Chock

Lots of little things really, most of which as I say are probably beyond the developer's control and only likely to bother super-realism nerds, but to list a few which are not absolutely correct... There's nobody visible guiding any vehicles onto, or off the aeroplane (i.e. a banksman), which is something which is always used in real operations, you will see this around real aeroplanes if you watch any footage of ground ops; it is to alleviate the risk of damaging the aeroplane. Many vehicles drive the wrong way onto the aeroplane, i.e. the direction they come from in real life is usually for a specific reason and there are many rules where that is concerned. This is to keep things clear to allow access for other vehicles when operating simultaneously, or to minimise going under the wings and avoiding scimitar winglets, this is really what all those cones which are placed around the aeroplane are about; they are essentially no go area guidance. For example, the only vehicle which is actually allowed under the wings, is the fuel pump truck, and it should at all times be unobstructed from being able to drive off the aeroplane in case of an emergency. In reality the baggage trucks do have to turn a bit under the wings of an aeroplane to get the trailers close enough to the conveyer belt, but they should never be driven right under the wings, instead, always going around the cone placed at the wingtip. Not doing that kind of thing leads to this sort of stuff: The belt loaders are too close to the aeroplane, in fact they are projecting inside the aeroplane doorway, which is a big no-no these days, we used to do that years ago for onloads, but now it is frowned upon and not really permitted. The belt loaders are unloading and loading the front and rear of aeroplane simultaneously, which is not something you typically do; admittedly it's not unknown to do this a bit if there is a fast spin and the weight distribution is carefully monitored throughout the procedure, but generally speaking, you offload the back first, then offload the front, then you load the front first, then the back; this is to alleviate the risk of tail tipping. Some airliners are more critical in this regard than others, notably the longer variants of the B737 and the ATR 72, where you typically make sure the balance from the pax on board doesn't add to the problems. The worst one for this is probably the 737-900 variants, but in any case, regardless of the type, every rampie knows that getting the weight off the back is typically the sequence to stop the things tipping from being tail-heavy. This is more like the distance you keep GSE from the aeroplane when loading: Here you can see where a belt loader is in relation to the loading hatch of an airliner's cargo holds, as you can see, it's well outside the aeroplane: The tug and bar are invariably connected very early in the ground operation, not typically just before the push. This is because you don't want to discover an equipment issue five minutes before departure, you instead want to have that good to go. Typically this might occur when you are waiting for some other thing to occur, for example, if you are waiting for the outbound bags to show up, or waiting for a load plan to be finalised, instead of just standing there waiting, you get on with other things like that since you are basically running agains the clock on a turnaround, where they can be a quick as around 30 minutes, but more typically are an hour, which sounds like a lot of time, but often isn't when issue occur. So in reality, connecting the tug and bar is often one of the things you do pretty much right after the aeroplane has taxied on stand. There is another practical reason for doing this too, which is that when the tug and bar are connected, the airliner crew can disengage the parking brake to allow the brakes to cool off, and the aeroplane will not roll onto its chocks because it will be held by the tug's brakes. You want to avoid having the aeroplane roll up to its chocks because this can pin the chocks under the tires and make them impossible to remove without pulling the aeroplane forward a bit prior to pushing back, which is annoying. contrary to what most people think, you don't typically shove the chocks right up to the wheeels, because when the aeroplane gets fuelled and loaded, it sits lower and will pin the chocks in place, so more often than not, you stick the chocks in place and leave a couple of inches of clearance. It's an issue with MSFS that it cannot easily simulate multiple pivot points for a pushback, which is why the default airliner tug in MSFS is one of the 'lifter' types rather than the more commonplace tug and bar combination. GSX developers have done a pretty good job of working around this, for example you can see they have the bar animating some pivoting on pushbacks during turns. Because of this limitation, the GSX animations for connecting the tug and bar are limited in how realistic they appear, notably that the bar is always connected and disconnected on its own, never with the tug attached. So, in real life you fit the steerting bypass pin (GSX does animate this properly, although bear in mind no all airliners actually use a bypass pin, such as the ATR and the CRJ for example), then when the pin is in place, the bar is manually wheeled up to the nose gear and connected. then the tug is slowly driven up to the bar with someone guiding it, then it is connected to the tug, after this, the towbar wheels are raised (GSX does animate that part of the wheels being raised). When disconnecting after a pushback, the tug applies its brakes, then the aeroplane applies its brakes, then the towbar wheels are pumped down, then the tug is released from the bar, and it backs up about two towbar lengths then turns off to the side and parks approximately in line with the engine so the flight deck crew can see it. The headset person stays at the end of the bar during this tug manuever so they are not placed in any danger from the tug driving around and accidentally swiping the bar. When the tug is clear of the bar, then the headset person disconnects the bar and wheels it to the tug, where the tug driver then connects it to the tug whilst the headset person goes back to the plane and finishes supervising the engine start up, disconnects all the other bits from the aeroplane, closes the hatches, removes the bypass pin etc. The last thing they do is remove the choch they placed at the nose when the pushback came to halt, and they give that to the tug driver so mboth the tug driver and the headset person can both confirm the aeroplane is correctly configured to taxi. Then the tug drives off and the headset person walks alongside it and gives the crew a wave off signal and shows them the bypass pin to confirm it has been removed, which is why it has a great big red remove before flight streamer on it, so the crew can actually see it. These are what the pins themselves look like, the fat one is a Boeing pin, the thinner one is an Airbus pin; to use them, you pull a spring-loaded lever on the nose gear forward so that a pair of holes align, then shove the pin through those aligned holes to hold the lever in place, which disconnected the hydraulics of the nose gear's steering mechanism so it becomes free castoring to allow the tug to turn the nose wheel for the pushback. This is why you show the crew this pin after the push by holding it up with the big streamer attached to it, so they know it has been removed and their steering will work when they commence taxying. On pushbacks where there is a rear of stand road where vehicles can drive behind the aeroplane, you actually have three people doing the pushback - the tug driver, the person on the headset and a 'road man' who, prior to the push commencing, is signalled be the headset person to go in the road with a set of marshalling wands to stop traffic. If there is no rear of stand road, this person is not required obviously, but when they are, this person stays there until the aeroplane passes over the road onto the taxiway. They are also there to make sure the aeroplane clears any GSE parked in the clearways and to observe that there are no other problems, for example, I was doing this once when a BA A320 began leaking fuel from its wing, so I signalled for the pushback to stop, so some airports have this third man even when there is no traffic to stop. It's usually the case that pushbacks have some default procedures, which are known as standard pushbacks. What this means in practice, is that most of the time when a crew call for push and start clearance from ground ATC, they will be cleared for push and start and everyone knows where the aeroplane will push to, so there is no other discussion needed. Exceptions to this are if ATC need a 'non-standard push' for example, you might push back and then tow forward some distance to ensure you have a lot of clearance behind to allow another aeroplane to push off an adjacent stand and not be blasted by the thrust of an aeroplane's engines, so it's not unrealistic to have the crew be involved in how an aeroplane pushes back, but most of the time they just let the ground crew manage it, however, what is frequently unrealistic in many flight sim pushbacks, is the point at which the engines are started. Look at this document pictured below. This is the push manual which you find in all pushback tugs, which lists the standard pushbacks for all stand (in this case, tthis is for EGCC). Although for the stands on this page of the manual which you can see, there are no instructions concerning engine start, for many stands it will state that the engine start must occur at the TRP (the Tug Release Point), but even when there is no instruction concerning this, an important part of why you have a headset person for the pushback, is that the crew cannot see behind the aeroplane and cannot even see their engines, so the headset person watches for this such as a hot start, engine fire of other rare (but not unlown) issues, so they can advise the crew to stop cranking, or apply an extinguisher or whatever. There is in fact a fire extinguisher operation button in the panel where the headset connects on some airliners, so the headset person can do this themselves (the A320 for example, has a fire extinguisher operation control for the APU). Because of this restricted visibility from the cockpit, it is the headset person's responsibility to say when it is safe to crank the engines, since you need about 200 yards clear behind the aeroplane to safely crank the engines without blasting things with the thrust. So normally what happens, is the engines are not started as you see in many sims, i.e. right as the push commences, because it soimply isn't always safe to do so. There are good reasons for this, not least of which is that there is frequently a fair bit of FOD on aeroplane stands, such as bits which have fallen off suitcases, nuts and bolts lying around on the floor and so on. Theoretically, these should all be picked up by the person doing the walkaround prior to the pushback, but they can be missed, so we would normally not crank the engines until on the taxiway regardless of tug manual instructions just to avoid that FOD risk, and we would also try to avoid cranking the engines whilst the aeroplane is going backwards, as this effectively puts a tailwind up the engine's tailpipe, and if there is any tailwind already, this is asking for a hot start to occur, so is not a great idea. So as a general rule, if I'm headsetting, and I daresay most other people do the same when they headset an aeroplane out, I only give permission to crank the engines when we're rolling forwards and in a straight line, i.e. when the tug is pulling up to the TRP. We do try to expedite this with modern airliners, particularly ones with the latest engines such as the 737 MAX and the A320 NEO, because they take a long time to get up to speed (unless they are completely cold), so the sooner you can crank them the better. It's also usually the case that we keep the bar on the aeroplane until we know the crew have a good start, since if there was an issue and we had to pull them back onto the stand, we'd find outselves having to reconnect the bar again. Because of this, we will sometimes crank the engines before we get to the TRP even if it says you need to be at the TRP for engine start, but only if we are sure there is a ton of room clear behind and the engines are not going to be pointing at anything which might be damaged by backblast as the pushback progresses. Some airlines actually have rules about when their crews can start their engines too, for example, Emerald Airlines, which operates ATR 72s for Aer Lingus, will only start the number one engine after the pushback manuever is complete, whereas many other operators will crank that one up as soon as they have permission from the headsetter, and likewise they will crank the prop on the number two from hotel mode as soon as they have the nod from the headsetter. So yeah, some of this is stuff which only plane nerds would be bothered about, and some of it not being exactly like real life in a flight sim is a function of what is and is not possible/expedient for a flight sim, but for people who like to try to be as realistic as possible in their sim airliner operations, these are some things they might like to consider, such as deliberately holding off on cranking the engines for a bit so you're more like the real operation regardless of the sim headset person telling you you are clear to crank the engines when you're not even halfway off the stand. 😮 Having said all this,I did also see a preview video where an Easyjet was being loaded with ULDs, which as far as I'm aware is not the case with Easyjet Airbuses, which I think are all bulk, but then again, I wouldn't wish to stop anyone doing anything they liked in their flight sim, since oit is their flight sim, so regardless of any of this nerdy realism, whatever floats yer boat is cool. 👍

Still makes me cringe a bit seeing preview videos with the ground ops not being done correctly in lots of ways, but most of that which is incorrect is a result of what the sim will and will not support and the need to be a bit generic on occasion, so I don't really blame the developers of GSX for these things; they are obviously limited on occasion with what's possible, so in spite of the things where I'm thinking 'Noooo! don't do that, that's really dangerous!', it's still a vast improvement over the default MSFS stuff and will as was the case with previous versions of GSX, be a no brainer purchase for me. 🙂

Welcome to Avsim and welcome to the UK. 🙂

If what's going on outside doesn't float your boat then that's great because it is your sim after all, so you can choose to avoid anything which doesn't interest you, but... Having said that, airline pilots do have to deal with what's going on outside during the turnaround procedures to at least some extent, and sometimes this includes quite a lot of things, depending on what is occurring and what aeroplane type it is. Some of that stuff is a necessity if you are operating any of the more realistically-featured add-on simulator airliners of course, since the inputted data in the CDU is necessary to have the thing function properly for example, which means you have to concern yourself with weight zone distribution and fuel upload at the very least. Beyond the CDU data for that kind of stuff, you might have to be marshalled onto a stand upon arrival if the Safedock isn't working or has been e-stopped for some reason, then you typically want to see a signal from the rampies that they've connected the ground power so you can select that bus and shut down the APU. You'd want to tell the cabin crew to put the doors to manual for when the steps or the air bridge goes on so you don't have the escape slide accidentally deploy too of course. Most of the time you want to do a walkaround check of your aeroplane to ensure it is okay. Some airlines have a headset arrival procedure which is mandatory for certain ramp tasks such as connecting the tug and bar, putting the chocks in and connecting the FEP/GPU (Air France is one of them). You might want additional steps on the rear door of the aeroplane for a number of reasons, or other GSE for wheelchair-bound passengers, or a fuel watch when fueling with passengers boarded (required for some airliner types). Then you might want to deal with the fueller to request the correct amount of fuel to be onloaded, and sign off on that when it is completed. Similarly, you might want to deal with the dispatcher with regard to passenger seating distribution and the bag and cargo onload plan. Passengers are sometimes late and the gate sometimes stays open for them, so this may be something you might have to deal with too. You might have some systems not functioning, such as a busted APU which would require you to use an air start unit whilst still on stand prior to the push, or some such. You then have to deal with the ramp headsetter for the pushback; this might include you doing all of the procedure via hand signals since headsets or the input socket on your aeroplane sometimes fail, meaning hand signals are necessary, or if there is electrical storm activity, ground crews don't wear a headset in case there is a lightning strike, so then hand-signals are used too, last but not least, you get the wave off from the pushback crew who show you the bypass pin so you know that you're okay to taxy. So, as an airline pilot, there are in fact loads of occasions where you have to deal with stuff other than simply the panels in the cockpit and find yourself looking outside. It'd be great if you never had to concern yourself with any of that stuff in real life, as it would mean you really could just concentrate on driving the aeroplane, but the reality is that all that other stuff is part of the task of operating an airliner. Of course with a flight sim, you can skip or omit anything you are not interested in, but for many people who like messing about with airliners in sims, all that stuff is part of the deal. The truth is that there are typically at least thirty people on the ground, from the check-in to the ramp, who are involved with the arrival and departure of an airliner. Without all those, that thing isn't going anywhere and as an airline pilot, you have to interact with many of these people and get involved in their tasks to at least some degree.

Tell him to visit here.

Yup, someone probably knocked it up and 'accidentally on purpose' left it lying about to wind gullible people up, there's no way any such briefing would be kicking around a local govt office. Moreover, if the alleged visitors were so friendly and harmless as the document was suggesting, what would be the point of keeping their presence a secret?

About two minutes before the nice nurses turned up in their yellow van, equipped with the straightjacket they had for this guy.

Update: There is a patch out for this thing which significantly improves it in a number of areas. I'd say it was worth a punt now if you are looking for a somewhat unusual twin for MSFS.

He's wrong. Everyone knows Garlic Bread is the future.

Model is a bit ropey in places and the frame rates are very choppy. Hopefully it will get patched to sort such things out, but at the moment it's hard to recommend it, even at the price.

What do you say to someone with a liberal arts degree? Can I have fries with that please... Some years ago, my ex-missus and I were talking about degrees and it turned out that between us, we had both written the final degree dissertations for six people we had known over the years as favours, in order to help them to get their degrees. Yeah I know, you're not supposed to do this, but whatever, sue me. This means technically we've got a ton of additional degrees each over and above the ones we've actually got for ourselves which we went to college for, in subjects we did literally no study for whatsoever. It used to amuse me when these people would be freaking out about having to write ten thousand words on the subject for their final dissertation, when I had a job as a writer, where somneone would ask me to write 2,000 words on some subject I didn't know at all and give me about two oir three hours to do so. So you can imagine my thoughts when someone would be freaking out about having to write ten thousand words on a subject they'd allegedly been studying FOR THREE YEARS and would get me to do it for them! Seriously, if someone can't knock it out of the park when asked to write what is basically the equivalent of four pages of a tabloid newspaper, on a subject they've been studying for three years, what the hell were they doing in all that time?! What also used to amuse me was when a student would say they will take a year out from their studies. Seriously, take a year off from doing what exactly? They've done next to sod all! It's not hard work; try working a twelve hour shift in a coal mine or some such, that's what actual hard work is like, where you will genuinely need some time off from doing it. So yeah, having a degree might impress some people and might be a box tick for some jobs, but I know lots of people with academic qualifications that I wouldn't send up the road to buy me a Mars Bar without strongly suspecting they'd mess it up, so I prefer to judge people on what they are actually like and what they are demonstrably capable of.

In the UK it's probably worth having a nosey at Currys PC World's website for gaming desktop computers, where something for about 800 quid or so would do the job. You don't have to buy from there of course, but it's a quick and easy way to suss out what is generally available for a reasonable price and you can then shop around for something similar if you don't want to buy from there, but you could do worse than to get something from them. You could pay more of course, that's up to you, but figure on spending at least that amount to get something capable of doing the sim justice in terms of graphics and performance. Things to watch out for in a suitable PC are the processor (an Intel Core i5 would be a good choice), the amount of RAM (go for 16Gb minimum, more if you can manage it), the amount of memory the graphics card has (I would aim for at least 8Gb on the graphics card, again more is better though), and the amount of storage the drive has (aka the SSD), where I would not recommend going for anything less than 1TB of storage space because modern flight sims use up a lot of storage. These are the things which will matter in terms of perfomance. If you tick all of the aforementioned boxes, it will do the job fine. I would recommend getting hold of the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator (can be bought online at the MS website), as it is optimised to run very well on even fairly modest computers, so a new gaming-oriented PC would run it very well indeed, and it is currently the best all-round flight simulator available for a PC (note there is also a console XBox version of it too, which might be an option, however, if she's into flying for real, a PC version of it will probably suit better since there are far more peripheral devices suited to flight simming available for PCs). Since it is visually impressive, with streaming scenery based on real-world data, it would actually be useful for practicing what she is doing for real, such as visual navigation around her home airfield. It comes with a number of aeroplanes built in, including several which are similar to the kind of thing she will be learning to fly in, and it's easy and fairly inexpensive to expand upon these via a built-in marketplace. Bear in mind that if you want to surprise her with something all set up and ready to go, MS Flight Simulator is a big digital download which might take several hours to install because of that, depending on your internet connection. If you don't want to break the bank but would like to add some realistic controls which will be similar to those in her training aeroplane, you could consider one of these. There are better an more expensive controls out there, but generally speaking that thing does an okay job without needing anything much more than to simply plug it in. If you really want to go for it, you could also add some of these too, which would then mean the sim would completely replicate the controls in her real aeroplane. With this in mind, since these things plug in via USB sockets, make sure the PC you get has enough of these available, if not, you can buy expansions which add more sockets, so don't worry about that too much. If you total all that lot up, you're probably looking at somewhere around £1,300 all-in, which is a fair chunk of change of course, but whereas you can put a price on flight simming, you can't put a price on love. 🙂 Flight sims are useful enhancement to real flight lessons, particularly for flying circuits accurately in terms of learning visual landmark references and getting used to reading the instruments. Hope you find something suitable, and welcome to Avsim.

Two thirds of the planet's surface is covered by water, so that's plenty of space for BOOM to wind up to supersonic speeds to make travel quicker even taking into account slower speeds over land since this is a small percentage of the overall flight route; this isn't too much different from what Concorde had to do too either - flying subsonic until it too got out over the water - and this is not even a speed restriction limited to solely supersonic aeroplanes; they all typically have to do less than 250 knots until they get above 10,000 feet. As for their seating, these days the airlines want range, not capacity, which is why there are many more smaller airliners than there are massive ones and why we don't often see tons of A380s and 747s at most airports. The fact that the Boom aeroplane doesn't have massive afterburners and will be made from modern composites, will be factors in making it more economical and practical; modern airliners, with their improved performance, cheaper crewing costs, much better maintenance schedules etc, only have to have a few passengers on board to make their flight a profit-making trip, as evidenced by the number of small regional airliners which fly on a regular basis with plenty of empty seats. Being a Brit, I'm as fond of Concorde as anyone - I went on it a couple of times and it was a cool experience - but from an economic standpoint, comparing it to a modern stab at creating something with similar capabilities, is akin to comparing perhaps a Short S23 Empire to an ATR-72. The S23 with its 123 foot wingspan, four Pegasus engines, five crew and 24 passengers, could go about 750 miles at 200 knots or so and a ticket would cost a lot, being the preserve of the well-to-do; the ATR with an 88 foor span, twin P&W 127 engines, two crew can go about 950 miles at about 280 knots, and it's considerably cheaper than going on a bus or train, or even driving that distance yourself. This is the difference technological advancement brings us. On the downside, like yourself, I lament the aesthetics: I'd rather look at a Short Empire thundering across a lake to take off, than watch an ATR zipping down 23R at Manchester to get airborne, in the same way I'd prefer to swan around in a '57 Chevy than a Ford Focus, but this is the other price of progress. In fairness, that last one doesn't stop me from driving an old classic car like I do, but that's a choice I'm still just about able to do, and it ends up costing me a lot more!

Exactly. The scenario MS lawyers are considering is as follows: Call it a simulator, and you risk some loon who learns to fly a plane using it, then getting in a real aeroplane and killing themselves, followed by some 'grieving' relative seeing a law suit cash cow. Conversely, call it a game and the case is dismissed. This is the exact reason MS trademarked the 'Flight Simulator' name. They get to call their software by that name and have it quite obviously be a flight simulator, but they make sure they refer to it as a game at all times.

The online bit of Air Hauler has ferry flights posted by other users who have bought used aeroplanes and need them flying to one of their bases from a remote spot; be warned though, if they've not fixed the aeroplane they've bought and it was cheap, it may have some maintnenance issues which could make the flight risky, but then again that's part of the fun I suppose. There's quite a lot of stuff like that in Air Hauler. You could always do your own thing with that too if you liked, for example, if you check this aeroplane on Flight Radar 24, you could replicate its world tour route.

Whilst it is true that Lufthansa was the first Airline to receive production model 737-100s, they didn't get the very first one which Boeing built, that being the prototype, PA-099 (registered N73700), which first flew in April '67. PA-099 was retained by Boeing for testing, until it was eventually handed over to NASA in June '73, when it was re-registered as N515NA, NASA having bought it with the intention of using it for all kinds of development work on things such as FMCs, high lift devices, FADEC and so on. At one point PA-099 actually had a second cockpit built in the rear cabin so it could be used to allow completely blind flying in simulated IMC at any time, whilst employing a prototype CDU design, testing not only the functionality of the thing, but also the haptics of the CDU's layout, all whilst having the additional safety of a crew up front in the standard cockpit, monitoring things and able to take over if necessary. NASA retired PA-099 in the early 2000s, whereupon arrangements were made for it to go on display, so in September 2003 it was flown to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where it remains as an exhibit of what is arguably the most successful jet airliner series ever built; certainly the longest-running continuous production of one.

Just as a point of interest, BA flights don't always use 'Speedbird' as their callsign; Manchester to Heathrow BA flights use the callsign 'Shuttle'. 🙂

Welcome to Avsim. 🙂

Good of the Met Office to issue a Red Heat warning, but it's not really necessary; everyone knows it's not a great movie. Walter Hill was really phoning it in on that one. 🤣

Yup, that was my reaction too!

Yup, there are a lot of good things about the way this was faked, the lighting on the 3D aeroplane model and the matching of the resolution and blur is pretty well done, but the problem with video CGI is that unless you select a video very carefully to do something like this with, where - barring aerodynamics - it would be physically possible for the object to be pulling the move you fake, you'll give away the fact that it is CGI. This is something I was always careful to tell my students when teaching them how to do this sort of CGI, as if you are not careful with that, you could create some really great CGI from a technical standpoint, but still not convince people of its veracity for other reasons, which is a mistake you do see in a lot of the CGI in big movies. The two obvious problems in this regard with this clip, are that the flap configuration on the substituted model which performs the roll is not the same as that of the real aeroplane on the original footage (you can see this toward the end of the clip where the passing truck is used to make the transition from the model to the real aeroplane), and the altitude is too low for the wing of the model to clear the terrain as it comes out of the roll. Contrary to what people might imagine, this sort of thing is comparatively easy to do in something such as Adobe After Effects, although in fairness, this is not the easiest clip one could pick to have that process be largely automatic, so it helps that the model is only traveling on a linear path, which would have mean the only real difficulty to do this, would be to match the speed and angle of the render. More often than not you will use a flat ground plane or some other horizontal or vertical object in the shot to get the camera tracking data for the simulated 3D space you then work with to match the 3D model moves with the live footage. This matching has been done very well in the faked clip in spite of this, but it's the altitude and the configuration of the aeroplane's flaps and slats, and the wing flexing, or rather the lack of it, which give it away. And of course the fact that we know such a maneuver isn't possible either. You might also notice it has no nav lights on it either, which is another missed detail that could have been added in to help sell the shot. Incidentally, the other thing you tend to do with this sort of CGI, is film the source footage as steadily as you can, then add-in in the 'camera shake' post-process, to help cover up any switches or glitches, which is something very apparent in this clip. But in spite of this, it is pretty well done from a technical point. You can see a problem of this nature in this clip from the movie 'Knowing' below, which has a very dramatic plane crash CGI'd in it. There is some very clever shot planning, editing and switches between differently dressed sets in this scene, notably the conversation which Nicholas Cage has with the cop, which allows the shot angles to be changed to allow the damage to the vehicles and the fire trail of burning jet fuel across the road to be set up to look like it has just occurred in real time. Unfortunately, they do still fluff the angles a bit when the cop 'spots' the crashing plane but is looking the wrong way (Cage does this too), which is a fault on the director's part, but thereafter from about 1:05 in this clip, the transition between the pre and post crash scenes on the set are very well done, making it look like it is all one shot, which helps to sell it to us. This is what I was talking about when saying that if you make it look like it couldn't possibly have been an edit to cover a switch, it will fool you into thinking it looks realistic, which in this case is aided by the camera pan back to Cage for his shocked reaction after the CGI crash, which allows these two differently dressed sets to be utilised and the edit to be masked with what just looks like a fast hand-held camera pan. In spite of that small mistake with the cop and Cage looking the wrong way, this is still one of the more convincing CGI scenes in a movie of recent years, and it's a pretty good fun movie too of course:

For all you musicians out there, here's something worth checking out. This is an instrumental cover version of AC/DC's Thunderstruck, played on the Chinese Guzheng, which is a tradition type of zither. Fans of AC/DC and in particular guitarists, will know that this riff is a favourite to learn and practice because it requires a lot of precise plectrum playing to time this with the fretting. You can make playing that riff a bit easier by using hammer-ons and pull-offs to strike the notes, but that of course isn't an option for this player on the Guzheng, nor does she have Stevie Young, Phil Rudd and Cliff Williams providing the solid backing that allows Angus Young to let rip like he does. If you watch a performance of Young playing this tune, you'll notice he doesn't go the easy route and use hammer-ons and pull-offs, but instead plucks nearly all the notes with a plectrum, which as most guitarists will know, does require very good technique particularly on the cascading waterfall-esque second half of Thunderstruck's guitar riff, which when you know that, makes this lady's performance all the more impressive when you consider she's also replicating the vocal melody too. To be fair, it does look like some of the percussion might be overdubbed, it's hard to tell, but even if it is, this is still some really talented musicianship which will leave you Thunderstruck:

If you get one of the Helicopters in DCS, you will really notice this phenomenon is modelled in the sim and how hard it can make things, which of course is also the case in real life. In DCS there is a mission for the UH-1 Huey which involves doing a rescue mission up into the mountains, where of course the air density is reduced at altitude and the chopper has real problems ascending and hovering. This was a real problem for the Huey in SE Asia during the Vietnam War, and indeed more recently in the Gulf War, where the high temperatures sometimes means they can't always carry a large number of fully equipped troops, even though they have the volume to physically fit them in, and so they have to resort to shuttling troops into the patrol area in smaller numbers, with several round trips. The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army were well aware of this and would often attack the smaller first wave of troops with added fervour, and close to very near attack range, knowing it would be a while before they had some support from larger numbers and being aware that when in close contact, there would be little chance of additional artillery or airborne support strikes being able to be called upon to keep the enemy back. Of course the other problem with this, was that the NVA and VC would also know that those choppers were coming back and they would almost certainly be landing in the exact-same LZ, at the exact same place, which meant they could get very well-prepared for shooting at the things whilst they were slow and vulnerable, knowing exactly where to set up the sight lines for their guns. More savvy chopper pilots would come in a different way to the LZ the second time around, but this wasn't always possible, so it was a risky aspect of airmobile operations to be landing where you knew the enemy knew exactly where you were going to touch down, and certainly made worse by high temperatures.

One of the reasons a lot of AI aeroplanes disappear from sims after landing or taxying in, is because many of the real-world systems they use which some sim add-ons use to replicate aeroplanes in the sim, are either turned off after landing or put in different modes on the real thing, for example the transponders and the TCAS systems. If these can no longer supply the data for the sim to utilise, it can make the aeroplanes disappear from the sim when they are of course still really there at the real airport.

Nothing is impossible of course, but there is a world of difference between the weight of passengers and the weight of cargo pallets. You also have to consider that it isn't just a case of making the floors a bit stronger, there also has to be a cargo loading system fitted, with all of the powered rollers, locks and such, which itself adds quite a fair bit of weight, as indeed do the much beefier doors where the thing is opened up. You also need an improved fire suppression system on the aeroplane, and a bunch of crash nets/bulkhead reinforcements. You might have noticed with some cargo aeroplanes which have been converted from passenger variants, that there are some cockpit modifications required too, such as different windows or hatches, for example, the crew of a cargo aeroplane typically have to be able to evacuate through the windows of the cockpit in case upon a crash-landing, a load shifts and rolls forward, blocking the normal cockpit access door and preventing egress. Then you also have to consider what these weight zones along the length of the aeroplane will mean in terms of trim and balance, and not just for flight, but also for things such as the risk of tail-tipping during loading. You also need the cargo decks to be easily accessible for loading, which for massive cargo aeroplanes, typically means either having the entire tail section be hinged to swing to one side, or the entire nose section of the aeroplane to do that, or lift up to open, which would be no small thing to achieve. Another consideration is the airport infrastructure, by way of example, at Manchester EGCC where I work, there are only a few stands where the A380 can be accommodated. Part of the reason for this is not merely the size of the aeroplane, but also the clearance of the taxiways and the weight these taxiways are able to support on the shoulders of them where turns are made, and none of those stands are where the cargo ramp is, so EGCC would have to alter some taxiways if it was going to use A380 cargo aeroplanes. As it is at Manchester, airfield ops often have to stop airport traffic when the A380 pushes out because its wingtips pass over some roads during the pushback maneuver. I should imagine there is plenty of other stuff to have to think about, but the only dedicated pure cargo aeroplane I work on, is Lufthansa's converted A321s. When we work on those things, it's usually a bit more of a complicated procedure than most people might suppose it would be. These come in from Ireland to us at EGCC, then go on to Frankfurt after we've loaded them up. Some stuff is offloaded for Manchester, and some stuff put on, but we quite often have to take stuff off, leave it in the clearway, shuffle things about, then load stuff back on in order to alleviate the risk of tail-tipping. Those converted A321s have a lower deck which takes AKH containers and similarly-sized smaller cargo pallets, whereas the upper deck takes the larger PMC pallets. To facilitate this, on the lower deck it makes use of the standard starboard-side forward and aft cargo doors you find on a normal A321 (with some modification to the door lock systems), then the upper deck has a very large purpose-built upward-opening cargo door on the forward part of the upper port side of the aeroplane (this is massive and it has a ton of fuselage reinforcing), but in spite of having three cargo doors, we cannot go at all three at the same time owing to the need to carefully manage the tail-tipping risk. The standard roller system the normal passenger A321 uses to load in AKHs on the lower deck is retained, but to be honest, it's not really up to the job of moving a lot of heavy cargo about and is frequently either completely broken, or intermittent in operation, which makes things even more tedious when we have to manually shove things around. Several of us have been injured when doing this, including me a few weeks ago, to the point that we have all said that if it comes in again with a completely busted cargo roller system on the lower deck, we will all refuse to work on it!