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Admin
Nah - it would decrease. You forgot to factor in the union strike. Since the mechanics would be doing more, that obviously means they need to be paid more.
Admin
It's surprisingly difficult to set fire to jet fuel. Cigarette ash wouldn't do it. When my brother's boss tried to set fire to a controlled amount of jet fuel in a safety demonstration he eventually had to pour gasoline on it and light that.
Admin
I knew a guy who was afraid to fly, so he took a train...and a plane fell on it!
Ba da bing.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Admin
Just the other day I had a fellow in the office asking me why his column headers didn't align when he printed his spreadsheet. I went over there and realized he was typing everything in the first column and using spaces to position the text over each column of data. WTF
Admin
Admin
That had me laughing so hard my stomach hurts now.
Admin
Have you ever seen an actual train wreck on the news? I don't fancy my chances either way
Admin
Well, if he'd actually transliterated Klaus, it'd gone like this: "Su, ya buys vunna leern ebuoot hoo ve-a use-a cumpooters in zee heegh tech feeeld ooff mudern efeeunics? C'mun - step intu my ooffffeece-a - pooll yerselfes up a cheur! Bork Bork Bork!"
Is that any improvement?
CAPTCHA: letatio - I don't wanna know what that might me
Admin
Exactly. If the engine falls off a plane, it can still glide. Now if the engine explodes....
If the engine falls off the track, or if the engine runs into an oncoming engine due to scheduling problems or failure to follow the schedule, or if the brakes fail...
The moral is, stay home!
Admin
... Unless it's a really fast train.
Admin
Wait . . . .
Admin
Admin
Humans also make mistakes and lots of them. It doesn’t matter if a computer system makes thousands of mistakes if the system it replaced used to make millions.
Admin
Usually people trust a computer's output 100%, and then they get burned by an error or incorrect output, because they didn't think to check it, and as a result they don't ever trust the computer to do things right ever again.
I would hope that in the case of avionics that if a computer screwed up, someone there would be smart enough to realize it.
Admin
Why is it that with all the BS internal training companies offer, few offer the most needed: Basic Excel, Basic Word, and how to move files/folders around on a computer.
I know of entire departments of finance people where half of them don't know anything beyond editing existing Excel documents. Those people would be better off with an Excel intro course than taking yet another fluff course like "Conflict Resolution".
Captcha: Abbas - I thought that band stopped touring long ago?
Admin
I don't recommend hick Swedish airports to anybody of a nervous disposition. The engineering is no doubt top-notch, but you have to remember that the non-Slavic part of Russia came from Västerås ... which is where Ryanair base their "Stockholm" airport. It's nice if you don't mind flat plains and heavy cross-winds. Not so nice if the thought of Aeroflot crosses your mind.
Got a problem with Minnesotese? Sounds like it was directly translated by the Coen brothers, to me.Admin
It always amazes me that people would expect a heavily regulated industry like aviation to be high tech.
Regulation maintains the status quo that existed when the regulations were passed. The current US aviation regulations are from some time between the 1930s and 1960s. They maintain that status quo. That status quo did not include computers. Ergo no computers.
The average airplane you see flying around has avionics less advanced than a $150 wal-mart GPS. It is 50 times as expensive though.
Admin
I'd suggest a course either in reading comprehension or in accelerated humour. Finding something else to do, like giggling when paint dries, is also a viable alternative. The big bonus is that it wouldn't be disappointing -- unless you're a member of the Third Church of God Told Us That Paint Would Never Dry, or else you bought paint that was somehow mercury-based.
Seek amateur help. Now. You'll look back on this advice with fond memories and a cheque for $30,000 to the Third Church of God Told Us That Paint Would Never Dry.
Admin
This sounds like a bargain.
I don't even care if it's a DC9.
Where can I find one of these things? EBay? Or has Alex got his sponsors sorted out such that we can buy something useful at distressed Russian Oligarch rates, for once?
Plz contact: [email protected]
Admin
Like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster
Admin
I suppose you're aware that thanks to fly-by-wire systems, aircraft operations since decades depends very directly on computers working properly?
Admin
There is also "hanger" instead of "hangar".
Admin
In which about two thirds of the passengers survived. Compare that to, say, the Madrid plane crash this August - of 178 passengers over1 50 were killed.
Plane crashes are deadlier than those of terrestrial vehicles because planes have to be light enough to fly, which means they're less robust. They're often going faster too. Of course, that's offset by the training of the pilots. The most dangerous means of transport by far is a motorbike - you're mixing inexpertise (yours and others') with little protection if a crash does happen.
Admin
Same goes with where I work. Spaces = eventual carriage returns, and to get a new page, why, use the new page button (aka return).
Couldn't be easier! Maintenance and file manipulation, OTH...
Admin
Actually, if the engine falls off a small airplane (typical single engine airplane with engine in front), you're pretty much screwed. The engine is a good chunk of weight and losing it will throw the center of gravity way off and the airplane becomes uncontrollable. Fortunately, it is much more common for the engine to simply stop running. In this case, the plane can still glide.
As far as I know, the main way for an engine to depart from the airplane is to actually lose part or all of one of the propellor blades. The propellor then becomes wildly unbalanced and the vibration can tear the engine loose from its mounts.
Admin
I guess he meant Camel cigarettes.
Admin
About 17 years ago I was fixing Microfilm cameras and printers. The airline mechanics had these manuals on microfilm packed into a cartridge that would auto-load on a reader/printer. We replaced many an auto-load switch and speed control varistor because they would slam the button really hard or twist the knob off. Ham handed monkeys was one comment I heard from my manager. Anyways, this one guy came into the workshop area I was working at and he was covered in Kerosene. He said that someone was testing the injectors while he was in the engine inspecting something else. He was joking around that it was a good thing the igniter was not tested too. Those mechanics are real hard cases.
Admin
But planes do. There's a reason they call unavoidable problems "the human factor".
Admin
In the north of Sweden they have a very distinct dialect so the comparison quite ok. They talk very s l o w l y
Admin
In most airplane mishaps, the plane doesn't just burst into flames in the air. Instead, the engine stops working. People die because it's a long way down.
Most train (or car) mishaps also involve the engine not working properly, or a wheel breaking, or the things that bind the cars together failing. In such cases, the train stops, the people climb down and are taken away by bus or by another train. Sometimes a spare engine is brought in, tied to the train and pulls it to the next station. In all such cases, the incident doesn't make it to the news.
Admin
Oh god, now my brain hurts.
Admin
Don't quit your day job
Admin
True enough. But in a plane at least the driver has a chance to swerve if a WTF puts two of them at the same track with opposing directions.
Admin
Too far north in relation to you, yes, ethnocentric Stockholm resident.
Admin
You could take a cab
http://www.news.com.au/gallery/0,23607,5035894-17382,00.html
(OK this was a natural disaster)
Admin
Who said I did live Stockholm? Maybe I live in Umeå and always take the flight... When I can afford it, otherwise, there always is the night train! =)
Admin
But seriously, the privately owned aircraft (like mine) are subject to an annual inspection that inspects every aspect of the plane from the rivets to the inside of the engine. And it costs about $1500/yr if you fly or not! In contrast, likely due to "big wig" pressure, the commercial airplanes often don't get the minor fixes repaired all the time. And if you watch the news, it's often discovered that a service bulletin existed for the inexpensive repair that took down am multi million dollar aircraft and ruined many lives, because of greed on the upper managements part. Aviation mechanics take great pride in the enormous responsibility of the general publics safety and the view of the mechanic often conflicts with that of the upper management.
Admin
The key point in aviation regulations is tracability - and lots of it. This means tons of paperwork, which means things are a lot pricier. I've seen people say a screw that costs $0.10 in a hardware store, easily costs $5 for aviation because of all the paperwork behind it. To give an example, you could take a failed part (propeller, say), get its serial number, then trace it back to where the aluminum it's made of was mined, casted, etc. Or if it's a used part, the aircraft it was used on before the current one, and get accident histories.
Anyhow, a lot of avionics also have tighter tolerances - before GPS, the heavy tin carried inertial navigation systems, relying on extremely pricey gyroscopes to figure out all the slight twists and turns a plane makes to figure out its position. It's an advanced form of dead reckoning, and stays quite accurate - half a nautical mile or better per hour in position. Nowadays, GPS is often used to supplement (after all, you gotta have backups).
More traceability there - the paper records and checklists and instructions all form documentation in case of a maintenance issue - they can trace who did what when, if something was completed, etc. Having multiple paper records help form redundancy in case records get forged (has happened).
NOt really - a lot of commercial flying is done via autopilot, and a number of accidents have occurred because of miscommunications between the avionics and the pilots. When you're "up there", you can't really look out the window and say "I'm here" - you're relying on your instruments to aid you in that determination.
Which brings up cellphones on planes - most of phones have no issue. Some common phones and other electronics though have caused things like instrument drift, GPS sat lock loss, etc. None are implicated in any accidents, mostly because the interactions are temporal, or so complex it's difficult to tell what is going on. Modern planes are better shielded so it's not as big a deal, but given the general crappiness of consumer electronics, well, there are never any guarantees. (And it doesn't have to be the radio transmitter to be the cause - it could be a random clock line or digital hash).
Fun stuff.
Admin
I just read the the guy who walked away from a Grumman Goose crash that killed the other 6 occupants of the plane was flown from BC to Edmonton.
Now, if it was me, I'd probably take the train. . .
WTF
Admin
Well, on the Scarebus, anyway. Remember that one at the Paris Airshow?
Admin
I know tech and they got it wrong, but they got everything else perfectly correct, and all is good.
I know tech and they got it wrong, and I'ld be crazy to assume that the only thing they got wrong just happened to be the one thing that I understood.
It's not just airlines, it applies to even your daily newspaper. If every second technology story is clearly written by someone with no understanding of the topic and is full of mistakes, why would you automatically assume that every story relating to a field you're not an expert in has been written accurately to provide correct and valid information to non-experts?
If binders full of documents is best, then the management who decided a "custom CMS" that's utterly uselss was actually a great idea, what other management fads and technical mistakes have also been going on?
Some grizzled old mechanics are brilliant and can repair engines mid-flight with both hands tied behind their backs. Some grizzled old mechanics are the airline's equivelent of the old drunkard who thinks that COBOL is too modern and loves hard-coding his constants.
On average they're probably muddling through with a mixture of good intentions and institutionalised knowledge that isn't written down, yet alone in a database, but it's all kinda depressing, if you think that making things more efficient and profitable is best done by doing things right. ;)
Admin
Some university kids who know nothing about airplanes visit a guy who knows everything, and based on his having a partial dependency on paper documents over reading stuff off a monitor, you conclude there are safety problems?
I think if I were crawling around jet engines, I might at times prefer something I can carry around easily, scribble notes on, etc.
This WTF is a WTF.
Admin
How about if a wing falls off? http://www.chilloutzone.de/files/08102703.html
Admin
CMS -- camel maintenance system ???
Admin
Mmmmm, sludge cakes.
I knew a plant operator that tracked all their outfall and cso analyte numbers via excel. One page per site per parameter for every day of the year. Came out to about a 75 meg spreadsheet. With no backups.
Not computer related, but he'd also sample his BODs in a used milk carton on a Monday and leave them in his car till he could get to the lab on Friday.
Admin
I disagree.
You are talking about the certification requirements. Those are burdensome, sure, but they don't innately inhibit innovation. Nor do they account for the bulk of the cost difference between aviation-approved components and the same components as used in other industries.
I am talking about type approval. Type approval is the process by which designs and consequently methods... this aircraft, that type of construction, this design of altimeter, that type of generator, etc., are approved. Type approval is innately stifling and conservative. It forces new materials, methods, and designs to pass a gauntlet run by the masters of the old. Imagine anyone designing a new RAM technology had to have it approved by the people who designed delay line memory systems -- that's what the aviation equipment world is like. The regulations maintain the status quo.
Even getting a very "old technology" new design through that gauntlet can cost millions of dollars and years. Getting anything innovative approved for real use can be impossible.
Look at composite airframes. Composite has been used in the marine and automotive industries for 60+ years. It is a well known technology. In the aviation world it has been saddled with absurd limitations like official airframe lifespans of 10 years/10,000 hours based on the "newness" of the technology. That isn't based on science or experience but beureaucratic ass-covering, and it places a real burden on any company trying to sell newer, more efficient, quieter, better aircraft designs to people who will say "why do I want a 10-year plane when I can get a 40-year aluminum plane?" Aluminum has many problems in high-vibration environments but those are known problems.
The cost of type approval, and the reduced market sizes caused by arbitrary limitations, raises the price of type approved gear far more than a paper trail. Every company that sells consumer products today maintains an paper trail as good as that required for aviation gear. I've received letters from retailers and manufacturers due to faulty batteries in $20 cordless drills I purchased years earlier. There is no requirement that they do so but the cost is so low they do it anyway. It maybe raises the cost by $0.05 per item -- not by a factor of 10.
Which is why 747s had sextant ports. Riiight.
Admin
LOL! I can't believe I'm the only one to get it, either. Brilliant. (With two 'i's.)
Admin
Aviation is a ridiculously backward industry. Most planes today operate with 1950's technology, and updating is very slow because the risk of liability is so ridiculously high.
Basically, they can't afford to update anything because if anything goes wrong the lawyers go into a feeding frenzy and another airplane manufacturer bites the big one. It's so bad that even when a new technology is demonstrably safer than the "old way", the fact that it fails every so often is compared to the improved performance that it offers and that's used to justify a liability suit!
So although aviation is rather safe, it's not nearly as safe as it could be. Statistically, you are about 1/3 as likely to die in a mile of travel in a small, single-engine piston plane than a motorcycle, and only slightly more likely to die in a mile of travel than in a car. Small planes should be safer than cars since most accidents boil down to one of two things:
Pilot didn't gas up the plane. (Seriously, WTF?!?)
Pilot flies into nasty storm clouds.
Crashes due to mechanical failure are actually relatively uncommon. Most "forced landings" do not result in a crash - just an unpowered glide to a nearby airport, field, or road.
Commercial airlines have more money behind them, so they are more likely to be relatively current. That, and the airlines get sued either way in the event of a crash, technology notwithstanding! What with their much simpler jet engines, well-practiced pilots, and better system redundancy, they are considerably safer than driving a car.
Admin
Admin
ONEHUNDREDTH!¬!!!13