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blambert posted:Holy mother of god gently caress this. The next time I have to hit a tiny LZ at max gwt at high altitude with no power margin and obstacles blocking the escape path I'm going to think about this and feel better.
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May 17, 2011 06:01
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MrChips posted:I'm no military pilot, but that's pretty much true. Callsigns are never, EVER flattering, and often reflect something about you or something that you've done that everyone else finds hilarious. Basically, the punchline to a joke. The whole idea should be a joke, since the only time these callsigns will ever be used is when not flying. Despite how much fun it would be to have FlappyTits or AssBreath on the radio.
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Nov 28, 2012 04:57
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vulturesrow posted:THe answers you got from others is pretty much the long and short of it. Every squadron does it a little differently but the end result is the same. However it isnt exactly true that the callsigns are never used airborne, they definitely are. When are they used outside of internal chatter? I've never heard one on a tactical or ATC net.
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Nov 29, 2012 05:18
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But where? If it's in the airspace system they are using FAA call signs, if it's tactical they're using ATO. Maybe in a training mission and only while talking to a ground unit or something?
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Nov 29, 2012 05:28
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Geizkragen posted:I'll jump on the vulturesrow QA session as well. Thanks, I suspected as much. Just curious since it's a different culture than I'm used to (AH-64D O3 here.) Thanks too, but if I'm reading correctly that explanation cites a unit callsign used for a flight (which kind of makes sense) as opposed to the flight lead talking to center with "Dickboat69" or whatever his personal one is. A few years ago I flew a bunch of missions under a Marine rotary unit whose pilots all identified themselves by their personal callsign when they introduced themselves during briefings, but never used them anywhere else. Given that anecdote, individual callsigns seem sort of vestigial. And on our side of the house GWOT flight hours usually vastly outweigh training hours simply due to funds.
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Nov 30, 2012 00:51
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McDeth posted:Any comments on who's fault this was? As someone who is an avid model pilot, and also a professional pilot who has had near misses with UAVs multiple times, I will always blame the model pilot. That poo poo is scary.
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Sep 13, 2013 02:52
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Dead Reckoning posted:I like that they think putting aluminum foil on your car will somehow shield you from a Reaper. I bite my tongue a lot about the melodrama people throw at various systems used for war-waging (eg calling them drones), but man someone has to be a doucher to say their mildly reflective poster evokes techniques used by people to defeat airborne cameras. Also  at the B model hellfire.
Ambihelical Hexnut fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Dec 25, 2013 |
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Dec 25, 2013 19:13
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Aircraft assignment is fairly similar for the Army; that is, your timing versus the needs of the force has the largest influence on what you end up driving. The flight school product is not supposed to be an expert pilot, like you say, it's intended to be someone who can generally land the aircraft, talk on the radio, and operate systems as directed by a pilot in command *after* they've gone through a readiness level progression with an instructor pilot when they arrive at their first unit. And every time you go to a new unit, for the rest of your career, you still get evaluated on your proficiency before anyone will sign off on you performing flying duties without an IP in the cockpit. RE: go arounds, there's always going to be a professional embarrassment factor that leads boneheads into proceeding when they know they shouldn't, whether military or civilian. But I've never, ever seen or heard of a military commander or senior pilot who wouldn't back their crew in taking the most conservative action when a safety question comes up. I've been in a lot of pilots briefs where someone was commended for committing to IIMC/aborting an approach/etc even if it meant some paperwork or phone calls for the boss. Besides, I don't see what the big deal is with go arounds. If someone's on the runway just amend to the sod and hover taxi in!
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Jan 4, 2014 22:30
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Polymerized Cum posted:lovely. So with the pitch links snapped, the rotor head immediately went to flat pitch and they just fell out of the sky. Even though the EC-135 has seats designed to make vertical impact survivable, they aren't designed for a free-fall from hundreds of feet. That sort of crash usually means you end up getting smooshed by the engines and the main rotor gearbox. Lost PC links generally means the blades went to whatever pitch, individually, so the chance of landing skids down is greatly reduced. We had an aircraft lose one (of four) in flight and it rolled upside down, landing on its wheels pretty much just because the distance to the ground was lucky and the pilot was quick to use what control remained to get upright. Sucky situation.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:41
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That is actually the most realistic part about it.
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Jan 19, 2014 14:34
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FVL is just concepts about a family of different scale aircraft designed around future needs, not "replace all aircraft with the Hawksprey". The Army has to think past 60s chinooks at some point, and since there is some kind of meeting going on you will probably see a bunch of these mockups at Rucker this week. Sikorsky had their X2 project big rig parked in the middle of our running track this morning, hehe. Ambihelical Hexnut fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 14:37
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F models are great, as are Block III 64s, 60Ms, and the canceling of the 58 (heyooo) but the entire point of looking ahead in these conceptual manners is it allows you to shape a future force (like 2035+) in a way that capitalizes on things like optionally manned tech, condition based maintenance, new materials, and other advancements that are better made on airframes designed for them than by stapling 5 new boxes every year to what we've already got.
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Feb 4, 2014 23:35
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Big windy has such a derpy butt face. I love it. :3
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Feb 18, 2014 22:18
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Several quads tied together and you have your very own vertical aircraft! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L75ESD9PBOw
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Mar 23, 2014 17:40
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I feel like this is the second or third time in this thread's lengthy posts that I've been reminded of the multiple times I've almost had a midair with a UAS while flying. Something that weighs a few hundred pounds, does 50+kts, and has no regard for its own survival can be very difficult to see and avoid, and these are ones where the operators are talking to ATC. There's no reason that something of model size and weight shouldn't be fast and easy to put up vmc, just like any r/c airplane, but if you're going to send it out of visual range of the operator without so much as a notam then you're just asking for an incident. It's going to suck if there's no standard in place when someone's hobbyking-sourced fpv cross country project shits a servo and crashes 10 pounds of lipos into a school or a government building or whatever, then you'll really see some reactionary lawmaking. The need to submit a notification to the FAA prior to launches hasn't killed high power rockets, and those guys are putting 10-100 pounds up 20k+ at mach speeds. It can be done.
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Mar 24, 2014 03:51
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If you've never been told by tower that there's a predator-sized uav cleared in number two behind you and you should hurry up, it's interesting to contemplate whether that guy flying it can see you or is even looking. I just hope they sort out all this mess before GA pilots have to deal with that.
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Mar 24, 2014 23:25
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Godholio posted:And also cost a few million apiece. If things follow the path this thread is laying out, the cost of equipment, training, and licensing is going to climb right up to manned GA levels. Aviation stuff costs what it does not because it's so advanced, but because it's tested, certified, proven reliable. Any technical solution that gives unmanned aircraft the burden to see and avoid will suffer from the same cost issues. Snowdens Secret posted:Which is going to do a real disservice to the compliant civic / civilian users by cranking up their costs, but isn't going to do a thing to the huge black market it'll inevitably create, as at some point it'll be cheaper to just make drones disposable and abandon them as needed to avoid potential fines than it would be to reach/maintain compliance. I feel like any scale where they're disposable you're basically just operating a short range r/c plane that has some extra sensors and controllers, and the need to be involved in GA regs is unnecessary. Do you really think someone's going to make a useful autonomous aircraft that's cheap enough to be considered disposable but will have "way beyond operator line of sight" kind of range? Sure you can make an autonomous plane fairly cheaply, but if you're gonna write it and its payload completely off then what's the point? And if you're gonna send an air vehicle beyond LOS by itself then why not just have a mechanism where you can easily notify the FAA of its intended route so real planes can avoid or be aware?
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Mar 25, 2014 01:32
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Captain Bravo posted:The problem is that the FAA is just lumping everything in as "drones". Whether I want to send a camera 150 feet in the air to get a picture, or fly a drone three miles away, they're all considered "the same thing", insomuch as if they're all used for a commercial purpose, they're all commercial drones. So when we're talking about very different things, such as someone sending up a drone with a 100 meter range for a few minute, and someone flying a drone 1000 feet in the air for half an hour, they'd all be covered under the same legislation. If you're flying a gopro around a soccer field then just buy something that leaves an r/c controller in the loop for manual override and you're no different than any other park flyer. I'm not saying the FAA is doing their job perfectly in that instance, just that if you're going to release an untethered aircraft that has the capability to interfere with manned flight and nobody's in the loop it doesn't really matter if it weighs 3 pounds or 300; if I have to foot the bill for a damaged rotor blade due to a rogue quad copter, I'd be upset that there's no system in place to notify, license, insure, or certify any of that equipment or their operators. Ambihelical Hexnut fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 15:42
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Captain Bravo posted:The problem is that the FAA says that anyone who uses one of these for a commercial purpose, for whatever reason in whatever way, is a drone operator and must abide by the exact same rules. So I'm an R/C flyer right up until the point where I try to sell my picture I took off the soccer field, and then I immediately become a "Drone Operator" Yea. If you're gonna run a for-profit business based on sending a vehicle into the NAS that occupies charted airspace which manned aircraft may be occupying, you should be subject to stringent regulation. Yes this will make it more difficult for a dude to run a shady non-tax-paying internet aerial photography company by sending his DSLR up around buildings and stuff, but so what? That guy has financial incentive to roll the dice on safety, combined with the potential to hurt people and damage property that doesn't belong to him. Like the guy above me mentioned you can't take paid passengers on your plane without being certified and subject to regs, just like you can't haul commercial freight on public roads without being certified and subject to different requirements. When I fly high power rockets (which, oddly have mostly self-regulated their industry by establishing standards) I am operating within FAA rules, through a club that has submitted notification to the FAA, and under the million dollar insurance policy of a national organization that has certified me, my equipment, and the field to a minimum level of safety. These procedures mitigate the potentially severe damage I can cause. I think R/C fliers have a similar set of rules (maybe insurance?) under AMA. No such organization that I'm aware of has taken the reigns on chinese quadcopters, availability is outpacing safety, someone please think of the children!!
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Mar 25, 2014 22:35
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Nebakenezzer posted:Just out of curiosity: High powered rockets are unguided rockets that exceed the definition of a model rocket by total weight, propellant weight, or both. I don't remember the exact limits off-hand, I think it's something like 1500g total weight and 125g of propellant producing less than 160Ns thrust. The typical HPR sport rocket will weigh somewhere around 5-15 pounds on the pad, and will go 300+mph on the way up to 2-5000 feet AGL. There are two governing bodies (NAR and Tripoli) each of which divide high power rockets into three levels based on total installed impulse, so at level 1 you could fly an HPR made of cardboard and balsa with no electronics and simple parachute recovery, or something much more exotic if the motor will get it safely up, and at level 3 you could build a several hundred pound scale model that makes a lot of noise, or do some crazy triple staged ablatives/carbon fiber deal that breaks mach 2 and goes 70,000 feet in the air with long distance radio telemetry. In any case rockets are flown and safely recovered under the coordination of a local club that abides by the rules of one of those two governing agencies. Motors are only sold to people qualified to fly their impulse level, as registered by those agencies. Here is someone else's very big and loud rocket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ugc_BZgGWw
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Mar 26, 2014 01:40
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Those are already flown within FAA rules (formal notification, VMC, airspace considerations), so how specifically are things that are not "drones" (like r/c, rockets, etc) proposed to be any more limited than they already are? Edit: I read more better. I guess I just don't agree that every upper middle class kid on Christmas morning should be allowed by the FAA to send their quad copter in airspace that contains legally flying manned aircraft (or within slant range of buildings/etc) if the vehicle is designed to operate out of visual range. They're just going to do it anyways, since the risk of screwing off in a soccer field is so low, just like I do if I fly an r/c plane over an empty construction site or whatever instead of under AMA's rules. I'm certainly not going to care much when I see it, but I am never going to agree that the rulebook should allow loose operation of unregulated, uninsured UAS since some retard is going to make a GPS guided gopro foamie that does low passes over their downtown area and ends up hurting someone or breaking something. I've had a scaneagle come drat near under my rotor disk, heading in the opposite direction at about 150kts closing speed between us. That was with a professional operator under ATC control. Careless, unlicensed operators need more structure, not less, and a 3 pound quad copter can still kill someone in an aircraft or on the ground. Ambihelical Hexnut fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Mar 26, 2014 |
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Mar 26, 2014 02:22
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I don't know that location specifically, but a lot of Class B has little cutout corridors running under it to service the local non commercial traffic and adjacent airports.
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Apr 7, 2014 01:26
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Godholio posted:Yup. And they ended up doing significantly more damage than just belly-landing it. I would never try it with a harrier (because that's stupid as gently caress) but the 'stack of whatever' method for landing helicopters with hosed up gear has been used successfully many times, so there is some precedent. Of course with a helicopter in that situation there's an un-equal number of remaining fixed wheels sticking out, a risk of dynamic rollover, and no ejection seats, so not simply hovering that jet onto its nice flat belly was still maxing out the extended retard scale.
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Apr 21, 2014 00:08
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No .mil pilot should ever shirk away from writing up a "silly" fault, even if they're not sure. Maintainers should, correspondingly, not gripe (too much) about silly write ups, because if the system in question operates within limitations then they can sign it off. A pilot who thinks he's being cool by not reporting something potentially out of tolerance is potentially harming the readiness of the fleet. The government spent money on an air conditioner, so if it doesn't work to the standards in the book then it needs to be fixed.
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Apr 24, 2014 17:35
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Haha, jeez guys. I'm sorry if my tone was terse, but I've almost been killed by maintenance failures a few times and in my life as a pilot, maintainer, maintenance manager, and test pilot I've seen a lot of undocumented minor things turn major as well as a lot of bitching and moaning over (usually junior) pilots who get nitpicky with no effort to correctly educate them. If a pilot is writing up something incorrectly then there are plenty of maintenance officers who are happy to tune them up, but I've found the case more often to be systemic laziness or the desire to feel persecuted. Even if it doesn't kill someone, these routinely noticed performance issues with certain systems have to be documented because they can tend to point to future failures that leave aircraft stranded at places without maintenance. Maybe attitudes are different in the fixed wing world since nobody ever has to shut down at a tiny fob in the mountains, but in my aircraft the air conditioning system has standards in the book that can be measured and can cause problems when degraded. Hugs and kisses all around. Nostalgia4Infinity posted:A novel. Hello, I think we are arguing about two different things: I am saying that military aircraft are flown largely by people who do not understand aircraft maintenance, and maintained largely by people who do not understand flying. The adversarial culture this generates tends to make people want to avoid looking stupid/angering each other, and that attitude reduces readiness because you have guys who don't write up faults for fear of looking like a dick to the maintenance guys. Resource limited, undermanned maintenance dudes (esp. the young ones) play into this to avoid having yet another bird downed in their shift. "The cockpit only smelled like fuel in the beginning of the flight, but it seemed okay at the end so I shouldn't red X it because they need this bird for the next mission set." This attitude is pervasive and dangerous on both sides of the house. I have tried to educate many of the guys I fly with on finding where the line lies, but in any uncertainty they must always write up on the side of caution, even if the problem is seemingly small. You (I think) are saying that you wasted a lot of man hours chasing a problem that was insufficiently documented because you were unable to get relevant information out of the pilot. This is the pilot's fault, and the fault of the chain of command (maintenance officers) who failed to help you rectify that of course. I have put a lot of boot into pilot rear end over this issue in my career, because it also destroys readiness and wastes time. This is a problem, however, it is not the same problem as maintainers who view system degradation (a/c blows hot) as a pilot complaining too much issue instead of a maintenance issue. That is what I understood you to be talking about, and what I was responding to. I do, in fact, understand aircraft status symbols and their significance, and while red X conditions often lie with things that you might associate with an in flight emergency, they simply document any condition (in the opinion of the writer) that makes the aircraft unsafe for flight. And when most of your pilots don't understand maintenance, it's a lot better to have them X something stupid to ensure that you, the maintenance expert, have a chance to review it than to leave it out there flapping. If our communication issues are continuing then you probably won't believe this, but I have spent years fighting my colleagues for wasting my maintainers' time. And as someone who has been the first guy to take up an aircraft they just spent weeks tearing down, I definitely respect the relationship of trust and courtesy. Ambihelical Hexnut fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 20:44
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FrozenVent posted:Can you land a V-22 on a perfectly manicured lawn and have it still be photo-op ready when the thing leave? Those things set the ground on fire A LOT. It would be pretty badass looking, though, and the dead spots in the lawn would make a nice visual reference for approach.
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May 11, 2014 14:16
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ApathyGifted posted:Isn't it the case that in such instances it doesn't actually have enough power to stay airborne? I seem to remember that in the case of an engine out, they have to do a rolling landing with the rotors at a 45 degree angle (forward to provide enough thrust to keep the air going over the wings for lift, but not all the way forward so you don't smash the blades all over the runway). Most dual engine rotary wing aircraft at combat weight or high DA aren't going to be able to hover single engine, and would do a roll-on/run-on landing with speed with one engine inop. Since you don't want to smash those blades unless you have to, landing in the semi-helicopter config probably gives them the best drag profile to do that.
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May 12, 2014 22:27
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brains posted:interesting sidenote, the way to escape settling with power in a chinook requires lateral input, as opposed to a conventional rotor system which requires forward airspeed. Conventional rotorcraft can escape settling with power by (reducing collective and) gaining airspeed in any direction, not just forward. Forward is generally easiest/safest. The chinook may specify lateral for its tandem design, but single rotor aircraft can do that too.
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May 14, 2014 02:03
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ctishman posted:I'm sort of surprised (well, not THAT surprised, given what I've read here but somewhat) that B-52 crews currently have to carry their data onboard on a loving notepad and type it into the computer. The funny thing is that these upgrades which give them the flexibility to do more/better close air support will mean they'll receive target updates over the radio, write them down on their notepad, and type it into the computer. 
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May 27, 2014 03:03
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I had a good laugh at a unit dinner full of apache guys when someone's phone loudly BEETLE BEETLE'd in the middle of a speech and everyone's heads instinctively went slightly down and right to look at an imaginary display panel.
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Jun 4, 2014 23:12
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CharlesM posted:What's Beetle Beetle signify? Bing / Google don't seem to be any help. Sorry, it's the general alarm tone for a warning/caution appearing on the text display. Typically accompanies a master caution light. Ambihelical Hexnut fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 11:04
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bitcoin bastard posted:At this point would it be better to scrap the helmet part of the Distributed Aperture System and just put some Oculus Rift mounts in the existing flight helmets? I mean, is the plucky startup (until recently) company actually further along than Northrup Grumman? Apache's been doing the helmet tracking/display thing effectively since the 70s/80s with 60s tech, and has working (as of yet unpurchased) integrated i2/flir image processing so what issues is DAS having? I flew one of the f35 sims in pre production several years ago and in fake computer land it worked pretty sweet. That seems like an odd thing to not have running yet since it's been done for so long in other places, unless I'm uninformed about some ambitious new capability it is supposed to have.
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Jul 5, 2014 05:38
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karoshi posted:I think in the Apache you're slewing the camera and directly feeding that to the one eye display. In the simulator you flew it was probably a simulated (hurr) DAS fed from a graphics card in some PC. In the real deal you have to do image processing from multiple cameras to render the final image. IIRC this process was taking 150ms, so the feedback loop from your head movement to your vision updating was 150ms, or around 14 beers, leading to pilot nausea. See: all the discussions about the new VR gaming gizmos and the importance of very low latency from head gyros to the display updating to avoid a lovely experience. I figured as much, but flying with the tads as the night vision sensor (instead of the pnvs) the slew rate is wayyy behind your actual head motion unless you exercise some neck discipline and we still manage. Sounds like their pilots need more heart!  I just didn't think the stitching of video would be such a technical challenge for a "hookers and blow every night" airframe cost, but it's also not my field so I guess I'm wrong.
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Jul 5, 2014 15:19
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holocaust bloopers posted:I especially liked the one that was modded for special forces airborne insertion. Whoever runs this page https://m.facebook.com/RipStevenSeagal should update it to reflect his actual cause of death: f-117.
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Jul 16, 2014 21:36
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Thanks for the Osprey chat, truly an interesting machine. I always liked covering Osprey insertions because (a) they hit the release point at like 200+ knots which meant I'd get to do a steep roller coaster dive to attempt to catch up with them as they slowed down for landing and (b) they liked us to shoot IR illum rockets which are really fun and satisfying to time and aim correctly. How many hours is that thing getting out of an engine these days? The stats were pretty dismal according to the afsoc guys I worked along side a few years ago: something like 25-30 hours. 
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Jul 30, 2014 18:03
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holocaust bloopers posted:Low altitude performance is where a prop or rotor shines. This is an interesting question, but I think it's more complicated than that. Aside from the penalty paid by every engine and lifting body as PA or DA increase the altitude of flight really shouldn't matter. The relatively huge diameter and slow speed of a rotor system makes generating lift more efficient than direct thrust from a turbofan/etc engine. I haven't really seen the numbers on a thrust vectoring fixed wing aircraft but I have to imagine that the lower induced flow velocity and drag of a conventional helicopter translates to fewer pounds of fuel required to keep each pound of aircraft aloft for a given amount of time, the same way IGE performance is improved over OGE. I'm pretty sure that the harrier requires additional (wingtip?) thrust nozzles and water cooling in the hover mode, no clue about F35, but I have to imagine that hover mode agility is made easier in rotor form than vectoring form. So rotors have that on top of the years of established design knowledge accumulated by the high popularity of rotorcraft over the handful of hovering jets that have ever been produced. Aircraft design is just a balancing act of advantages and penalties, and for the V-22's intended use the rotor design was better. Not that I don't also long to see avatar-style sky manatees cruising around on jet thrust nacelles. PhotoKirk posted:The Germans tried something like that with the VJ 101C. Runway erosion was a problem. Haha, yea. Even with rotor thrust the V-22 is still really good at setting the ground on fire. 
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Jul 31, 2014 20:57
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Nerobro posted:
I could've worded that sentence more clearly. I understand they aren't for lift I just meant it's easier to make an aircraft agile using the rotor configuration. Those numbers are probably designed around the tiny standard motorcycle rider man, I'm sick of buying new springs for everything. 
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Jul 31, 2014 21:29
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The absolute worst part of being a professional aviator and commercial pilot is when you dock another tanker with your orbiting gas station in Kerbal Space Program then accidentally activate an engine and destroy the whole thing making a waste of the entire flight. Edit: gently caress. Ambihelical Hexnut fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 02:07
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Hahah awesome
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Aug 1, 2014 13:55
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If there's one thing I've learned in a decade of aviation work it's that every aircraft has some part on it somewhere that crew members call the donkey dick.
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Aug 1, 2014 21:47
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