pilotdave

I've had the chance to fly the RAH-66 Comanche simulator. Once in the full motion, domed screen sim...but with screen and motion shut off. Then again in a non-moving simulator with the night flight program loaded so my only view was the FLIR. Didn't get a chance to really try landing or taking off, but I was able to fly along and even bring it to a hover. Course the simulators aren't completely realistic and the comanche is probably a whole lot easier to fly than any other helicopter. Doesn't want to yaw when the power changes because the fly by wire takes care of it. I've flown a real R22 once. Very much doubt I could have survived without the instructor.

http://www.zazzle.com Design it and let people order their own. Good quality stuff from there. Dave

Well....close...sorta. It's a Shanghai Sikorsky Shen 2B. It's a schweizer 300 built under license by a joint venture between the "Little Eagle Science and Technology Company" and Sikorsky Aircraft in China. http://www.shanghaisikorsky.com/ Dave

Just training the kid to deal well with hypoxia. Gonna make a great skydiver someday. Dave

I'm still trying to figure out all this wonderful advice. You keep saying he should have spiralled. I'll ask again... how do you know that would have helped? From my understanding, he was downwind of the airport backing up. You suggest he should have used REAR risers after spiraling. Again, how would that have helped? Front risers maybe makes sense, but apparently doesn't work well. I dont think I'm capable of holding down both front risers on my PD150 for more than a few seconds, let alone a manta. Dave

If it was flying fine yesterday and nobody's touched it since then, it'll fly fine today.

The only ultralights that have 2 seats (in the US) are trainers. The chances are pretty good that if you own a 2 seater, you're an ultralight instructor. I doubt you'd find one that would let you jump. Not sure how someone becomes an ultralight instructor, but I'm guessing they'd lose that privalege if they got caught. If the pilot has a license and the aircraft is a certified experimental, then it can be done legally. Those probably make up the majority of "ultralight looking" 2 seaters that aren't technically ultralights. Dave

Definitely no expert on the subject, but I remember when the movie water world came out, I heard predictions that if all the polar ice melted, the oceans would actually rise about 6 inches. No idea if that's even close to correct or not. Dave

Yeah but when the space shuttle disconnects from the spinning space station, which NASA exec screwed up? This is sounding like the aircraft flight dynamics course I took last year. Describing the motions of an aircraft in all different reference frames and converting it back and forth. Pseudo-inertial axes, aircraft axes, wind frame axes. I really shoulda taken some linear algebra... Dave

It's an easter egg in that it's an undocumented feature, but it's there for a reason. It could actually be very useful to some people. Whe you need a whole bunch of text real quick to set up formatting, it's a lot easier than typing pages of dsfjhdsfhds... Dave

We found it would be considerably cheaper to rent a van from a car rental place than our university if we were paying out of pocket. Luckily we never had to pay out of pocket, because it was over $1000 per van (for 2 vans) last year to drive round trip from Maryland to Florida. Maryland funds us really nicely. This year they'll pay for the vans to Florida and 3 hours of wind tunnel time. And that's only part of the club budget. Dave

Hahaha! There probably is a clutch... I know there is in R22s!

This is what I don't understand. Would spiraling down necessarily have helped? Maybe getting out of the high winds at altitude more quickly would help, but spiraling isn't usually going to keep you from drifting farther from the DZ as opposed to holding into the wind. During a spiral, you're going to drift approximately with the wind speed away from the DZ (assuming you're starting overhead or downwind). When holding, you'll drift at the wind speed minus your forward speed (assuming you're backing up). Of course the winds usually decrease as altitude decreases, so maybe spiraling to get down to lighter winds could help. But how sure is everyone that spiraling down would have kept him closer to the DZ? (Keep in mind this is a manta, not a Velocity.) Dave

Yep, seen that one. it's a schweizer 300. Amazing to see how fast you can get one of those spinning when you don't know what those pedals in front of you are for. Dave

Yep. Solved that problem with a cattle prod though! Nothing like a little motivation to help put up some fliers! Dave

If only this guy hadn't survived he'd be a great darwin award candidate... Video (available for a limited time only) Dave

ficticious is just the wrong word. pseudo is more like it. said it yourself. (yes, i realize you understand this better than any of us anyway

Just so you get at least one positive response, I'll be there. And this year, I plan to NOT come in last place in the 4 way scrambles! If I have to bring a couple golden knights with me and pay some people off, so be it. Dave

Yeah, I didn't mean to say that the Spectre is hard to land. I think I stood up all but 2 of my 17 landings with it, and even took it for a night jump. Landed right in the peas on my last jump with it. One of the landings I couldn't stand up was a downwinder... never came in so freaking fast in my life.

Nope... I'm not gonna draw it but picture this: you're standing in an elevator. The elevator puts an upward force on your body. You feel heavier, not lighter, as you accelerate upwards. It's the same situation here. You are ACCELERATING toward the center of the circle. You are MOVING tangential to the circle. Centripetal force is the force that keeps you from flying off the circle. In other words, it points inward toward the center of the circle. If that force was to suddenly disappear, you will lose your acceleration toward the center of the circle and therefore continue to move in whatever direction you were already moving in... tangential to the circle. One more example... picture a satellite orbiting earth. There's plenty of gravity up there. It's not just floating in a weightless environment. So it's in freefall. It's accelerating toward earth at somewhere around 32 feet/sec^2 (I dunno what the actual number at that altitude would be, but it's not a whole lot lower than on the surface). So if it's accelerating downward, why isn't it falling out of orbit? Horizontal (tangential) speed is the answer. The only real force on the satellite is gravity, which obviously points straight toward the center of the earth (or at least close to it for those that are going to say the earths gravitational center isn't in the geometric center

They have a GREAT system where I jump to prevent those kinds of accidents. It's so simple... There's a "spring loaded" rope (like a clothesline or something) attached between a fence at the loading area and the boarding steps. Wheel the steps to the plane with all the jumpers behind it, and there's a rope physically blocking them from walking under the wing. And all loading and unloading, other than the pilot, is done at the same loading area. Simple but effective. Also no observer rides are allowed, even for jumpers. Dave

No clue... canada maybe? I just got those pics (and more) at work... safety people love that stuff. Gives a really good idea of what a propeller can do to a person without having to see it. Also got a hilarious video of a helicopter crash. I'll try to post that later. A real darwin award contender... if he had just not survived. (it's really funny.) Dave

PM billbooth. He IS much of the history of skydiving.

Yeah, yesterday's AvFlash (an aviation news email) suggested ebay as the place to get them (at highly inflated prices). I've been hearing about the event for a looong time but I dunno anything about it. NC isn't warm enough for me to wanna stand on a beach in december.

Watch out for props... ya might bend the blades and make a mess. These could be turned into a drozone warning sign... Dave