Not GA, but our ever-growing use of tablets at work has been a real boon. As Richard Pearse explains in one of his posts to that thread.
We’re really just getting started in discovering all the ways that getting more info and more think-power into the cockpit can more than pay for itself in improved cost or safety. Net of the risk of “improved” distraction.
News item in New York Times:
Where Birds and Planes Collide, a Winged Robot May Help, Tina Rosenberg, NYT, Nov. 28, 2017.
Edmonton International Airport, Alberta, Canada is experimenting with a robotic peregrine falcon to scare birds away from the airport area, in an effort (among others) to reduce incidence of serious airplane/bird collisions.
Peregrine falcons flap their wings when they are hunting, so this robotic bird has to flap its wings too. That was a challenge for the designer of the robot. Birds quickly habituate to other forms of bird control (e.g., propane cannons), but it is hoped that won’t be the case here since the falcon is a natural predator and other birds are “hard-wired” to fear them.
It will be controlled by a drone pilot on the ground, working in conjunction with a wildlife observer, who will be in constant communications with each other and ATC.
Now all we need is to get these drones to actually eat the prey species for energy and to reproduce themselves. All while knowing and abiding by ATC rules to stay out of the way of the vastly bigger predators and also knowing to not migrate elsewhere.
Why no, I haven’t read The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Why do you ask? 
Someone’s ignorance needs to be fought here. If it’s me, I need to have it done.
In another nearby thread, I wrote:
and got this response:
Who is right? When a plane is rolling, does that increase the AoA on the down-going wing for the duration of the rolling motion? (Note: Not after the plane is in a stable bank attitue, but while the plane is rolling.) And is the same true if the plane encounters an updraft under just one wing?
I think you are right and **Morgenstein ** has misunderstood you.
Concur.
In most cases the dynamics don’t matter, so folks only think about steady-state. Typical beginning texts teach only about steady state and might mention the dynamics in a footnote.
Sailplanes are a special case in that, if flown optimally, a lot of time is spent at speeds / AOAs near stall while loaded up in banks and in gusty conditions. A properly flown power plane will almost never get near enough to those conditions for it to matter.
No way to know whether **Morganstern **skipped over that difference or doesn’t understand it himself.
Here’s an NTSB report on an interesting box canyon crash that occurred in May 2017. https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20170508X45426&AKey=1&RType=HTML&IType=FA
A seaplane being flown by a factory test pilot was flying at low level over a large lake in hilly terrain. He turned up what he probably thought was a narrow neck to another part of the lake.
Oops, he’d turned up a narrow cove instead. His best efforts to turn & climb in the space available didn’t clear the terrain.
I studied the facts about this incident after Roy Halliday’s Icon crashed. I was looking for a fault with the design of the the aircraft. Nope, the plane didn’t kill the pilots, it appears that the pilot flying the A5 at Lake Berryessa decided to turn and climb out of a one way valley. I saw where the planes wreckage was located in that cove, he might of had 400 yards of water to chop throttle and slip down to a hasty landing. A big if for sure, I don’t know what I would do, but I hope I wouldn’t fly myself into a low slow corner.
On October 17, weeks before Halliday’s accident ICON Aircraft CEO Kirk Hawkins announced a new set of low-altitude flying guidelines. The ICON guidelines said flying 300 feet above water or undeveloped ground “provides a reasonable margin for a pilot to make decisions and maneuver the aircraft away from terrain or stationary hazards.
Be safe out there, and always give yourself a way out.
Agree.
Skimming familiar lakes is fun. But leaves little time or room for correcting a screwup. As yet another pretty highly skilled aviator learned the hard way. :smack:
Skimming unfamiliar lakes is simply trolling for unseeable wires. That’s flat foolhardy.
And here is a link to a further discussion of the incident, an article published on-line in Plane And Pilot Magazine:
Analysis/Opinion: NTSB Releases Final Report On Fatal Icon Crash
Jeepers. I flew over Lake Berryessa last March with some friends. I wanted to fly lower over the lake at the dam end, but not that low (we were up around 2500’ agl). It’s in a gorge with mountains rising on both sides. If I recall some observations correctly (from driving through the area), there are in fact power lines strung over the gorge on those mountain tops. I think the wires have those big orange balls on them, because they just know that pilots are going to try flying down the gorge.
I don’t know where the box canyon in question might be, but I imagine it’s up towards the other end of the lake from the dam.
Aerial photo of Lake Berryessa. Extremely irregular shaped lake, full of coves galore.
ETA: Looks like it would really be one damn fun lake to skim from one end to the other, but you damn well need to know your way around the terrain there first!
Somebody familiar with the area who knows where the wires are and is flying an amphibian so the entire lake is available as a forced landing area is in a different situation than somebody who has neither of those advantages.
But, as the P&P article points out (thanks for the link), there’s a big ass difference between flying at 500 ft, 300 ft, and 50 ft. One’s sensible, one’s marginal, and one is plain stupid. Selling the latter is highly irresponsible.
High powered, highly maneuverable airplanes are one thing. Light planes in general, and LSAs in particular, can barely maneuver. That same turn into that cove in, e.g., a Pitts might have been survivable. Even if so, there’re certainly other even smaller covelets that a Pitts couldn’t handle.
As military helos demonstrate, the slower you go the closer you can fit in against the terrain. In that sense an LSA is seductive; at 40-50mph it seems comfortable near the rocks. Unlike military helos, an LSA can neither quickly stop in midair, nor pull much sustainable G, nor climb at much of an angle. In tight geometries they maneuver more like supertankers, especially in the 3rd dimension. Ultralight pilots also learn this lesson all too often.
Just like street racing with cars & motorcycles, in aviation there’s almost no gray area between the white and black of fine & fucked. Unlike on a track with high side run-out areas, hay bales, energy absorbing barriers, neck braces, ambulances, and all the rest.
The benefit of something like a Pitts is that you can escape vertically. If you find yourself up a dead end cove at 50 feet, a half cuban-8 will get you out of trouble easily enough. Of course you should avoid getting there in the first place, but power and maneuverability can make up for a lot of stupidity.
If you have a plane that can do that, don’t you also have a plane that can simply climb out at V[sub]x[/sub] (or maybe even faster) and clear the top of the ridge?
(Or, in a plane that can climb vertically, is V[sub]x[/sub] the speed at which that happens?)
You may not be able to climb straight ahead sustainably more steeply than the terrain rises. In fact, even a Pitts probably can’t maintain even a 30 degree climb for a great distance. Certainly there’s plenty of mountains and even a few hills steeper than that.
What you can do, unless you start real slow, is half-Cuban out of the canyon. Your forward progress into the cul-de-sac ends when you pass vertical going uphill. The fact your airspeed is decaying like mad doesn’t matter either as long as you can get past level inverted before you run out. It doesn’t matter if the cliff face is 5 miles tall at that point; you’re going the other way.
In addition to shiny jets I also flew low-speed tactical airplanes for USAF. They were not nearly as powerful or as G-capable as a Pitts, but we still flew them aggressively within their power & G limits. One of the big things aerobatics teaches you is how to really use all 3 dimensions. Most lightplane pilots operate it like a 2D car that’s able to gradually climb or descend in addition to 2D turning and that’s about it.
Anecdote/war story.
While in USAF stateside I once rented a 172 and went flying with another USAF officer who was a private + instrument rated pilot but not a USAF flyer. We’re out noodling around seeing the sights from a couple thousand AGL. She points out something back at around our 4 o’clock she wants to see. I had the controls.
Without much thought I go to full power, pull up to about 30 degrees nose high, roll right to about 120 degrees bank, and pull through at 2-ish Gs going to idle as we start building speed. In just a few seconds we’ve changed direction 180 degrees, offset laterally almost not at all, lost 500 feet, and the target is filling the windscreen. Non-event for me; I’d done it hundreds of times in sorta-similar aircraft; the next move we couldn’t complete that day is to stuff a rocket into the target then pull off and go find something else that needs shooting.
Barely halfway through the turn she lets out a squeal I’d never have expected from either her personality or her flying history. Turns out her flying repertoire ended at 60 degree “steep” turns in level flight. This was not something she believed a 172 would or could do survivably. This was utterly outside her experience base, much less her comfort zone.
The point is *not *“ain’t I cool.” I’m not. The point is her idea of the capabilities of the airplane covered barely 10% of what it could do. That is IMO a massive failure of training. Conversely, Richard’s immediate and casual “Just go vertical and leave the other way” bespeaks the all-envelope thought processes common to aerobatic pilots.
Absent altitude to spare, my rocket attack is not a good escape maneuver in a 172; you will bottom out lower than you started.
But a wingover-like maneuver can get you out of a box canyon that a level steep turn won’t. Unless you’re already so slow and so close to your service ceiling that pulling the nose up even a little drops you down to a speed where you can’t pull >1 Gs without stalling.
Hotdog!
That thing is mechanic nerdvana…
Links for those who were wondering:
CFI tactfulness diplomacy quandary . . .
This has more to do with everyday social skillz and respectful assertiveness (of both of which I have nearly none) than aviation, other than the aviation setting —
How do I politely and tactfully tell my CFI-G of several weeks that I’ve decided to fly with a different CFI-G (at the same school)?
The back-story, briefly: Ref this post from 01 Aug., in which I express impatience that, after taking lessons for a year, I seem to be getting nowhere, and subsequent discussion through about Post #998.
The update: For those reasons, and some others, I decided to reduce (but not totally quit) my involvement with that soaring club and check out another one. This club only operates on Saturdays (as opposed to Sat and Sun) and is a TWO-hour drive to get there (as opposed to just one). Anyway, long story short, I joined and have been taking lessons there for about six weeks now. It’s a private glider port (no other GA except for occasional members who fly in), on a rather large dirt runway. We train in Schweizer 2-33’s. (See blog here from last year with LOTS of photos. The bright yellow glider is one of the 2-33’s I’m flying now.)
So far, it’s very encouraging. For one thing, the 2-33 is just easier to fly.
Anyway, now this: I flew for several weeks with one instructor, who TBH doesn’t majorly positively impress me. I flew with one other instructor last week who seemed much better but… not quite the right fit for me.
Fast forward to YESTERDAY, Saturday Dec. 10: I flew with yet another instructor. I’ve been watching this guy’s briefings with other students, and I was pre-disposed to think he might be the really right instructor for me. Based on two flights with him yesterday, it appears that I was not mistaken.
Now: How do I tactfully let Instructor #1 know that I’m not going to fly with him any more? It’s not like I can just disappear to another school and totally ghost him. He’s there regularly. Do I simply continue scheduling with Instructor #3 and not mention anything to #1? (Note: This is a club and the instructors charge only a rather small amount. It’s not about the money.)
It was an eventful week at Avenal, BTW. They had operations on Friday (which they usually don’t) as well as Saturday. (Correction from above post: Yes, I meant Saturday Dec. 9.)
They have a fairly new tow pilot. College kid, lots of ASEL flying experience including IFR, taking glider lessons now. They trained him to be a tow pilot, and he did his first day towing, the same day I started there. Friday, they soloed him!
Yesterday, he took me up in the tow plane with him for the morning warm-up flight. It’s a C-150.
Also yesterday, another student took his oral and flight exam. We have another glider pilot in the world now!
All three of the instructors I’ve flown with, like the guy I flew with at Air Sailing last summer, are saying I ought to solo Real Soon Now.
Somebody (or somebodies) likes to take lots of pictures, which get posted to the club blog, which is right there on the front page of their web site, updated regularly. It looks like the above-mentioned “Instructor #2” is the major picture-taker. Unknown to me at the time, he took pics from the back seat while I was flying with him. http://www.soaravenal.com/
Something feels real familiar about this post as I’m writing it. Did I already make a post about all this stuff?
ETA: And as for me, I came away from yesterdays lessons feeling very encouraged.
