Friday, April 10, 2015

You Need To Have Complete Faith In this IFR Landing......WOW



From the description of the video.....

Pilot's eye view of landing in fog using an instrument approach procedure called a CAT 3b.
Completely automated approach where the aircraft's computers land the aircraft. 1080p avail
Auckland, New Zealand.








9 comments:

  1. Amazing! While that was going on, all the passengers in the back were likely calmly reading their ipads in sweet ignorance of the hair raising landing their pilots were watching. I'll drive, thanks.

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    Replies
    1. Watch it full screen. My knuckles were white on my mouse and keyboard HA!

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  2. My homies at work design those systems. When we first started making auto-landing systems they discovered a problem. The autopilots were landing the airplane on the tarmac at the same place every time. Pilots can't do that, so it never happened until then, but the landing loads were damaging the runways. We had to inject a little noise into the systems so that the tires don't hit the same exact place. Spread the contact points along the runway a bit.

    One of my favorite stories.

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    1. Designing those systems must be very interesting work. If it could be guaranteed fail safe, I think I would feel better with all those controls in place. Obviously the pilots on that run were used to it. I'm sure the first trial was scary indeed! On another note it's interesting that no one thought or would realize that the computer would land it at the same point each time :)

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    2. The systems are designed so that no one failure will take out a plane. Not just redundancy, but considering the likely errors and which direction they put the plane. I don't know much about it; it was way before I went to work there. I think I was told it was the late 70s/early 80s. One of my former officemates, and a guy I've gone shooting with, does the modern systems. Very sharp guy.

      Still, you know things can go wrong, automatic system or pilot controlled. The autopilots have gotten so good, now there's a problem with pilots not being able to fly when they have to. When autopilots get very confused they kind of just hand control back to the pilot and figuratively say, "I don't know what's goin on, you take it" If the pilot wasn't really paying attention, it can be Bad Trouble.

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  3. I remember hearing about and reading about what "Graybeard' said back when "Hanger Flying" at ol' "Hammond International" when all we had was lotsa weeds growing between the cracks and an old "Unicom" on 122.8. Those were the daze!! Great clip, but he still busted out just about right. The really hairy ones are when it is total white on the windshield all the way till the tires bark!!
    On that note, lets take a short side trip, this story is true to the core!! Picture if you will, a Dropzone in Southern California, Lake Elsinore to be exact!! The year was 1967 almost to be 1968 (New Years Eve) and a group of people known as "Skydivers" were planning to exit an aircraft at 12500'AGL at 30 seconds before midnight and Freefall" into the New year opening their Parachutes 30 seconds after Midnight!! The Night was Cold with No MOON!! The only light we had was the stars and what local ground lighting there was which wasn't much...back then!! The Jumpers, Yours Truly, Mike Babineaux, Dale Moench, gary Douris and a Korean fellow named Cho. Gus Norberg was our Pilot and we were jumping out of one of the Howard DGA-15P aircraft from Elsinore, (I forget which one) Well we had an accurate "Chronograph" (watch) to make sure we were "On Time!!" At 12,500' I was by the door so I got to "Spot" (line up the A/C over the ground where we were suppose to be. I had a pretty good fix on things and gave the "CUT" climbed out on the wing strut and waited for the others and the "GO!!" signal! Finally someone yelled "GO, GO!!" I let go and popped the night end of my Navy MK-XIII day-night flare. Mike "Frenchie" Babineaux came down and the two of us got a two-man hook up and were looking up for the other 3 guys when I just happened to look down at Frenchie's Altimeter on his reserve chute and past that to the house across the street from the DZ with the porch light over the screen door which I could see very plainly!! I believe at the time the needle on Frenchie's Altimeter was deep in the red we were somewhere in the neighborhood of a "Grand" or so (1000') I yelled at Frenchie (PULL!!!!) pushed him off and un corked my PC (Para Commander)!! I got open OK but was Out in the middle of the field away from everything. It was Dark and I lost the horizon in the Pitch Black Dark it was like getting sucked into a Black Hole!! I put my feet and knees together knowing that this was going to be (MY CAT III Landing!!!) which it was...KA-Chunk! Hit the dirt, rolled, got up took a breath and heard Frenchy some ways away, "Hey Deli!!!!!" "WHAT!!?" I yelled back!! Said he,"I Broke My LEG!!!!" ...........for the rest of the story, go to the History and Trivia Forum on and find "Steve1" post "Scary stories from the old days" it's somewhere around page 10 I posted it as "skybill" enjoy. Airplanes!!! Ya' gotta love 'em!!!
    BSBD (Blue Skies Black Death)
    III%,
    skybill-out

    ReplyDelete
  4. I remember hearing about and reading about what "Graybeard' said back when "Hanger Flying" at ol' "Hammond International" when all we had was lotsa weeds growing between the cracks and an old "Unicom" on 122.8. Those were the daze!! Great clip, but he still busted out just about right. The really hairy ones are when it is total white on the windshield all the way till the tires bark!!
    On that note, lets take a short side trip, this story is true to the core!! Picture if you will, a Dropzone in Southern California, Lake Elsinore to be exact!! The year was 1967 almost to be 1968 (New Years Eve) and a group of people known as "Skydivers" were planning to exit an aircraft at 12500'AGL at 30 seconds before midnight and Freefall" into the New year opening their Parachutes 30 seconds after Midnight!! The Night was Cold with No MOON!! The only light we had was the stars and what local ground lighting there was which wasn't much...back then!! The Jumpers, Yours Truly, Mike Babineaux, Dale Moench, gary Douris and a Korean fellow named Cho. Gus Norberg was our Pilot and we were jumping out of one of the Howard DGA-15P aircraft from Elsinore, (I forget which one) Well we had an accurate "Chronograph" (watch) to make sure we were "On Time!!" At 12,500' I was by the door so I got to "Spot" (line up the A/C over the ground where we were suppose to be. I had a pretty good fix on things and gave the "CUT" climbed out on the wing strut and waited for the others and the "GO!!" signal! Finally someone yelled "GO, GO!!" I let go and popped the night end of my Navy MK-XIII day-night flare. Mike "Frenchie" Babineaux came down and the two of us got a two-man hook up and were looking up for the other 3 guys when I just happened to look down at Frenchie's Altimeter on his reserve chute and past that to the house across the street from the DZ with the porch light over the screen door which I could see very plainly!! I believe at the time the needle on Frenchie's Altimeter was deep in the red we were somewhere in the neighborhood of a "Grand" or so (1000') I yelled at Frenchie (PULL!!!!) pushed him off and un corked my PC (Para Commander)!! I got open OK but was Out in the middle of the field away from everything. It was Dark and I lost the horizon in the Pitch Black Dark it was like getting sucked into a Black Hole!! I put my feet and knees together knowing that this was going to be (MY CAT III Landing!!!) which it was...KA-Chunk! Hit the dirt, rolled, got up took a breath and heard Frenchy some ways away, "Hey Deli!!!!!" "WHAT!!?" I yelled back!! Said he,"I Broke My LEG!!!!" ...........for the rest of the story, go to the History and Trivia Forum on and find "Steve1" post "Scary stories from the old days" it's somewhere around page 10 I posted it as "skybill" enjoy. Airplanes!!! Ya' gotta love 'em!!!
    BSBD (Blue Skies Black Death)
    III%,
    skybill-out

    ReplyDelete
  5. Re reading the post somehow it didn't register "dropzone.com" the website the hist. and trivia form iss on.
    skybill-out
    PS Scary stories is 60 pages long now!!! Have a couple of Cold Beers handy, you'll be readin' for a while!!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks skybill, I'll go check it out! Your one story posted here is scary enough. You must have had some wild times! ; )

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