231–240 of 491 posts
I bet this was a guy raised on video games. I was about to make a joke about it but I'm actually serious. Once I, a former Houstonian with no experience driving on ice, was driving through the snowy mountains and lost control of my car. Instead of panicking, my video-game-induced laser focus kicked in and I calmly piloted the car until the wheels gained traction and I could park the car on the side of the road. But l…
I grew up in Florida. It would take all my fingers and toes and more to count the number of times I have seen articles or even witnessed personally from the beach a pilot of a small craft either die naturally at the controls or have some medical event that causes a crash and death. Why are small planes necessary? Am I wrong to believe what it seems like, that the overwhelmingly popular purpose is entertainment ? Is a…
Man I'm making a big assumption here but for someone who hasn't experienced a plane crashing into their home you seem to have a lot of angst for something that doesn't affect you in the scheme of things. Are you self aware enough to ask yourself if you're foisting your own baggage onto the shoulders of people and things you view as outsiders? Let me be the voice of reason here, my man. You're the only person that has…
> doesn't affect you in the scheme of things.
I have subsonic hearing and I live in a rural area, not particularly near any small or large airport. What drives me nuts are diesel school buses (something about the low frequencies) and those really slow single prop planes that seem to want to linger around my airspace, sound-polluting the entire area with harmful low frequencies. And for what? Entertainment and entitlement. We need diesel school buses right now and until electric buses become available to school districts, so I'll just deal with that. A vehicle gets you from point A to point B. Most of these planes and flights, nearly all of them, leave and return to the same airport a few hours later. They're not traveling anywhere, they're just bored. While I can empathize with boredom, I really don't tolerate being victimized by the bored. It isn't just me. Wildlife and Mother Nature and gravitational potential hates small engine planes.
I bet this was a guy raised on video games. I was about to make a joke about it but I'm actually serious. Once I, a former Houstonian with no experience driving on ice, was driving through the snowy mountains and lost control of my car. Instead of panicking, my video-game-induced laser focus kicked in and I calmly piloted the car until the wheels gained traction and I could park the car on the side of the road. But l…
As someone who grew up in an area that gets a lot of winter driving conditions and has a bunch of car handling training (dry, rain, and winter specific): you didn't "calmly pilot" anything, friend. You hit ice, you're a passenger until you're no longer on ice. The car is mostly a 2D projectile unless you're on studded tires. You were lucky, that's it. And, I might add: you lost control of the car. There's a whole cha…
Pilot here. I'm floored that a person with no flying experience could put this airplane down without a scratch. Air traffic controllers are not necessarily pilots, but luckily, this one was a pilot and certified instructor. ATC and passenger worked through a stressful situation to produce an amazing outcome. Bravo!
Landing on a long runway (10001 feet / 3048 meters [1]) as was done here is much easier, as long as the plane doesn't malfunction and visibility is good. So I'm not that surprised that some people would be able to do this given good instructions over the radio / phone. Especially so if the person doing it has witnessed landings from a cockpit before, which may have been the case here.
With such a long and wide runway, if you can direct the plane to fly over the runway and then cut off power, that should be enough to land the plane somewhat safely I would think.
[1] Runway 10L at https://skyvector.com/airport/PBI/Palm-Beach-International-A...
Pilot here. I'm floored that a person with no flying experience could put this airplane down without a scratch. Air traffic controllers are not necessarily pilots, but luckily, this one was a pilot and certified instructor. ATC and passenger worked through a stressful situation to produce an amazing outcome. Bravo!
Listening to the audio of the conversation, it doesn't seem like the passenger has no flying experience... At minimum they must have spent significant time around aviation or be ex-military. e: From another comment on Reddit > Examples: > The passenger knew what button to press on the yoke to transmit to ATC. > The passenger knew aviation phraseology and phonetics “333 Lima Delta”. > The passenger knew where the alti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Video game experience is absolutely better than no experience. On small general aviation planes, the feature set is quite minimal and most simulators will replicate all of it faithfully enough, so the only remaining thing is the “feel” of the plane which you can hopefully experience a bit during flight before landing. In contrast, a big passenger jet has insane amounts of different systems that need to be configured…
I wonder about DCS "study sims" of combat jets. No, no, I'm not saying one could actually be a fighter pilot just by flying DCS F-18. But I wonder about the realism. It seems every single knob and button and thingy on the cockpit is clickable. Every subsystem is simulated. The manual is reportedly huge (I don't own it, just watched videos on YouTube). With such a realistic flightsim, TrackIR, a HOTAS setup, and all t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Video game experience is absolutely better than no experience. On small general aviation planes, the feature set is quite minimal and most simulators will replicate all of it faithfully enough, so the only remaining thing is the “feel” of the plane which you can hopefully experience a bit during flight before landing. In contrast, a big passenger jet has insane amounts of different systems that need to be configured…
Decently sized plane was stolen, did many loops, and flew around just fine for more than an hour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Horizon_Air_Q400_incident All by a guy with zero flight experience but also credited playing video games
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Listening to the audio of the conversation, it doesn't seem like the passenger has no flying experience... At minimum they must have spent significant time around aviation or be ex-military. e: From another comment on Reddit > Examples: > The passenger knew what button to press on the yoke to transmit to ATC. > The passenger knew aviation phraseology and phonetics “333 Lima Delta”. > The passenger knew where the alti…
I reckon I could do most of those things except transmit to ATC and squawk. I suspect I could google the rest or call someone to tell me how to. If there's a manual up there, then maybe that will have info?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Listening to the audio of the conversation, it doesn't seem like the passenger has no flying experience... At minimum they must have spent significant time around aviation or be ex-military. e: From another comment on Reddit > Examples: > The passenger knew what button to press on the yoke to transmit to ATC. > The passenger knew aviation phraseology and phonetics “333 Lima Delta”. > The passenger knew where the alti…
I reckon I could do most of those things except transmit to ATC and squawk. I suspect I could google the rest or call someone to tell me how to. If there's a manual up there, then maybe that will have info?
I can't imaging myself getting anything from an unknown manual full of jargon in such a stressful environment!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Moore is suspected of being responsible for approximately 100 thefts in Washington, Idaho, and Canada, including bicycles, automobiles, light aircraft , and speedboats.[15] It is believed that he learned how to fly small planes by reading aircraft manuals, handbooks, watching a "How to fly a small airplane" DVD, and playing flight simulator computer games .[17] One plane he stole was a Cessna 182, FAA registration n…
Taking off isn't hard, an airplane will take off on its own. It'll fly straight and level if you simply let go of the controls. It's the landing that's hard, and Moore would crash every time he landed.