archiewood's New Writeups

Small moves (personal)

2009-11-13T00:49:26Z

I just watched Contact, which was one of my favourite movies of my late teens/early twenties. Now, not so much. This is how the conversation on the beach near the end would probably have gone for me.

"Why did you contact us?"

"You contacted us. We were just listening."

"And there are others?"

"Many others."

He crouches and scoops up a handful of sand, watching the glitter of the grains trickling through his fingers. The sky is black but crowded with stars; the beach we stand on is bathed in gentle light.

"They all travel here through that transit system you built?"

"We didn't build it. We don't know who did." He pauses. "He?" "She?" I don't know if these terms apply. But whatever is facing me right now looks like a man. "No, they were gone long before we ever got here. Maybe someday they'll come back."

I smirk, shake my head and—knowing I'm breaking several behavioural guidelines for first contact&mdash…

trim (thing)

2009-11-11T09:56:03Z

Trim is a way to make a small but constant and continuous adjustment to a control surface on an aircraft. Control surfaces are the things that make the aircraft pitch, roll, and yaw: the elevators, ailerons and rudder, respectively.

To understand how trim works it's first useful to understand how wings and control surfaces work.

Wings work largely off the principle described by Newton's third law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. They also utilise the coanda effect, which is the tendency of jets of fluid substances (of which air is one) to follow the contours of surfaces they are in contact with. Hold the underneath of the head of a spoon next to a stream of water from a tap to see this for yourself.

A wing is shaped in such a way that air flowing over it is deflected downwards; in doing so, the wing itself is forced upwards. Fine.

Control surfaces change the shape of the surfaces they are…

The most engine failures in one flight (idea)

2009-11-11T06:17:38Z

Many things can cause the in-flight failure, or flame out, of an aircraft engine. Anything from icing to bird strikes, failure to put enough fuel in the tanks (hellooo, Air Canada), or a structural turbine failure (stand up, Pratt & Whitney).

During the time I spent at ATC college, the topic of emergencies was covered in some depth. The importance of knowing the aircraft type when an emergency is declared was impressed upon us, more so on some who didn't immediately grasp that an engine failure is potentially far less serious for a Boeing 747, which has four engines, than it is for a Piper Cherokee, which only has one. Was this noder included in such admonishment? Not telling.

The potential ambiguities in language used during emergencies was also mentioned; such language should be carefully checked, we were told, particularly considering the high stress levels such a situation can provoke. More than one airliner…

airliners that have gone supersonic and survived (idea)

2009-10-20T15:02:27Z

Breaking the sound barrier profitably is a notoriously tricky business. It's such a cool idea, being on an aeroplane that's flying faster than a bullet. Who wouldn't want to burn tens of millions of pounds, forge crazy foreign alliances and exhaust all of their political capital making that dream come true? Shut up!

Plenty of aircraft exist that can do supersonic, but most of them achieve it by brute force alone. This isn't really an option for commercial aircraft, since they have to, you know, make money. Economic supersonic is an elusive creature, and some would argue that it has yet to be achieved. Perhaps incentives are what we're missing. Earth now sadly lacks an operational SST, and I don't care that I'd never be able to afford to fly in one—anyone who can claim responsibility for getting this beast into production deserves to have all of their empty things filled with cream for as long as…

KIAS (idea)

2009-10-14T20:01:54Z

KIAS means 'knots indicated airspeed'. A knot is a nautical mile per hour.

KIAS is one of the speed units used in aviation. There are several others: rectified airspeed (RAS), true airspeed (TAS), and ground speed (GS).

KIAS, or indicated airspeed, is the basic, most crude measure of airspeed. That doesn't mean it makes "your mom" jokes all the time. Rather, it is the measure of an aircraft's speed through the bit of air it's flying in.

Why is this crude? Because it ignores a) the aircraft's speed relative to anything useful, b) movement of the air itself, and c) the properties of the air. What this means is that KIAS is almost always wrong as an indicator of aircraft performance.

For instance, imagine an aircraft with an airspeed of 75kts. Simple enough? 75kts across the ground? Wrong. Turns out that it's flying into a 75kt headwind. So amusingly, the aircraft is actually stationary relative to the ground. Its airspeed might be 75kts, but it's…

April 10, 1912 (log)

2009-10-11T10:37:54Z

*** BEGIN BURST MESSAGE ***

SENT: 5678421T (new calendar)
RECEIVED BY: GATE 4; relayed by CRUITHNE NODE 12
FROM: Jacobs
TO: Anders

STATUS REPORT

POSITION: T-1428y 120d

Requestioned steamer SS Waratah (ref: 710), July 28, 1909. Navigation and displacement units installed, crew and passengers neurologically co-opted (note: crew resistance forced tactical action, likely visible to nearby vessels). Vessel displaced to 1912 and steamed to North Atlantic basin.

Following survey and selection of appropriate iceberg, Waratah (rebadged SS Californian) successfully concluded towing operations late April 09, 1912, installed degradable thruster units and proximity sensors, and took up holding pattern approximately nine kilometers West of staging area (ref: 495649W 414832N) for observation and contingency availability.…