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 25 Lou - STORIES (Read 911323 times)
LOU
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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1875 - Mar 13th, 2020 at 2:35pm
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Okay, I have a question for you simmers...

Whats the difference between the corona virus and the 737 MAX?



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The corona virus is AIRBORNE!   Tongue
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1876 - Mar 25th, 2020 at 4:24pm
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Lou, are you flying at all now (GA) or strictly a 'yachtie'?
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1877 - Mar 30th, 2020 at 7:52pm
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Hi Jay,

Just finished a three leg cruise right before Christmas. Wonderful two month tour of the Med, Africa and South America.  On Viking Ocean cruises two of the ships have state-of-the-art planetariums and high end telescopes. When I sail on those ships I am considered the Viking Resident Astronomer (VRA).  Along with presenting programs in the planetarium, on clear nights I go top deck and give tours of the night sky.  I've done enrichment talks on ships since I retired from the airlines.  I did several tours in the South Pacific in French Polynesia, it was wonderful. I've been doing talks only on Viking for four years now and really enjoy the gig.  Of course I bring my Captain Sim 757 along and demonstrate how the plane flies.  The ship has a fantastic 16 X 32 foot LED screen with a resolution of 1080p, and Bose surround sound so you really think you're in the cockpit.  Passengers love it!

Now with the nasty virus there won't be any cruising for a while - if ever!  Some of the companies will not survive.  That goes for the airlines too.

So I sold my small plane and airport and just fly the sim to keep in practice.

Stay well out there every one, be safe!  Kiss

Lou
  

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LOU
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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1878 - Apr 7th, 2020 at 1:49pm
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Aileron Balance Panel on the Boeing 707

https://imgur.com/a/f4ol5yA


The Boeing 707 was the last plane made without boosted controls.  Only the rudder on the 707 was hydraulically powered.  The balance panel aided the pilot in moving the ailerons and the elevator as well.

Here is a cool page with explanations of aircraft flight controls.

https://docplayer.net/39382857-Control-surfaces-rudder-ailerons-elevator-trailin...
  

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LOU
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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1879 - May 4th, 2020 at 5:20pm
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This link will take you to an interesting re-visiting of the Egypt Air 990 crash many years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIzTB_oCVlo&feature=youtu.be

Over the past decades there have been many re-visits of NTSB findings which show how money and influence tend to blame the pilot.  But after further investigations are done, it shows other reasons for the event. 

For example, Boeing had troubles with rudder actuators for many years which caused numerous crashes, but they never admitted these problems. 

Actuator problems affected the 737, 727 & 747.  Without admitting any problems, the rudder actuators were quietly replaced after the deadly crash of a USAir 737 over Pittsburgh, PA.  Now of course we see the problem they are having with the 737 MAX. 
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1880 - May 4th, 2020 at 7:09pm
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LOU wrote on Apr 7th, 2020 at 1:49pm:
Aileron Balance Panel on the Boeing 707

https://imgur.com/a/f4ol5yA


The Boeing 707 was the last plane made without boosted controls.  Only the rudder on the 707 was hydraulically powered.  The balance panel aided the pilot in moving the ailerons and the elevator as well.

Here is a cool page with explanations of aircraft flight controls.

https://docplayer.net/39382857-Control-surfaces-rudder-ailerons-elevator-trailin...   


The last plane? What about the MD-80s -90, 717? More planes with only a boosted rudder and elevator! (Only in the down direction)
  
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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1881 - May 4th, 2020 at 7:58pm
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Interesting. Even though it says "the last plane made without boosted controls",  I read it as "the last Boeing plane made without boosted controls". Undecided
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1882 - May 5th, 2020 at 2:40pm
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Yes, Alex is correct.  The Douglas planes were still cable and push-rod.  Can't remember about the Convair 880/990 I think they were servo tabs with spoiler assist for roll and I'm guessing the DC-8 was the same. 

But I only flew Boeing planes. 

Yes, the 717 is made by Boeing, but it's really a DC-9.  I guess you could even say the 727 was a bit of a hybrid in that with loss of hydraulic power the plane would go to manual reversion (servo tabs).  Flying the 727 in manual reversion was not fun.  You only had roll and pitch and it was very slow.

The idea of the balance panel was a pretty good design for the time.  The 707 was very nice to fly but you needed a bit of arm strength to make it happen.  Even with the boosted rudder in the 707 during engine out training you could see the pilots leg start to shake if they didn't crank in the rudder trim.

Lou
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1883 - Jul 14th, 2020 at 10:34pm
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Hey I also want to read his posts
  
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LOU
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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1884 - Jul 15th, 2020 at 3:54pm
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All the planes I flew, in fact as it turns out, almost every brand of jet has installed in the cockpit a windshield spray called Rainboe.  I guess this was supposed to be just like RainX for cars.  But as I recall, very few pilots ever used it on aircraft windows since if you inadvertently sprayed in on a dry or not wet enough windshield it would make a mess you could not see through and you would not be able to get rid of the sprayed-on mess until you landed and had to listen to the poor mechanic pregnant dog at you for making the mess which was hell to remove.

Just when you thought it was safe to spray RainBoe on aircraft windows, there is this: https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19901216&slug=1109705
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1885 - Jul 17th, 2020 at 7:55pm
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I'm re-submitting this post since somehow the part in bold was changed by the board...  Angry

All the planes I flew, in fact as it turns out, almost every brand of jet has installed in the cockpit a windshield spray called Rainboe.  I guess this was supposed to be just like RainX for cars.  But as I recall, very few pilots ever used it on aircraft windows since if you inadvertently sprayed in on a dry or not wet enough windshield it would make a mess you could not see through and you would not be able to get rid of the sprayed-on mess until you landed and had to listen to the poor mechanic would yell at you for making the mess which was hell to remove
  

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LOU
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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1886 - Aug 15th, 2020 at 3:30pm
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Some of you might get a kick out of this story. 

Some years ago when I was flying the 757 out of KJFK, we had just pushed back out of the gate into the alley to start out trip to KSFO.  As the tractor pulled us to the middle of the taxiway the ground tug driver called and said "park the brakes."  I radioed back "brakes parked, further signals by hand."  This meant that when the tug and tow bar were removed, the driver would pull the tug to the side out of the way and get out of the tug and give us hand signals which would be a salute from the driver and also be me flashing a landing light to confirm. 

As the tug began pulling away we called Kennedy ground for taxi clearance.  As soon as I started moving the 757 it was evident I had no nose wheel steering.  Since the tug driver did not have a radio it would be impossible to contact him to get him back and fix the problem which was very simple - he needed to turn a valve, which he had turned that shut off hydraulic pressure to the nose wheel steering, so he could steer the plane during push-back.  The valve needed to be re-opened again so I could steer the plane with the nose wheel tiller.  Both the co-pilot and I tried to get his attention by opening the cockpit window and yelling, but the noise was too loud for him to hear us. 

Then a light bulb went off in my head!

I lifted the engine thrust reverse lever on his side of the plane to idle reverse and put it back to forward thrust.  That got his attention and we waved him to come back.  He returned to us and plugged into the intercom and asked what was the problem.  When I told him I had no nose wheel steering you could hear the embarrassment in his voice.  A simple twist of the valve, and we were on our way.
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1887 - Oct 27th, 2020 at 2:48pm
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Another story from the past...

Back in the late 60's when I was a Flight Engineer on the 707, navigation was, shall we say not so precise as it is now with inertial navigation and GPS.  Flying the North Atlantic in those days, the spacing was very different than the way it is today.  We flew tracks that were 120 miles apart laterally and 2,000 feet in altitude and 10 minutes in long track.  The main navigation was Doppler navigation which used a special antenna in the nose of the 707 that put out four beams.  Two forward at an angle left and right and two more rearward also with an angle.  This was designed to be able to measure ground speed and drift.  Most of the time it worked pretty well, but when the sea was fairly flat as it is sometimes in the summer the Doppler was not able to receive a good return of the signal and would loose speed and drift information and revert to DR (dead reckoning).  Angry

In that case, we would use LORAN as a back-up to get a fix and plot our progress.  If you're not familiar with this system, it was really old school.  The radio stations for LORAN consisted of a master station and a slave.  The master would put out a signal that would move in azimuth over time and when the signal pointed at us, that would give us a LOP (line of position). Then you would plot the slave and it too would give you an LOP.  Using both would give you a "FIX."  The pilot doing the navigation used an oscilloscope mounted on the aft pedestal to line-up the two signals by dialing in a delay between the two beams. On a good day it was okay, but you had to plot fast to get a good fix since you were moving at 600 kts.  Remember, this system was designed for ships doing maybe 20 kts. But, here's the kicker, in times of solar activity - wait for it - yeah, you guessed it it was almost impossible to get a good signal - so back to DR! 

This moved us to the next system of back-up navigation...  look for other contrails!  Shocked
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1888 - Oct 28th, 2020 at 1:27am
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Thanks Lou. Another great story about flying/navigation from the past. And as always, a joy to hear them. Wink

LOU wrote on Oct 27th, 2020 at 2:48pm:
This moved us to the next system of back-up navigation...  look for other contrails!

One lost equals many lost, if the one ahead stuffs it up! Grin Grin Grin
  

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Re: Lou - STORIES
Reply #1889 - Oct 28th, 2020 at 2:28pm
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G'day Mark,

Hope all is well with you both.

You are so right, we could have been just like Lemmings!  Grin

It's always about money, isn't it.  Just before I was hired in 1968 the airlines decided to can the navigators and replace them with these new-fangled devices that were supposed to be "more" accurate than the old human. We had sextant ports on the 707, we even had them on the 747, that's how weird it was back then.  You might recall the story I posted a while back about the ocean station ships that were stationed in both the Atlantic and Pacific to aid planes with navigation.  But at the time we were separated by 2 degrees (120 miles) and 2,000 feet so it was a lot more forgiven if an error was made.

I really love the accuracy of today's navigation systems.  As a side note, the fun fact that with GPS we discovered that the prime meridian is actually 100 meters off to the east of the original Greenwich Prime because of slight bumps in the shape of the earth!  Shocked

https://www.timeanddate.com/geography/prime-meridian-wrong.html

Stay well all of you out there, this too shall pass!  Wink
  

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