks like a 4 blade propeller. I can’t imagine how much that costs to make.
On the subject of money, one of the commentators at the airshow explained that we weren’t seeing any Spitfires or Hurricanes was in part due to the annual cost of insuring them. A figure of $160,000 was mentioned… 
An expensive hobby, for sure!
Do you mean she could attest that you’d signed a document, or she just liked people talking about her?
YES! Curses, notariety vs. notoriety.