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My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

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Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#51

Post by cryptonector »

gus_massa wrote: post #3

The story was posted in 2018. Do you know when it happened? (Or at least an approximation.)

It says that cell phones had not been invented yet:

> When we were ready to head back to Teterboro Airport, I got to a phone, [cell phones had not not yet been invented], and called Departure. [...]

That's not precise enough to really know. It could mean "before the 90s", "before 1983", or even "before 1973". The plane's registration is from 1977, so TFA can't mean literally "before cell phones were invented". Though I suspect it really means something like "before cell phones became widely available to private pilots", which presumably means "before 1990".

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#52

Post by throw827474737 »

itslennysfault wrote: post #43
godshatter wrote: post #25

Shouldn't the dispatcher have given more precise directions than "follow the river"? If they had said "take a right and follow the river", this wouldn't have been a problem. I suppose they were used to professional pilots knowing what was meant, but they were already working to fit a small plane into a larger system presumably filled with mostly larger jets from commercial airlines that flew in and out of that airpor…

Honestly, I'm surprised by "follow the river" as a flight instruction. That sounds like the directions you'd get from someone that doesn't understand cardinal directions. "Turn right at the gas station, then turn left at the big oak tree" or something. I have no experience with flying, but I assumed it would be a heading / cardinal direction and not "turn right at [landmark]"

Hmm, can someone just paint me that path into Google Maps?

Washington National has no 18, but only a 19, and I guess everyone takes off southwards as directly north is the White House? Also the river is like parallel to the runway and then the natural extension of it, so "follow the river" there is super clear, no turn needed?

I must be looking at the wrong airport?

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#53

Post by mschuster91 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #44
pivo wrote: post #18

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such…

>> book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded it is critical that we recognize a few truths before we declare something "underfunded" 1. No amount of funding will ever "be enough". Government programs and depts expand to meet their budget + 25-50%... so they are always underfunded, you can increase a budget by 2x, 3x, 5x, and the very next year they will be claiming "we do not have enough m…

> 1. No amount of funding will ever "be enough". Government programs and depts expand to meet their budget + 25-50%... so they are always underfunded, you can increase a budget by 2x, 3x, 5x, and the very next year they will be claiming "we do not have enough money"

Well, the scope that the general public (or the impact of freshly passed laws) also continuously expands, and payment/contractor/vendor costs rise as well, which explains some of the demand for more funding.

A part of the blame also lies in parliament groups not doing effective auditing and oversight on government agencies, which can differentiate between legitimate growth (for reasons outlined above) and cancerous growth (as described by you).

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#54

Post by krisoft »

fh973 wrote: post #28
godshatter wrote: post #25

Shouldn't the dispatcher have given more precise directions than "follow the river"? If they had said "take a right and follow the river", this wouldn't have been a problem. I suppose they were used to professional pilots knowing what was meant, but they were already working to fit a small plane into a larger system presumably filled with mostly larger jets from commercial airlines that flew in and out of that airpor…

Actually no. The fact that to the left was a restricted airspace (that the pilot must be aware of) disambiguates the instructions already. Obviously the pilot did not do their flight preparation, was it includes being familiar with any airspace restrictions.

Also. I'm looking at a chart of the DC airspace. P-56, the restricted airspace containing the White House, is not on any rivers. If you are following the river (left, right, doesn't matter) then you are not getting into P-56. If you are oscillating around the river then yeah, you are going to have a bad time.

Also, I'm looking at all the runways at this airport. They all have one obvious direction which way you should be following the river. Just from the angle your flightpath would be crossing the river.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#55

Post by hotpotamus »

thepasswordis wrote: post #23
pivo wrote: post #18

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such…

>The book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded and sorely lacking in modern technology, with agents sometimes having to use their personal car to transport the people they're protecting because their official cars aren't working. Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? And a…

Bruce Schneier once said something that really stuck with me. He was talking about the culture of the DHS I believe and how their mission was "Never Again" in the wake of 9/11. But never is basically an impossible standard to meet, and the result was that we get security theater instead. I would imagine you can also soak up a near infinite amount of money and effort trying to achieve never again. Zero Fail sounds like the same thing.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#56

Post by goodcanadian »

otikik wrote: post #27

One of the things that surprised me when I flew (as a passenger) a practice flight on a coworker’s Cessna was the constant radio chat between ground and all the airplanes. There were like 4 planes doing practice runs like us. It was constant chitchat. I can’t imagine the noise in a big comercial airport. I am sure there’s many good reasons for that system, figured out by people smarter than me with much more experien…

There is a lot more going on than just the radio communications. There are standard published approaches and departures that will generally be flown (once cleared). Flight plans are filed and clearance given before take-off, so ATC knows where everyone is going. At a large controlled airport, ATC is in control, so less needs to be communicated by the pilots. There are not generally aircraft flying circuits which is what required so much coordination in your example. Most aircraft at large airports are required to have ADS-B(1) which is transmitting aircraft position, altitude, heading, speed, et cetera to anyone who has a receiver, particularly ATC and other aircraft. If everything does go bad, large airliners have TCAS(2). There are also lots of different controllers and frequencies to handle different parts of the airspace: approach, departure, tower (take-off and landing). This is just what I can think of off the top of my head.

You can listen to what is actually going on at your favourite airport on www.liveatc.net.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan... (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#57

Post by safety1st »

hotpotamus wrote: post #49
phpisthebest wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General rule for me is If any person has soooo much power we need a dedicated team of people to protect them continuously, that person has too much power and the solution is not ever-increasing amount of security, but ever decreasing amount of power to that individual

I wonder how big Musk or Bezos's security teams are?

Who cares?

The perennial mistake is believing that if any of these guys get capped, it's some irreparable loss to society. It's not.

Let them play the odds of life like the rest of us do. A society that depends on strongmen isn't a free society.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#58

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #39
throwaway1777 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your take but politicians do have a target on their back that the average citizen doesn’t.

But not one so big that every one of them needs multimillion dollars worth of protecting. A handful absolutely do, the vast majority don't. They will be perfectly fine. They might catch an egg or cake, or in the rare instance a fist: they'll still be fine.

As far as I am aware, the vast majority of politicians in the US do not receive Secret Service protection.

"every one of them needs multimillion dollars worth of protecting" is a straw man. Of course the vast majority of politicians, which includes a lot of city council members of tiny towns and so forth, do not need a 24hr security detail. And they don't have them either.

It happens for the handful, not the majority. Which seems to be what you want, but your tone is frustrated or angry.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#59

Post by cryptonector »

jaclaz wrote: post #6
plondon514 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe he started flying in his late 30s/early 40s so it would be around the early 1970s. Edit: I just asked him (he’s at the dentist) and he said around 1980, guess I was wrong about when he started flying!

I would say no earlier than October 1977: https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N47943

That registration and the reference to cell phones not being available at that time puts the timeline somewhere between 1977 and 1987 or maybe 1990.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#60

Post by mschuster91 »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #39
throwaway1777 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your take but politicians do have a target on their back that the average citizen doesn’t.

But not one so big that every one of them needs multimillion dollars worth of protecting. A handful absolutely do, the vast majority don't. They will be perfectly fine. They might catch an egg or cake, or in the rare instance a fist: they'll still be fine.

Unfortunately, that is increasingly changing. The covid pandemic, for example, has led to a massive increase in threats to everyone advocating for containment measures, and so do the advocates of other political issues impacted by conspiracy myth spreaders and/or the far-right (e.g. 5G rollouts, single-payer healthcare, gun control, immigration).

Having been the target of about five dozen death threats myself as a political commentator/activist here in Germany, I can tell you the political climate drastically devolved over the last seven years, and police is nowhere near the security system it should be. In my case it took over four years until the main perpetrator was identified, arrested and subsequently sentenced to almost six years in prison[1]. And for what it's worth, it's not limited to politicians, journalists and activists - even ordinary doctors can be driven to suicide [2], or YouTube streamers such as the infamous Drachenlord [3].

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSU_2.0

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa-Maria_Kellermayr

[3] https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/kommentar-wer-dem-d...

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