Posts from — April 2010

If you have even been around an Air Force flight line you would have seen a truck that had the letters “FOD” on the sides. It is a trash truck used to get rid of anything that doesn’t belong on the flight line to prevent “Foreign Object Damage”. Jet engines are very large vacuum cleaners that tend to fail when they suck up things like birds, rocks, or enough dust. One of the possible causes of the recent CV-22 crash is the dust kicked up by the engine exhaust as the aircraft was landing. You don’t knowingly fly a jet into a dust storm.

When the BBC reported that Europe’s airlines and airports question flight bans, it was obvious to me that these people were thinking about the effect of the flight ban on their bottom line, without considering the effect of losing an aircraft and hundreds of people.

The airlines said they had flown test flights and there were no problems, which is interesting in light of the fact that the ABC reported Fighter jet engines suffer volcano damage from test flights.

No planes crashed, but when the F-16 engines used by the military were examined, FOD, volcanic glass, was found. They have to replace the engines and send the ones that were used in the test flights back to a depot for cleaning, inspection, and testing. If damaged, the titanium blades used in jet engine turbines can fly off like knife blades piercing the fuselage and anyone inside. Of course they might just destroy themselves in a fiery explosion.

[Read more →]

A month late.

Maria Antonova who writes at Global Post has committed journalism by talking to people and consulting open sources to provide a more reasonable picture of the crash at Smolensk.

The most important piece of the puzzle she provides is the fact that the Ground Control Approach system at the Smolensk North airport did not have a working glide slope radar, so the aircraft was using its altimeter. In the same vein she reports that there was only one landing attempt, not the four that have been reported by other sources. The pilot told the ground controller that he would make one pass and if it was unsuccessful, he would divert to another airport.

The other piece of information needed was to locate the airport on a topographical map and see what the terrain was like around the airport.

With those pieces in place, the landing was pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster.

The airport sits on land that is more 200 meters above the surrounding lowlands. There are hills on both sides of it. If you are using your radar altimeter, it won’t react to the higher ground until it is too late to correct. If you set you regular altimeter to the barometric reading of the airport and compare your standard altimeter with the radar altimeter, it will look like your standard altimeter is off. Visibility was 400 meters in fog, so there was no way of seeing the problem until it was too late.

The ABC reports on the preliminary data from the “black boxes”. Essentially, Russian sources are saying that the data indicates that the aircraft was descending faster than is recommended, and continued to drop after the pilot tried to level out.

This effect is common in a lot of aircraft types, but is more pronounced in the Tu-154/Boeing 727 design. Jet engines have to spin up to increase power, so there is a time lag there, and the lower speed of landing is a bit tricky in those aircraft. Many of the design features that increase their in-flight speed, complicate low speed handling.

My personal opinion is that the pilot should not have attempted the approach in the absence of the glide slope radar.

You have probably heard a lot lately about the “value added tax” [VAT] as a better way of raising money and solving the deficit problem. Badtux notes that the normally sane Paul Volcker has started talking it up.

As BT notes, this flies in the face of financial reality. When the economy is in the tank because of a lack of demand, you don’t tax consumption.

I put it down to Volcker being a banker and totally lacking a clue how the real world of the market works. If you don’t make enough money to pay income taxes, tax credits aren’t going to help you. If anyone thinks that shifting all of the paperwork involved in a VAT system is going to be anything but PITA for small businesses, they have never been in business.

The VAT is just another attempt by those at the top to shift the cost of government to those at the bottom.

Jobs! Create jobs and everything gets better.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

Every time you turn around, the “problem is ‘entitlements'” and the solution is cut them [and income taxes, of course]. The Boomers are always the excuse, and they are the ones who have to pay.

Ronald Reagan doubled withholding taxes, making the Boomers the first generation to pay the benefits of the generation before [the way it was before Reagan] and their own benefits. When it was done people still received pensions at their jobs, so there was no huge outcry. Then, a decade later, there wasn’t going to be enough money [despite all of the promises made], so Boomers have to wait until they’re 66 to retire [find your Normal Retirement Age]. Oh, yes, those job-related pensions disappeared into the pockets of hostile take-over specialists, and you were stuck with IRAs and 401Ks that disappear at the whim of Wall Street.

Now Obama and Peter G. Peterson are at it again. Peterson made his money as an investment banker, one of the criminal conspiracy that stole all of the solvent business pension funds and left the workers with nothing. He seems hell bent on making sure that the lower classes live and die in poverty so he doesn’t have to pay more than 15% on any income he hasn’t tax sheltered. Obama is just another politician sucking up to Wall Street.

The Fiscal Sustainability project is attempting to counter some of the misinformation being distributed by Peterson and Obama. Bankers got us into this mess, so they obviously aren’t smart enough to get us out. No one who predicted the dire consequences of what Wall Street and the large financial institutions were doing is associated with these efforts, only the those who kept parroting the line that “the general business conditions are sound”.

The US deficit is a deficit of income and corporate taxes, and should be paid from income and corporate tax revenues. Any problem with Social Security and Medicare can be solved by creating jobs, so there is more revenue, or raising the cap. Jobs should be the number one priority of the administration.

How about a week with no stupid human tricks being treated as serious news.

Fun fact – more people in the US support socialism [20%] than the tea party movement [18%]. This isn’t actually significant because on any given day a majority of Americans believe in “the little people”.

So a judge admits the obvious that the McCarthy era day of prayer law, yet another Republican effort to render “Thou shalt not use the name of the Lord, thy G-d, in vain” totally meaningless, violated the Constitution.

At my Mother’s CNN’s Headline News is on and they are asking for feedback on the issue and this woman from Ohio calls in and says that since we have to celebrate Martin Luther King [Jr.] Day, Black History month, and Cinco de Mayo, there is no reason that there shouldn’t be a National Day of Prayer. And she goes on to say that the government is moving towards minorities and away from religious people.

She stopped then. I guess the rinse fill started and she wanted her Klan robes to be fluffy. I was on an EEO panel for years, and grew up in the segregated South – I know it when I hear it.

Feline Photography Follies

Oh, cat toy!

[Editor: Just as I was ready to snap Property saw the wrist strap. Previously I had a nice grouping of all three littermates and when I clicked the shutter, the message came up “Low Batteries Shutting Down”. The Ides of April isn’t kind.]

Friday Ark

In Memoriam
Curmudgeon Cat, who lived with Hipparchia passed today.

I blame the long winters and cabin fever that produce people like Jesse Ventura and Michelle Bachmann, but it can also affect people more to the left.

Rook reports on his start, and his progress.

Actually it is probably a great way to lose the “winter weight” that you add to protect yourself from the cold.

Prior to the crash in Georgia on Monday, Training Squadron 86 had gone over 25 years without an accident, which remains the record.

The Pensacola News Journal reports that the Victims identified in Monday Navy jet crash. Retired Lieutenant Commander Charles McDaniel of Cantonment was the pilot, flying as a contractor. The passengers were: Marine Captain Jason Paynter of Pensacola, Naval Flight Officer instructor, and two students, Marine First Lieutenant Shawn Nice of Levittown, Pennsylvania and Navy Ensign Zachary Eckhart of Orefield, Pennsylvania. They were all assigned to VT-86.

It will take months for the cause of the crash to be established.

The Local Puppy Trainer reports that Mike Huckabee is now a Walton County resident,

Walton is the neighboring county to my East and no doubt he got a great deal on wherever he lives because of the tanking of the local real estate market [or he already had a vacation place, like Karl Rove, and couldn’t unload it.]

They’re Having A Birthday!

yaaaaaaawwwwwnnnnnnnnn

[Editor: April 15, 2007 they showed up.]

Keith Kisser at Invisible Library is having his seventh blogiversary™.

Oh, yes, there’s this .

Update: Jim DeRosa’s buddy, Hitchcock, is 15 today.

The Florida state constitution, like the constitutions of three-quarters of the states, has incorporated the language of the 19^th century Blaine Amendment. The original purpose of the language was to ensure that no public money was used to pay for the “icky Catholic schools”. Since they didn’t want to say “icky Catholic schools”, they said:

“No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”

The sponsor was Republican Congresscritter James G. Blaine, but the initiative was started by Republican President US Grant in a speech to veterans. Grant thought public schools were a good thing and wanted them funded. [Oh, yes, the Catholic immigrants voted for Democrats, but that, of course had nothing to do with this.]

Fast forward to today, and you have Florida Legislature to take up public funds for religious institutions.

The Republican legislature of Florida hates public schools [which has nothing to do with the fact that teachers tend to vote Democratic] and wants everyone to have “choice” with vouchers. Alas, the only viable private schools in the state are religious and the Florida Supreme Court keeps throwing out voucher bills because of the Blaine language. [Which has nothing to do with the fact that the Catholic immigrants in Florida tend to vote Republican.]

It’s nice to know that the legislature has already solved all of the state’s problems and has time to play games… oh, wait, they haven’t solved anything.

The Pensacola News Journal reported that yesterday afternoon an aircraft assigned to NAS crashed in Georgia killing 3 with one still missing. I have been waiting for identification of the crew, but with one still missing, officials will probably wait.

The aircraft was a T-39N Sabreliner assigned to Training Air Wing Six at NAS Pensacola. This was probably the standard low-level navigation training flight that is flown from Pensacola to Tennessee and back. In 2006 another T-39N flying that mission crashed in the same general area of North Georgia near the Tennessee border.

Although the aircraft belongs to a Navy unit, the unit trains personnel for the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and foreign countries, and has US Air Force instructors.