Captain_Barfbag

Reminds me of Air France 447. But, they were out of radio contact. They will find the wreckage of this one pretty soon, I'm afraid.

I bought an XP licencse when I bought a new machine. I have an old gameport yoke and pedal set, so I need XP to use it, thanks to Microsoft's dropping of gameport support after XP. So, I'm happy to run XP and will do so as long as I can. Who needs a great big telephone on their desk, anyway?

For those who have no trouble with using the GUI to do this, do you ever delete or re-arrange sceneries? I think I was OK until I shifted the levels around a bit.

This question comes up every now and then: How many sceneries can you have in FS9? One of the limits is the "Level" number in the scenery.cfg file. It's 400. I hit it yesterday, and my scenery for LEPA disappeared after I did some rearranging to get my AFCADs to work. After this point, it appears that you need to manually edit scenery.cfg. The scenery GUI can't handle it. The good news is, it will still work fine with a text editor on the file.

A friend of mine is looking into a job at KBED. He described it as "the guy with the ping-pong paddes," so it's some kind of ground crew work. Right now, he works at an auto dealership, moving cars around and doing detailing work prepping cars for sale, so it's not like he's got much in the way of job skills. He said the pay is about $11 an hour.

I's FS2004 for me. At this point, I've got mine so chock full of add-ons and custom flight plans that I just wouldn't want to start over. My computer handles it fine with most sliders all the way over. I bought it because I found it in a bargain bin for $10. I check the Library every day, and add stuff that looks interesting. I'm a "builder" in the model train world, and in the flight sim world as well. I spend more time adding on an airport, and then populating it with appropriate aircraft and flight plans than I do flying in and out of that airport.

Friends walked with you to the gate? I remember helping a girlfriend take her child and child seat right on to the plane. And that was in the early 1980s. But, I would have to say that it felt like the "good old days" when we flew to Italy on Swiss a couple of years ago. The plane (A340) was roomy and comfortable, the food and drinks were free and the flight attendants were all pretty young women.

I've been on 2 go-arounds, both crew initiated. The first was back in the 1960s. It was a short shuttle flight from Boston to New York, probably on an old Eastern Electra. After circling NYC for an hour, we were told it was closed and we were going back to Boston. BOS was pretty fogged-in, too, and we aborted our first approach. The second was an RJ going into Manchester, NH. It was the only time I can remember that the descent was so bumpy that I actually looked around and counted the rows back to the exit. We got down to about 500 feet, then spooled back up and raised the gear. We flew around for a half hour, and then the crew announced that the airport was closed and we were going to divert to Portland, Maine. I spoke to the pilot as we were getting off, and he said he got a wind shear indicator. An hour and a half later we re-boarded and flew to Manchester after the front went through.

The world's economy remains stagnant, and recent turmoil in the Middle East may be reducing demand for air travel to that region. This may be less about Emirates than about external issues that affect them.

The report indicates that the crew did not perform control surface checks pre-flight. My speculation remains that the elevators failed to respond when they tried to rotate. It was at that point that they intentionally engaged gust lock to force the elevators down and abort the takeoff. The lever was found in the forward (off) position because it was pushed forward by the impact.

The NTSB has released a preliminary report. "The Globe reports that a preliminary report from NTSB shows that as the plane took off, the controls were in “gust lock” position, which secures the rudder and elevator to keep the plane safe from damage while parked." Here is the full story from the Boston Globe site: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/06/13/ntsb-confirms-hanscom-crash-came-after-rejected-takeoff/igIl1qI4OgHIrouLDrcm4K/story.html So, it looks like a glaring case of the crew failing to follow pre-flight check procedures.

This just happened here on Wednesday the 11th shortly after lunchtime. http://www.wcvb.com/news/26441110#!Xv5Nr It appears to be a Cirrus with the chute deployed. The airframe looks to be in good shape. The crash site is in the woods, about halfway between the extended lines of the two runways at Hanscom. This is about 4 miles from Hanscom Field, where the Gulfstream IV went down 12 days ago.

Thanks, Bob. Since you know about these things... I had a thought that auto-brake, auto-thrust-reversers and auto-spoilers might have been set on takeoff, which I assume would be wrong. Then, the plane gained a few feet of altitude and came back down, activating the "nutcrackers" and applying one or more of those. Is that even possible?

This one happened in my home town. A G-IV went off the end of RWY 11 on takeoff. 7 souls aboard, no survivors. They found the recorders and they seem to have good data. They are analyzing them now and information is coming out slowly. Weather was clear, the pilots were experienced, but the plane never left the ground. Someone said "Rotate," but shortly after that brakes and reversers were applied. The plane skidded through an antenna and a chain-link fence and stopped abruptly in a stream bed, where it exploded and burned. I've been Googling "Hanscom crash" to get updates

Direct flights first, price second. I don't fly enough to make airline loyalty worthwhile. We fly out of Boston. JetBlue to PBI. We've done our last couple of ski trips out west on United, and I would have to say they treated us very well, particularly taking good care of us when our original flight got cancelled due to weather. Swiss to Europe was like a trip back in time, to when flying was comfortable and relaxing and they treated you like guests, not cattle. Southwest out of BOS almost always involves a plane change in Philly or Baltimore. This makes the trip hours longer, and with their seating policy I avoid it. I avoid Delta because I've had too many bad experiences with them.

We think of Bud, Miller, Coors and Schlitz as being "American" beers. However, all of these high-volume producers (I hesitate to even call them "brewers) are foreign owned. The largest American-owned brewer is Sam Adams.

I am very happy with the proliferation of craft beers, and bars that connect their taps to kegs of them. I've always been bothered when I ask "What's on tap?" and I get the decades-old recitation of "Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light, Miller, MIller Lite...." Why? Why pay $5 for a glass of that when it's about 70 cents a can in your refrigerator? Putting it on tap does little for it. Stone Breweries' Arrogant B*astard, on the other hand, is worth searching out. Although it is still pretty good out of the bottle, on tap it's great. Some beers, in particular Shipyard which is mentioned above, does not translate well to the bottle, but I often go for it on tap.

I'm beginning to think that they will only find this plane when someone stumbles across the wreckage by accident, while doing some other form of undersea work. Either that or the US Navy will give them a latitude and longitude, but refuse to tell them how they figured it out.

My slide rule is hanging on the wall right behind my monitor. And to do real work, I still use the command line and UNIX.

Winter is important. Even though I live in the frozen north, I grill year-round. I had them add an overhang when they built the mud room between the garage and the house, so I've got a covered area that's still open-air and I can grill in a thunderstorm or blizzard.

Hmmmmm...discussing grilling meats on an Aviation forum... Upgrade to Grill Class! Love those ads. When we got married 28 years ago, a bunch of my friends got together and got us a very nice propane grill, with a nice redwood base. I had always been a charcoal guy, but once I started using it I found myself doing a lot more grilling, simply because it was so easy. Once the grill gets "seasoned" and has a coating of burned-on crud, the charcoal taste is pretty good. It may not be "pure" charcoal, but it's pretty good. That grill (a Charmglow) lasted over 20 years, with a few part replacements, but eventually I had to replace it. Now, as I contemplate retirement, I think I'll get a Weber charcoal grill and get back into that, since I'll have more time. I'll still keep the gas grill, but when I've got the time, I think it will be fun to go old school for some special meals. I've also got a giant pot and burner base, the kind you use for deep-fried turkey. We use it for lobster. Every year around here, somebody is deep-frying a turkey, knocks over the pot, ignites all that oil and burns his house down. No thanks.

Also, [fltsim.07] will NOT work. It needs to be [fltsim.7]

Today's story is that his father will fly to Hawaii to get him. He's been in the hospital all this time. I'm beginning to think he didn't come out of this all that well.

Yeah, I think that was his selection criteria for this plane. But, doesn't the plane say "Hawaiian Airlines" on it? Can he not read (which wouldn't surprise me either) or did he think he'd find a plane from Air Somalia sitting there?

Bruins! (I don't follow college hockey much.) I came very close to starting a playoff beard last week.