Top_Gunn

Some of these posts seem to assume that pilotless planes will be flown by somebody on the ground, the way military drones like the Predator are. But the technology is already getting past that stage, to where a computer will fly the plane with no human assistance at all. The Navy has already tested systems that can land an F-18 on a carrier that way, and that's probably the hardest job in aviation. I suppose there will be somebody called a pilot on passenger planes for a long time, though I'd bet against cargo planes having pilots in 15 years. But even on passenger planes, the "pilots" will mostly just monitor instruments and talk on the radio. Which, come to think about it, is a big part of what they do now. I'd also bet on driverless cars, but probaly in countries with fewer lawyers than we have, at least at first.

Pilots' "survival instincts" aren't something you can count on, especially in a wolrd in which they do little flying. The Colgan and Air France pilots' instincts seemed to have been to pull back on the stick. I am old enough to remember when some people didn't want to ride on self-service elevators. In the end, machines are more accurate and more reliable than humans, and the world will be safer when they fly our planes and drive our cars.

Everybody says you never forget your first solo, but I don't remember mine. I do remember my first flight in a single-seat glider, though, probably because I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

The vertical stabilizer causes a plane to turn toward the wind when the plane is on the ground, but not when it is flying.

It's a serious mistake to use life-expectancy comparisons to eveluate medical care. If you remove deaths from traffic accidents and murder from the data, the US has the highest life expectancy in the world. Survival rates for all sorts of diseases such as heart edisease and cancer are higher here than in any European country or Canada. The Mayo Clinic insurance is sold to Canadians who don't want to wait for things like joint replacement. Even Canadian politicians get care here when they're in a hurry. It may also be worth mentionoing that nearly all new drugs come from American drug companies. Once a government takes over health care, the incentive to innovate vanishes.

There's a fair amount of misinformation in this thread. For one thing, if your income is low you can get Medicaid (insurance) from the state, free. It's not great, but it will cover treatment for any life-threatening condition. Even if you don't qualify for Medicaid, and you don't have private insurance, the emerency room must treat you--not just for emergencies, but even for the sniffles. Yes. they will send you a bill. If you don't pay, they'll pester you. If you can't pay, you can declare bankruptcy and get the debt discharged. A lot of low-income people who would qualify for Medicaid won't sign up because they don't want to bother with the paperwork. The hospitals press them to enrol, so they'll get paid, but they can't make them do it. Our outcomes for people with serious medical conditions beat those of any other country, and we don't have to wait long for treatment. This is probably one of the main reasons the Mayo clinic sells insurance to Canadians for treatment in US hospitals. Most of us have group medical insurance or, if we're over 65, Medicare (which is sort of like the Canadian system except that it covers practically any treatment, though that will have to change because there won't be enough money.)

This is true only on the ground. When a plane is flying (and not slipping or skidding) the relative wind (save for gusts) is always from straight ahead. That's why a yaw string works: if a glider with a yaw string were "getting hit from the side" by wind, the string wouldn't be straight up the centerline of the windscreen.An airplane flying in a steady wind is flying in a mass of moving air, and the whole plane is carried along in that mass. The tail is not "getting hit in the side by the wind."

Read the transcript. Near the end, he said he'd had the stick back the whole time. From the context, he seemed to think it puzzling that this hadn't made the aircraft climb.

Thanks everybody. It seemed somewhat better today, and I can slow it down after landing by reducing the RPMs, which is easy now that I've assigned that to the slider on the throttle. Still seems a little puzzling that this problem first appeared months after I started flying this airplane. When I had difficulties yesterday, I was flying with the head tracker on, and it was off today. I'll try again with it on just to check on whether that was messing something up.

Started Flight yesterday and it began with a huge download of an update. Then flew the Stearman, and couldn't throttle back enough to stop it after landing. When I cut the throttle, the needle on the manifold pressure gauge drops to below 10, but the engine hardly slows down at all; just to land I need to pull the throttle all the way back and even then it lands a little hot. I'm using a Saitek throttle, which works fine on other sims. Using the keyboard to reduce throttle doesn't work either.

Thanks, guys. The more basic problem here is that I can't get the throttle low enough to stop on the ground. This is new: when I started today I got a half hour of updates, and now when I cut the throttle the manifold pressure drops down below 10 on the panel but the plane hardly slows down at all. It was fine until today. All the other controls seem the same.

Is there a list of all keyboard commands for Microsoft Flight? Their manual has only the "essential" commands, which don't help me as the engine on the Stearman has stopped and I have no idea of how to start it.

Some fiction suggestions. "The Hunters" and "Cassada" by James Salter. Both about USAF fighter pilots.The first is set in Korea, the second in Europe in the 1960's. "The Hunters" was made into a preposterous movie (great flying scenes, though), which had just about no relation to the book except for the setting and the names of some characters. "Cassada" is, among other things, an attempt to show why it's sometimes the best pilots, as well as the worst, who get killed. Salter's "Burning the Days" is a good autobiography, too. He flew F-86's in Korea. "Guard of Honor" by James Gould Cozzens. Set on a USAAF base in Florida in 1943. It's more about the military as an organization than about flying, but there is some flying. Unlike most WWII novels, it has no combat except for some brief discussions by some of the characters. It got a Pulitzer Prize. Today, Cozzens has pretty much been forgotten. Too bad, as he was a fine writer, though he's far from being everyone's taste.

It's clear that this was not a case in which Bonin pulled the stick back without realizing it while focusing on roll. When he started pulling it back he told David that he was going to slow down (apparently because of the increase in slipstream noise). Toward the end, he said he had had the stick all the way back practically the whole time. So he certainly knew he was doing this.