OT: What’s your weather forecast?

[barnacle]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

The only unpowered flying I’ve done is parachute jumping.  As the jumpmaster said right before my first jump, “I understand your nervousness, son.  I’ve never understood why anyone would willing leap out of a perfectly good airplane.” 

My thoughts exactly. I carry a parachute, and it's an _emergency_ device. But my wing - which most people seem to think is a parachute - is flying before my feet leave the ground. Or they wouldn't.

@Plasmo - you might not like thermalling paragliders then; round and round up in the thermal, maybe a couple of g if you're trying hard, and then all rock and roll when you get to the top! But you can have really gentle ridge flying, particularly at a coastal site.

Neil

(Jump master to the recruits: "Ok, last reminder: out the back, the static line releases your main. If that doesn't work, pull your reserve. If that doesn't work, flap your arms and shout 'Geronimo!'
And on the flight back, they hear a knocking on the window. The jumpmaster looks out and sees one of the squadies, flapping like mad, and asking "What was the name of that bloody Indian again, sarge?")

[visrealm]

plasmo wrote:

Learned how to fly glider in my 20’s; wonderful experience mostly, but what forced me out was banking hard in thermals, all that shaking and circling in >45 degree bank caused nausea and disorientation. I don’t have the right stuff to do long distance flying. Still go for a glider ride once in a while.

I also flew gliders as a kid. Soloed at the minimum age of 15 here in Australia. Unfortunately, didn't keep it up.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barnacle wrote:

(Jump master to the recruits: "Ok, last reminder: out the back, the static line releases your main. If that doesn't work, pull your reserve.

Buddy of mine had to go down on the reserve on his “maiden” jump.  The main opened but immediately went into a Mae West.  He said at first he couldn’t figure out why he was passing the other guys on the way down...until he remembered he was supposed to look up at his canopy to make sure it was okay.    He said he was pretty sure he wet his pants when he realized his predicament. 

[barnacle]

Interesting day, interesting new wing. I'll be giving it some more time on Tuesday, with luck and a headwind... an interesting change to go from a too-big top-end 'A' wing to a mid 'B' a size smaller

Neil

[visrealm]

barnacle wrote:

Interesting day, interesting new wing. I'll be giving it some more time on Tuesday, with luck and a headwind... an interesting change to go from a too-big top-end 'A' wing to a mid 'B' a size smaller

Neil

Seen a few paraglider videos - looks awesome. Not sure there's much of a paraglider scene around here (too flat for it), though there might be? Also watch paramotor videos on occasion (Tucker Gott, etc.). My gliding has always involved fibreglass (or aluminium) wings - never fabric

[barnacle]

Yeah, there are a few(!) paragliders in Australia - they tend to go long distances, I think.

I live in the flat of the German plains - we have a 'mountain' here (it must be a mountain; it's called 'cherry mountain' / Kirschberg) which rises a stunning thirty-eight meters above the surrounding land...

Locally I fly with tow launches with about a kilometer and a half of tow line; gets me to six or seven hundred meters above takeoff on a good day, and after that it's up to me

Neil

p.s. to see what happens when you get lots of people trying out wings they've never flown (and in most cases probably shouldn't fly) have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syk4KKWGMZ4

[plasmo]

Albuquerque is 5000 feet above sea level where I live. Immediately east of the city is Sandia mountain rising up over 10,000 feet. There is a tram service from the city to top of the mountain and the tram has an undercarriage specifically for hang glider. In the summer it is very common to see people riding up the tram with their equipment and jump off the mountain and do ridge soaring for hours. They stayed so long in 10,000 ft that most gliders have cocoon to protect them from freezing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIIuh3TagL0

[barnacle]

Yep, I was flying at cloudbase close to Mt Blanc a few weeks ago and my eyebrows had frost in them...

Temperature goes down (roughly) ten degrees C for every thousand meters of altitude. Which is annoying when you're just nice in your flight suit at a couple of thousand metres and then you land, sweating like a pig

My personal altitude record is 3,700 metres, starting from about 1,300 in Ager, Spain (a touch over 12,000 feet - the air is a bit thin there, but I've hiked at 5,000 metres plus in the Andes)

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barnacle wrote:

...a touch over 12,000 feet - the air is a bit thin there

I gasp (!) at the thought of flying that high with nothing more than some shower curtains and aluminum rods to keep me aloft. 

[jgharston]

Over here, we've had so much rain that the kitchen gutters are flowing back into the house.

[barnacle]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

barnacle wrote:

...a touch over 12,000 feet - the air is a bit thin there

I gasp (!) at the thought of flying that high with nothing more than some shower curtains and aluminum rods to keep me aloft. 

It's worse than that, BDD: I did further test flying on the wing today, and deliberately collapsed 50% of the wing (twice - once on each side) to see how it behaved when I recovered it (better than I had expected, surprisingly!).

But on the other hand, the legroom is _amazing_. And it doesn't say 'Boeing' on the side...

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barnacle wrote:

It's worse than that, BDD: I did further test flying on the wing today, and deliberately collapsed 50% of the wing (twice - once on each side) to see how it behaved when I recovered it (better than I had expected, surprisingly!).

As long as you don’t end up putting a dent in the ground during testing... 

Quote:

But on the other hand, the legroom is _amazing_. And it doesn't say 'Boeing' on the side...

It used to be: “If it don’t say Boeing, I ain’t going.”  That phrase became popular in the 1970s when the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 was involved in fatal mishaps that proved to be the result of design defects that were a product of cost-reduction.

It’s really unfortunate to see a company that has done so much to advance the quality and safety of air travel slip the way Boeing has.  Management there needs a wholesale shakeup to weed out complacency and restore the level of excellence that used to exist.

That said, the unspoken consensus regarding the two MAX-8 crashes (Lion Air and Ethiopian Air) seems to be both cases were less a problem with the aircraft and more one with the flight crews’ inadequate training with MCAS.  This is not to say MCAS didn’t have its flaws.  However, Boeing did not emphasize in training materials how to defeat MCAS and revert to manual pitch control when an uncommanded pitch-up occurs.

Interesting aside: MCAS in the MAX-8 and MAX-9 compensates for a change in engine position on the wing from earlier 737 models.  The revised engine mounting is higher relative to the center of lift, and also directs thrust in a more downward angle than earlier mountings.  This change was made, in part, to reduce the tendency of engines to ingest foreign objects from the pavement surface.  However, the more acute thrust angle can exaggerate a pitch-up command under certain conditions.  MCAS uses pitch sensors to detect that and compensates by changing the tailplane’s angle of attack.

In a further irony, it seems MCAS was born from a desire to make the MAX-8 fly like the previous 737NG model.  The thinking was if the MAX-8 flew like the NG, airlines would not have to spend more on crew training on the MAX-8, which would encourage purchases of the new plane.  So it may be some of the engineering decisions vis a vis the MAX-8 were being indirectly made by the accounting department. 

[barnacle]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

In a further irony, it seems MCAS was born from a desire to make the MAX-8 fly like the previous 737NG model.  The thinking was if the MAX-8 flew like the NG, airlines would not have to spend more on crew training on the MAX-8, which would encourage purchases of the new plane.  So it may be some of the engineering decisions vis a vis the MAX-8 were being indirectly made by the accounting department. 

Yeah... Boeing has been run by bean counters, not engineers, for too long. Mentour Pilot has some excellent videos on the subject.

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barnacle wrote:

Yeah... Boeing has been run by bean counters, not engineers, for too long.  Mentour Pilot has some excellent videos on the subject.

History seems to be repeating itself.  After Douglas Aircraft got bought out by McDonnell in the latter 1960s, the accounting department must’ve taken over, resulting in the DC-10.  Boeing bought out McDonnell-Douglas in the latter 1990s and undoubtedly acquired plenty of their bean counters.  Santayana’s aphorism appears to be alive and well at Boeing. 

[Yuri]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

barnacle wrote:

Yeah... Boeing has been run by bean counters, not engineers, for too long.  Mentour Pilot has some excellent videos on the subject.

History seems to be repeating itself.  After Douglas Aircraft got bought out by McDonnell in the latter 1960s, the accounting department must’ve taken over, resulting in the DC-10.  Boeing bought out McDonnell-Douglas in the latter 1990s and undoubtedly acquired plenty of their bean counters.  Santayana’s aphorism appears to be alive and well at Boeing. 

I want to say I had seen something that basically confirmed exactly this. That after the MDD acquisition the cost over safety mentality quickly permeated through the upper management of Boeing. Even after the most recent issues, it seems they still haven't quite figured it out and are more interested in costs over safety. Maybe time for me to start making sure I only fly on the A320s now.....