Boeing getting smarter

The ability for the things in our lives to be more automated is nothing new to us. We are used to having smart devices that are able to predict our needs and make our lives easier or safer. This concept is finally making its way to commercial airliners.

It seems as though the concept of a car being able to park itself and alert to a car's presence is making its way to planes as well. Soon they will be able to lay out the path of the runway in a 3D vision model, as well as give flight path projections and other tools that will automate the process and avoid human error. 

I'm sure it won't be too long before the drone concept will be applied to commercial airlines. Though as that technology is not here yet, it is interesting to see how aspects of it are being applied to the technology we have today.

http://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/airbus-boeing-set-sights-synthetic-vision

Blog Post #5

Third World Flying

When you hear the term "third world" you probably imagine a child starving on the side of the road, and people living in shacks that are falling over. Although there are not really any starving children, Belize is a third world country. I have had the privilege of traveling there twice on medical mission trips. On these trips, we were given one free day to explore Belize City. This area is the typical tropical tourist location, which is a great contrast to the rest of the area. To get to one of the areas, we had to take a little puddle jumper plane ride. 

This is one of my favorite plane ride memories for one reason: I got to ride right up front next to the pilot. The view was incredible. And I also got to get a first hand look at what it would look like to actually do the flying. 

There were a lot more controls than I had anticipated. The entire front panel was cluttered with gauges and switches and buttons. It seemed like a maze, and I was shocked anyone was capable of flying that machine. 

Yet he did. And he did it with ease. He was able to hit exactly the right button at exactly the right time. It was crazy. And I was still a little disappointed when he didn't let me try to land it. :) 

This plane, although it was housed in the third world, was still well taken care of. They still had well set out standards. They may not have had us walk through three metal detectors, and have everything we own get xrayed, but it was still a process. 

It was definitely interesting getting to see how these sorts of things operate in a country so different from ours. 

Blog post #4

Blog Post #3 (Kneice) - Flight 401

On December 29, 1972, a Lockheed Tristar jet flying for Eastern Airlines crashed into the Florida everglades, resulting in 101 fatalities. The reason the flight crashed was because the entire flight crew became distracted with a faulty landing gear light, and they failed to realize that the autopilot quit working. This resulted in the airplane slowly losing altitude and crashing. The more interesting part about this whole ordeal is that the ghosts of the pilot (Bob Loft) and the flight engineer (Don Repo) are claimed to have been seen on other Eastern Airlines planes. Parts from the crashed plane were used as replacement parts for some other Tristar jets, and there have been over 20 sightings of the ghosts of the two men on those planes. The general report is that they watch over all and take care of all of the flights in which their plane's parts are now residing. These examples include:
-The vice president of Eastern Airlines was speaking with a man whom he presumed to be the pilot of the plane, and only later realized he was speaking with Loft.
-Two flight attendants and the captain of a plane were speaking with a man that they recognized to be Loft, and then watched him vanish before their eyes, leaving them visibly shaking.
-A female passenger asked a flight attendant about the unresponsive gentleman sitting next to her in an Eastern Airlines uniform, and the two of them, along with other passengers, watched the man then disappear into thin air. The passengers were able to identify the man when shown a picture, naming him to be Bob Loft.
-A flight attendant observed a man fixing the galley oven (whom she later recognized to be Repo), and after the oven was fixed, the flight engineer claimed that he hadn't yet fixed it.
-Three flight attendants observed the face of Repo in a galley oven, warning them to watch out for fires on board the plane. That plane's last leg of it's flight was cancelled due to serious engine trouble.

I personally don't believe in ghosts, but I think that this was an incredibly interesting topic to research! I didn't know what to write about so I just googled planes and ghosts, and this story had a lot of hits. I'm glad I found it!

http://www.near-death.com/ghosts.html

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta is something I've wanted to experience for a long time.  Every year, the city of Albuquerque holds this festival in Balloon Fiesta Park, where literally hundreds of hot air balloons take flight during the first week of October.  It is the largest hot air balloon festival on Earth, with over 500 balloons!  The mass launches of these balloons, as well as the sunrise and sunset "glows" are supposed to be one of the most beautiful things you'll ever see.  Plus I think it's really cool that balloons are still popular today, over 200 years after the first one was launched!

The week-long festival has all kinds of events planned like balloon races, mass launches, after-dark flights, balloon rides, live music, car shows, chainsaw carving, rodeos, and all kinds of other good stuff.  This festival has been held annually for over four decades, and will be taking place this year from October 3-11.

You can find out more on their website:
http://www.balloonfiesta.com/

And check out some of the great photos from past Fiestas!

The Barnstorming Carnival

The other day I was on Facebook and saw an ad for a barnstorming airshow.  Since I had two more blog posts to write this seemed like perfect luck and I went and researched it more.  As it turns out The Barnstorming Carnival is a two day event held at the Springfield Beckley Airport in Springfield, Ohio.  The whole things kicks off with an 8:00 am pancake breakfast and fly-in!  The airplanes featured will be antique biplanes and vintage aircraft from the 20s, 30s, and 40s piloted by real barnstorming pilots!  It looks like a whole bunch of really fun things will be happening from airplane rides to RC plane and helicopter demonstrations as well as a custom car show with Ford Model As, and a model rocket building workshop!  All of this awesome-ness is happening July 11-12th at the Springfield Beckley Airport in Springfield, Ohio--and admission is FREE!

Get more information at their website:

http://www.barnstormingcarnival.com/

Blog Post #4: This day in aviation history

In this day of history, on April 27^th 1911 the U.S. army bought its second airplane.  We all know that the first airplane was made by the Wright Brothers, but this plane was created by Glenn Curtiss and it was known as the “Curtiss pusher”.  It was slightly different than the Wright Brothers plane in that it had a propeller behind the wheel and a tricycle landing gear.  It was able to go to speeds as high as 60 miles per hour.  If you remember from the online book we read, Curtiss was the company that had a lot of conflict with the patent of the Wright Brothers.  Curtiss couldn’t use Wing warping so instead they had to use allerons (which turned out to be better than wing warping).  This is an interesting article because we usually always talk about the Wright Brothers, but we have not talked much about the other companies that were competing with the brothers.  Curtiss was one of their biggest competitors, but he was still a great inventor and also helped with the creation of aviation. 

Article: http://www.thisdayinaviation.com/

Blog Post #3: Columbia Disaster

                Many people have heard of the Columbia Disaster, but not many people know how it occurred.  10 years after the Columbia broke up (it broke up February 01, 2003) when it was returning to earth, Elizabeth Howell made an article explaining how it happened.  What NASA determined was that there was a giant piece of foam that broke off of the external tank of the spacecraft wing when it took off.  When this foam separated from the spacecraft, it caused a fatal breach to occur when the crew was landing.  This hole in the wing caused atmospheric gases to go into the spacecraft and lead to the destruction of Columbia.  A big controversy of this tragedy is that NASA knew the problems with the foam years before the accident.  However, NASA didn't do much to fix it (which I don’t understand why).  I’m curious to if the crew knew about the foam that flew off when they took off, maybe if they did they could have done something to help prevent the tragedy.  It upsets me that NASA knew the problem, but didn't bother to do anything about it. Maybe foam is a cheaper thing to use than another substance and that’s why they used it.  It’s an interesting article and I’d recommend reading it! 

Article: http://www.space.com/19436-columbia-disaster.html