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Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

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Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#121

Post by rmccue »

martinflack wrote: post #76
elteto wrote: post #17

ATCs have a reputation for never losing their cool and that really shines through here: “Tower, there’s a guy in a jetpack flying outside.” “Copy. To your left or your right?”

Incidentally, do pilots say left and right? They don't have a special word (port / starboard) like naval vessels?

They say left and right as others have noted, but the main boarding doors on planes are supposedly on the left for the same reason the left is called the “port”. It appears to be a relic of the flying boat era of aviation.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#122

Post by autisticcurio »

sandworm101 wrote: post #106
nl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another pilot chimed in: "Only in LA." The SR71 radio speed check was in LA too. I heard a Cessna ask for a readout of its ground speed. '90 knots Center replied. Moments later,a Twin Beech required the same. '120 knots' Center answered. We weren’t the only ones proud of our ground speed that day as almost instantly an F-18 smugly transmitted: 'Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests ground speed readout.' There was a slight…

That story is often told but is generally considered apocryphal. There is too much wrong with it procedurally. It's funny, but not likely a conversation that actually happened.

Dont under estimate what the military get up to. The MK1 Lynx helicopter (Westland Lynx) didnt have a black box flight recorder, and as it had the world speed record, many pilots when entertaining new recruits would attempt to scare the wotsit out of them by flying over the mountain tops of Wales before nose diving the chopper towards the valley floor to see how fast they could get it to go. Noisy! On a par with flying with The Blades who are ex Red Arrow pilots.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#124

Post by achow »

ckocagil wrote: post #110
Johnny555 wrote: post #91

As amusing as this is, it highlights how fragile air travel is -- someone managed to fly a 200 lb payload within a couple hundred feet of an airliner on final approach. And apparently did so anonymously since there was no mention of who or exactly what it was. It wouldn't be hard to maneuver it right in front of the airliner and cause a collision. While the aircraft would likely survive an engine strike, at only a fe…

All sorts of transportation are very fragile. Everyone with a driver's license is trusted with operating tons of steel that can move at enormous speeds. Society's based on some amount of mutual trust. We can't lock everything down and treat every person as a potential criminal. That leads to an inefficient and dystopian country.

Well at the risk of sounding pedantic, things on rails - railways, metro/subway etc. are not in same category.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#125

Post by shadowgovt »

Rochus wrote: post #114
elteto wrote: post #17

ATCs have a reputation for never losing their cool and that really shines through here: “Tower, there’s a guy in a jetpack flying outside.” “Copy. To your left or your right?”

This has less to do with coolness than with the fact that the controller will most likely not be able to see the guy on the ASR, and I would assume that the guy has no transponder either. You can only control the airspace if you can see who/what is around.

I imagine the radar signature of a wingsuiter is pretty small, even if they have an exhaust-belching rocket strapped on the thing.

How well do those show up on radar?

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#126

Post by tzs »

gambiting wrote: post #72
badRNG wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is truly one of my favorite aviation stories of all time and reread it anytime it gets linked here. Not sure why you are downvoted, it's the most relevant and humorous explanation of the calm, professional ATC "Houston Center" voice out there.

I haven't downvoted it personally, because I would really really really love it to be true - but it's been "debunked"(if you can call it that). I suspect some of it is true - but not exactly as told. https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/8x5ndw/til_wh...

> I used to be a controller at Los Angeles Center in the 90's, and worked Aspen SR-71's (and later under the NASA callsign when they flew them out of Edwards AFB). They could hear ATC but not other aircraft, because civilian aircraft are on VHF frequencies, military on UHF, and anybody above 60,000 feet (like the SR-71's) were on a separate, center-wide UHF frequency so they wouldn't have to switch frequencies constantly. So the SR-71 and F-18 pilots couldn't have heard those other aircraft requesting groundspeed, or heard each other for that matter.

Wait...military planes only have a single radio receiver? Military spy planes only have a single radio receiver?

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#127

Post by chrisseaton »

GuB-42 wrote: post #100
martinflack wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, do pilots say left and right? They don't have a special word (port / starboard) like naval vessels?

Yes, pilots say left/right, although it is more common to use clock positions for that. For example "traffic 3 o'clock" means there is someone on you right. Port/starboard is not used in aviation and I don't know of any equivalent besides left/right.

> Port/starboard is not used in aviation

Some things seem to have been carried over though - you still almost always board an aircraft from the port side, don't you?

And port/left is still a red light, and starboard/right is still a green light, on aircraft.

A good way to remember all this is 'port is red and is passed to the left'.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#129

Post by Yizahi »

joosters wrote: post #68
IgorPartola wrote: post #5

You know it’s true because it’s 2020. Remember that whole alien thing back in April? Me neither because about 10 years worth of events has happened in the past four and a half months.

A quick recap of 2020: https://imgur.com/gallery/x2o7JOi "Anything else?" ..."I'm still in January"

"Two dudes" was a nice touch :)

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#130

Post by l33tman »

bitcharmer wrote: post #28
cma wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of that alien stuff was miscalculating velocities by not taking into account field of view (zoom in/out) changes in the camera.

Are you referring to the documented cases of UFO sightings by the US navy? AFAIK there were also numerous pilot testimonies and radar logs to prove what was happening. Or is it a different case?

Yeah there were a lot of auxiliary interviews that corroborated the story, going back like for the entire morning with radar operators tracking multiple objects. Still, since it feels absolutely crazy that the navy wouldn't investigate more closely in that situation and then just "leak" 20 seconds of it, suggests that it's some kind of intentional or unintentional hoax..
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