Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investigations have some weird bits. I've always wondered if there's a certain title for the person who prepares the chickens for the 'chicken gun' in airplane testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun
Those guns are not cheap. I once worked in a startup that wanted to put thermal cameras on commercial planes to measure volcanic ash concentrations. The cameras had to be behind a special glass that is transparent for thermal radiation. But as the glass size exceeded certain size, it required to certify against bird strikes. It turned out the cost of the certification was like 500K euros.
Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
431–440 of 457 posts
Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unlikely that he's still alive, but the evidence of a controlled landing makes the whole thing more puzzling from a psychological perspective. Why slowly and consciously drag it out until the very bitter end when you've already completed your suicide mission?
I find the controlled ditching hypothesis less psychologically puzzling, not more, for at least three reasons: ego, agency, and practicality. First, successfully ditching an aircraft at sea is the ultimate test of piloting skills, and possibly one difficult to resist for the ego of a seasoned captain on his final flight. Second, it seems out of character for a meticulous pilot to just let the aircraft slip out of his…
Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#433Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#434Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was the "flaps down" switch, not "shut off engines". The key feature of fixed-wing aircraft is being able to glide unpowered; dropping the flaps however would be equivalent to yanking the yoke all the way forward.
But during a landing you would normally have the flaps down, this is exactly what they're for: to enable lower approach speeds and more visibility of the runway due to a nose down angle
Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#436Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, like it's not that long. They should add that disclaimer to the safety messages at the beginning of the flight. "In case of an emergency, you will have 12 minutes of oxygen, which while we know is not that much, is better than to die instantly."
It only needs to be long enough for the pilots to descend to a safe altitude.
Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#438I assume you must be pretty low to be able to ping a 4g tower. Is it impossible that the guy would have jumped from the plane with a parachute? Then he would have run with the insurance money.
Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would I know that the freezing point of water is 32°F? Pretty much nothing in this country is measured in Fahrenheit. I've definitely seen the comparison made, on random US articles which almost invariably show °C as well as °F, but I'm not sure that if someone asked me if I would recall the answer.
If you're even aware that Fahrenheit exists, this might be a thing you know. For example, my country mostly uses Fahrenheit but I know that freezing in Celsius is zero, because I attended school as a child.
Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
This story has been going around the world for 50 years, and in different variations. According to some sources, the first time it appeared in a publication in USA in 1958, in the professional magazine "Meat and Game" of the California Associations of Game Producers (proven fact). The authenticity of the story, however, is questionable. The FAA has at its disposal a unique device for measuring the strength of aircraf…
I read a story, "Maybe" true, probably not that once one of the testing organizations that did exactly these sorts of tests used to use frozen chickens from the supermarket. They would load the air-cannon the night before the test, then in the morning the chicken would be defrosted and they were ready to go. However one morning the test results were rather more "messy" than they were expecting. They had no clue what…