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Ag with kids

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Posts posted by Ag with kids

  1. On 6/15/2022 at 7:37 PM, Captainant said:

    I'm a proponent of nuclear energy, but this is incorrect - they released quite a bit of radioactive gas into the atmosphere. The recently released netflix docuseries on TMI is some pretty solid factual reporting too that highlights how everyone was on edge because of the recent release of The China Syndrome that had an eerily similar incident starting with a turbine trip

    We've come a loooooong way in understanding power coefficients and passive safety, but for the foreseeable future there's going to be justified concerns and skepticism around nuclear because of the stakes - not the risks. New reactor designs are passively safe without outside power, and once a nation-state perfects the tech (probably the French...) I'd imagine that they come back into fashion after a looooooong PR campaign

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/three-mile-island-accident.aspx

    Quote
    • Some radioactive gas was released a couple of days after the accident, but not enough to cause any dose above background levels to local residents.
    • There were no injuries or adverse health effects from the Three Mile Island accident.

     

  2. 6 hours ago, Captainant said:

     

    The challenge with nukes is that they require billions of upfront expenditure and damn near a decade of operation to reach breakeven and start turning a profit. America does not like long-term delayed gratification when shareholders want a profit next quarter and not a decade from now.

    The latest gen nuke reactors (gen 4) are passively safe and have relatively benign waste, but the economics are going to kill nukes without a subsidy or guarantee from the federal government

    In the past, a HUGE part of the cost in the upfront expenditure was fighting legal challenges.  There were a number of "green" or "anti-nuke" organizations that employed lots of oppositional legal action to prevent them.  One of the biggest was the Union of Concerned Scientists.  They had been VEHEMENTLY opposed to ANYTHING nuclear since the late 60s...

    Three Mile Island (which released ZERO radiation), Chernobyl (Russian fuck up) and Fukishima (Bad, but not really).

    However, in the past few years, they apparently have seen the light and are promoting nuclear power.  Which makes me very happy that they came to their senses.

    Things like this will go a long way to lowering the costs for nuclear to implement new plants. 

  3. 2 hours ago, Your Mom said:

    Yeah, we probably are looking at it from different angles. To me, getting to the x-ray machine quicker is all that matters. Taking off shoes and pulling out a laptop doesn’t bug me much if i got skip the long line.  But I get that for others, the pre check lane is valuable for the whole shoes and laptops hassle. 

    I'm liking the new scanners they have for your bags/shoes at some airports where you don't have to take your laptops out.  When I travel for work I have my personal and work laptops so I need 2 of those bins.

    But, here in CRP the scanner lets you leave it in the bag.  It was the same at SYR last week.  That saves me the biggest hassle.

  4. 11 minutes ago, Wiler77 said:

    If I'm traveling with someone for work, no doubt they are on their own.  "Meet you at the bar".

    If I'm with my family (wife and 3 kids), I'm not abandoning them.

    This...except I don't meet them for a drink because they don't have lounge access either...suckers.

    • Like 2
    • Haha 5
  5. Ah...this reminds me of my childhood.  I lived about an hour or so from the Cotswolds growing up.  We went there often - nice little day trip.  We had one of those old churches in our town, too.  Really cool attending service in a 700 year old church.

    And that little model village was really cool to a kid between 5 and 10...

    Thanks for bringing back the memories - should make the day brighter now.

    • Hook 'Em 3
  6. 5 hours ago, Bama Chick said:


    lol - we can do an exchange visiting parent program!

    Is your kid at Rucker, McClellan or Redstone?

    He’s going to Pendleton. He’s currently on hour four waiting at the airport USO waiting on transportation.

    He’s supposed to be there for 3-3 months but also found out tonight they don’t class up until July 11, so he’s going to be pulling guard duty and scut work for a month unless he gets approved for RA.

    And I got the platform wrong - he’s going to be on Cobras not Ospreys.

    Nice...The Zulus are SWEET aircraft...Had this poster on my cube wall for awhile.

    image-asset.jpeg?format=750w

    • Hook 'Em 3
    • Like 1
  7. 14 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

    The crew survived...that's what's important.  The IP required surgery on his back, the student was banged up but otherwise OK.  I'm sure you'll agree, that airframe is pretty fucking stout for crew safety.  

    I know 2 AH-64 pilots here at work that have made "hard landings"...it's apparently a beast.  Glad these pilots are (relatively) Ok...

    I'm a Bell homer and I admit it, but then, I can admit when Boeing ugly shit does well.  Especially since all they fucking do for the V-22 is AFCS/PFCS.  Well...I guess that's kind of important.  But, JFC their CLAWS are convoluted. 

  8. 44 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

    If I may interrupt the pissing contest, I just got info, from somebody that knows about the Apache crash.  

    https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2022/06/06/2-injured-in-military-helicopter-crash-in-southern-alabama/

    They are almost sure that the tail rotor lost a blade, which was found a half-mile away from the crash site.   All Apaches are grounded today, pending inspections.  This is not a known condition, and has only occurred previously as a result of battle damage. 

    Shit...LTE (Loss of Tailrotor Effectiveness) is not something I'd want to go through in a helicopter...

    There's not a lot of great solutions...go faster so that the TR is not needed as much and try a roll on landing (luckily AH-64s have wheeled gear) or try to drop collective and descend quickly to limit the rotation.  Both are not good.  Especially if the aircraft is close to the ground and/or moving slowly or both...

  9. Quote

    My bad. I guess the Marine Corps just hires shitty pilots.

    I NEVER said that.  The V-22 has over 500K flight hrs.  Shit happens.  

    Flight test has incidents.  ALL flight test does.  I lost 2 good friends in the flight testing of the 525.  RIP Backstreet and Frenchy...both Marine experimental test pilots.  That one was NOT pilot error.

    Then when you get into combat or combat training, there's a huge sense of urgency and maybe they skate too close to the edge.  It sucks, but it happens.

    Quote

    Maybe the Marine Corps should have you (since  you have  100's of hrs in the SIMULATOR) come train their pilots.

    Well, I'd be better than you to tell them how it flies since I actually know and I'm not talking out my ass that it's a "difficult aircraft to fly (really land)".  Because it is not...

    Quote

    Flown with many pilots in the Military and civilian sector (over 20 yrs) and the BEST, GREATEST airframe that they have flown is the one that they assigned to or flying right now.

    Kudos.  And...are they wrong?  Remember, if they're lying, they're risking their life with every flight.

    I will say that I won't get in a Robinson. Because I've had numerous experimental test pilots (you know, the guys who do first flight in rotorcraft) tell me they wouldn't get in one.  Nor would the 2 Apache pilots I work with.

    Quote

    I simply stated what others had or would state about the Osprey.

    You got your panties in a wad because you designed the toilet, flux capacitor, or something like that for the aircraft....

    Lots of those people (including the author of your article) haven't flown or flown in one.  The Marines fought HARD to keep it.  And then the Navy liked it so much that they wanted their own.  If it sucked so back and was so dangerous, why would they replace part of their fleet with the V-22?

    BTW...I stated on a couple occasions that I worked on the V-22 simulator.  Specifically in the rapid prototyping lab.  We helped to develop numerous upgrades with pilot inputs for the aircraft over the years.  Then those got implemented into the aircraft.

    But, if you want to call it the flux capacitor, cool.  I like that.

  10. Just now, BillyGoatHill said:

    More Blackhawks, more flight hrs. 

    From the link above - 11 Blackhawk crashes in 15 months = 0.73 crashes/month

    22 incidents (they weren't all crashes but I'll include them just for you) in 31 years = 0.059 crashes/month

    Quote

    Your safe aircraft should have been canceled before you started working on it. (first flight in '89 and finally combat ready in 2007)

    Tell me you know absolutely nothing about flight testing without telling me you know absolutely nothing about flight testing.

    I worked on the Bell 525 (FBW commercial helicopter) from it's inception in 2010.  It's still in certification.  That's 12 years for a COMMERCIAL aircraft...18 years for the V-22 isn't abnormal.  It was also embedded with the Marines starting in 2000...it didn't see COMBAT until 2007.

    Quote

    30 deaths within those crashes. Maybe a problem within the aircraft if only one was pilot error.

    I didn't say "only one" was pilot error.  In fact, I said MOST were pilot error.  I just specifically pointed out one - the VRS incident when the pilot was descending at over DOUBLE the allowable descent rate (if you fly outside the envelope don't be surprised if bad things happen to you - it's there for a reason). 

    Quote

    8 more crashes with 16 more fatalities since then. 

    And...most of those were pilot error.  Of the first 5 after deployment - only ONE, due to dust ingestion into the engine - was NOT due to pilot error. 

    Quote

    Let's agree it's a difficult aircraft to fly (really land). But when it goes down, it's just not a pilot that's involved.

    This is ABSOLUTELY not true.  I've got hundreds of hours of flying the V-22 simulator (which, since the software is in every trainer in the world, has to fly like the real thing).  It's WAY easier to fly AND land than a normal helicopter.  All the controls are decoupled, unlike a regular helicopter.

    What is your experience flying it that gives you a different viewpoint?

    I'm good friends with a LOT of V-22 pilots and they all love it.

    Quote

    It's long (written 2006), but there are other articles, studies or opinions out there that have considered (proven?) that aircraft is a Widow-maker.

    http://www.dmzhawaii.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/osprey-widow-maker-cdi.pdf

    Well...his article is nice doom and gloom, but definitely misleading...

  11. 16 hours ago, Mittens said:

    Crashes by aircraft since Jan 1, 2015

    6 Osprey
    6 Blackhawk
    0 Chinook

    (not particularly exhaustive research.  google/wiki)

    https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/aviation-accident/helicopter-crashes/black-hawk-helicopter-crashes/

    According to this..there have been 11 Blackhawk crashes between Dec 2019 and Feb 2021.  So, 11 crashes in 15 months.

    There have been 14 V-22 crashes (and 8 other incidents) since 1991.

    Yes, there's more Blackhawks.  But, that's still quite a few crashes.

    • Like 1
  12. 1 hour ago, FartingMonk said:

    The first gen ospreys almost got discontinued because of so many deaths.  It was sync error between the rotors when going from helo to prop.  If you are even a few seconds off it sends you into a death spiral. Those issues had been addressed.  What caused this one I don't know but I absolutely know whoever wrote the article is a fucking idiot by including the nuke statement

     

    This is simply not true.  See my comment above.

    Now...there WERE attempts to discontinue it - most notably by every Surly's favorite guy, Dick Cheney.

    And, yeah...there were no nukes on any of them.   That's asinine.

  13. 11 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

    I think you worked for Bell during Osprey development.  They were a client of mine at the time, too.

    I disremember the cause of the failures, but do remember there were a lot of them, whatever the cause(s).

    So, kindly elaborate.

    Yeah...I was at Bell from 2001-2018.  Worked numerous years on the V-22 simulator.

    Below is what I stated was wrong.

    Quote

    The early aircraft were plagued with problems to include the transition from vertical lift to straight flight. Something about the rotor head and it's transitioning mechanism which was powered via hydro which lead to fires.

     

    There was ONE engine fire incident.  It had NOTHING to do with the the nacelle transitioning between aircraft and helicopter mode.

    There WAS a hydraulic leak on one, but it didn't cause a fire.  It actually triggered a control law error.

    Most of the crashes have been pilot error or Vortex Ring State incidents (which in the worst case WAS pilot error because they were outside the flight envelope for descent rate).  VRS basically means the wake forms a ring that begins to push the rotor down.  Normally when you sink, you would add TCL (thrust control lever) to add power - but that only INCREASES the force pushing down making the descent rate increase.  Only way to get out is to fly out of the wake - which can be done by just pushing the nacelle wheel and rotating the nacelle a few degrees...the wake then stops coming down on top of the rotor and voila you're out of VRS.

    And I disagree the V-22 was "plagued with problems".  Yes.  There were several crashes prior to going operational in 2007 (IIRC).  But, ALL flight test programs have had crashes.  From 1991-2006 there were 4 crashes (and 1 was pilot error).  And 10s of thousands of flight hours.

     

  14. 2 hours ago, Mother mopar said:
    2 hours ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:
    Yeah.  But I thought they figured out the issue.  Be interesting if this was caused by the same thing or not. 

    The early aircraft were plagued with problems to include the transition from vertical lift to straight flight. Something about the rotor head and it's transitioning mechanism which was powered via hydro which lead to fires.

    Incorrect.

  15. 2 hours ago, Updawg said:


    When it’s for hire there are set numbers I think

    I wouldn’t go on it if the captain cheats. Huge issues if got busted or something went wrong

    Oh hell no.  I wouldn't either.  Because I have this strange urge to not die at sea, I guess...

    I've got a buddy that has a 42' that he uses for charters though.  He's not stupid enough to break rules and lose his captain's license.

  16. My deck boat has legal capacity for 12 people.  Any larger and it's classified as a yacht which doesn't have a "set" number of passengers allowed.  However, I'm quite sure if the Coast Guard or TP&W came up, they get to use "discretion" in deciding if there's too many people on it - beyond just the number of life vests/cushions.

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