Recent Events

[crfriend]

Ghastly business, that Air France plane disaster. People were saying that the recording medium within the black boxes would certainly be damaged. We must all wait and see.

Indeed it is a ghastly business, but the bright spot, if one can be taken from it, is that we have an opportunity to learn from it, and to make improvements to help ensure that it does not happen again.

My understanding of the recorders in question is that they're solid-state devices, not tape-recorders like the ones of old. Too, these are the sorts of devices that commit the data to non-volatile storage (i.e. power is not required to maintain memory), so the hope becomes whether the hermetically-sealed packages (the structure surrounding the integrated circuits themselves) could withstand the pressure of a 4,000 meter water-column atop them. Time, as you say, will tell.

Even though communications from the cockpit would have been in the international language of the Sea and Air...English, private conversations and announcements within the aircraft would of course have been in French.

Since the incident was to an Air France aircraft, it is only natural that the BEA would assume the prime role in the investigation -- and they perform those in French, both for initial publication and, more importantly, in the thought process.

I primarily recall the horrific accident to one of Air France's Concordes, and was so intensely interested in that incident that I used a grammar-school formal education in French, integrated that with other language-structure techniques I'd picked up over the years, and a proper dictionary to read the report for that in its original French.

Any announcement of results following an enquiry would certainly be translated into English for publication World-wide.

After a delay -- on some things I am not patient at all.

[Kirbstone]

I bow to your superior knowledge of these (and other) things, Carl. I certainly have nowhere near enough French to begin to read such a technical document in the original.
Having some German I regularly read 'der Spiegel' to keep myself up to speed, but I still find it hard going. When I go sailing on the Baltic with my old Shanty-Choir in September there won't be a word of English spoken in ten days. That should help a little.
I'm going to try to arrange a skirted musical encounter with Hugo/Mindermast on Day 1 of that trip

Tom K.

[DALederle]

Virus warning! You can check it on snopes!
Don't open ANY e-mails with a subject line of pictures of the raid, the killing or the hanging of Bin Laden! There is a vicious worm going around that wipes out hard drives.
He dead so let's just let him go!

I was amused by the fact that he wasn't hiding out in any caves or in any mountains. He was in comfort in an urban setting. I guess that's what money does for you.
Did he decorate a studio in his compound to look like caves in the background. Was he more "Hollywood Hype" then real "freedom fighter" which is what I think was the truth. He had people looking for him in places he never was. Did he pull the wool over people's eyes all those years?

Just don't try and see ANY picturews of him!
Not that I want to anyway!

Dennis A. Lederle
Welcome to the Sons of Yesterday! The place we all yearn for but can no longer live there!

[Since1982]

I enjoyed the picture of him watching himself on TV on 60 minutes, He was really enjoying the show, a few minutes later he saw the last thing he would ever see....A Navy Seal's red dot on his nose. I wonder if he went crosseyed looking at the dot on that nose just before the round entered it.

I previously misquoted Pres. OBAMA This is the correct quote.

This American (me) agrees completely with our President's final words on 60 minutes.

Pres Obama said: As nervous as I was about this whole process, the one thing I didn't lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.

[crfriend]

Well, the USA got one more (last) gasp of glory in manned spaceflight today with an almost flawless launch of Endeavour this morning just a bit before 09:00 EDT. The climb to orbit was "uneventful" and as far as I can tell the only glitches had to do with some of the bi-propellent fuel-tank pressures. Sadly, the next launch closes the books on a half-century of amazing and inspiring manned exploration on the part of the USA. It was a bittersweet experience to watch, even from the confines of my office at work, but majestic nonetheless.

On a more sombre note, the flight recorders from the doomed Air France flight from Rio to Paris in 2009 have arrived -- finally, after all these years, and in infinitely sadder circumstances than if the aeroplane had landed safely there -- in Paris and contained valid data that was retrieveable. Now the hard work of piecing the tragedy together begins so we can learn from our misfortune and not repeat avoidable mistakes.

It's been a somewhat rough emotional day.

[DALederle]

Skip:
If someone is aiming at you with a laser sighted gun you DO NOT see red dots on your body. That is just special effects used by the movies to show the audience that it's a "high tech" laser sight. The dots are seen only by the person doing the shooting as he is looking through a scope designed to see the point where the laser is aiming. It is pure hollywood.
Bin Laden probably didn't have time to see or do much more then just die.
They might not have even used laser sights if the were inside and the available light was good enough for their regular, sometimes called iron sights.
I used to be INTO hunting and competition shooting too, before my COPD took it away from me. Trap, rifles and pistols. And I worked as an armed guard. So I do a little about these things.

Dennis A. Lederle

Live Long and Perspire!

[Since1982]

Thank you for that info, Dennis, I just assumed it was that way by what I've seen in movies and TV. One scene in particular gave me that belief, an early scene in Blade II where the Wesley Snipes and Ron Perlman characters were "lighting each other up" at the same time with red dots. We think we learn a lot watching TV, but are probably being mislead. At 69, I spend wayy too much time watching TV anyway.

[crfriend]

On a [...] sombre note, the flight recorders from the doomed Air France flight from Rio to Paris in 2009 have arrived [...] in Paris and contained valid data that was retrieveable.

And the initial indications only make matters worse. According to the BEA all indications are consistent with a pilot-induced deep stall at approximately 38,000 feet. With loss of lift from the wings, and the tail elevators unable to get enough "bite" on the air to change the aircraft's pitch, the doomed craft fell those 38.000 feet into the Atlantic in about three minutes crashing belly-first into the water.

My heart goes out to all involved and their families and loved ones. Those must have been three very long minutes.

Perhaps we do not learn at all. Apparently the crew failed to recognise the onset of the stall that doomed the aeroplane and all aboard her -- something that used to be taught in flight-school 101 but apparently now isn't because the computers on the modern jets do not allow you to stall the craft -- when everything is working perfectly. Have we forgotten how to fly -- safely -- as well?

[Big and Bashful]

I thought it was an Airbus, they are fly-by-wire and the aircraft should not have permitted flying out of the envelope and stalling it. Thinking back- The one at the Paris airshow which took up nesting in trees was outwitted by the pilot who had left the computers in landing mode. That one just carried on in it's landing path and the trees got in the way!
I think I prefer the basic approach of Boeing, not fly-by-wire to anything like the same extent. The pilot still has control and this stops them having too much faith in the aircraft protecting them from making mistakes. Maybe pilots can become over reliant on the aircrafts control systems. Just a thought.

[crfriend]

I thought it was an Airbus, they are fly-by-wire and the aircraft should not have permitted flying out of the envelope and stalling it.

That's if everything is working properly. Recall that there was about a minute's worth of time where the speed sensors were giving erroneous results; that caused the computers to depart what's known as "Normal Law" (where one cannot leave a safe flight envelope) and enter "Direct Law" in which the computers immediately -- and accurately -- obey the stick-and-rudder and throttle inputs from the pilots (just the way things happened in the old "cable-and-pulley" era). In that mode there is no protection from errant control inputs; I do not know if there's a "stick-shaker" on the A-330, but there may not be. In "Normal Law", where you'd be >99.99% of the time, one would never be needed.

What the Flight Data Recorder indicated was that the aircraft was at a sharp angle of attack, the engines were at full-throttle, and the aircraft was losing speed because of the pitch. The wings would have stalled first ("classic" stall), followed shortly by the elevators ("deep" stall), and after that the tragic outcome was pretty much pre-ordained.

This is not the first time that deep stall has claimed an aircraft. BAC lost one of their early BAC-111 craft to the phenomenon during a stall test where the wings "shadowed" the tail in a climb at a surprisingly moderate speed (the BAC-111 is a T-tail) causing a crash that was fatal for the test pilots. Fortunately, BAC opted to share this weakness in T-tail design with the rest of the industry and doubtless saved many lives in doing so.

In any event, the current speculation in various trade-related articles I've read revolves around whether deep-stall recognition and recovery is even part of the simulator training that large-jet commercial pilots used to undergo. If that training isn't kept up, the skills will, quite naturally, deteriorate (the "Use It Or Lose It" law).

I think I prefer the basic approach of Boeing, not fly-by-wire to anything like the same extent. The pilot still has control and this stops them having too much faith in the aircraft protecting them from making mistakes. Maybe pilots can become over reliant on the aircrafts control systems. Just a thought.

Fly-by-wire has many compelling advantages and, just like any other technology, has some disadvantages. Overall, it seems to be a "win" in many regards, especially when it comes to fuel economy -- which directly affects the airlines' bottom lines. Where it does fail, though, is that it removes the responsibility of actually flying from the pilots and turns them into babysitters for the computers. That they forget how to actually fly in decidedly abnormal situations is perfectly understandable.

The BEA have made the interim report available.

I'm going to go have a good cry.

[Big and Bashful]

Just read that report, very sobering reading. Tried to put my thoughts into words and I can't. I'll leave it there.