Mythbusters On Talking Planes Down

[cpxxx]

what? Ive flown real planes before, its "not that hard"....

Warning: British sense of humour alert. Wind up the Yanks!

[Toad]

I do think AH can cut down training time. It teaches spatial relationships and gives a reasonable understanding of how to corelate what you are seeing outside with what you are doing with the controls.

IE: When you outside view is upside down, the AH pilot has a reasonable understanding of what to do with the controls to get it right side up.

It's  a basic form of mental preparation.

[WilldCrd]

COULD you then, please describe the landing procedure? start on the downwind leg. assume you're flying a simple airplane.....a cessna172. nothing fancy, simple 160hp lycoming 4 cylinder, fixed prop, fixed gear.

feel free to be as detailed as yo think is necessary

PFFFT piece of cake!!! I could take a F4U and land it no problemo!!! stop being so mean!
It's simple really: throttle back, once my speed gets low enough to drop the gear i would <they help slow ya down ya know> I'd proly come in kinda hot cause of
A) the damn vulchers that always seem to pop up ESPECIALLY when im in a perk ride
B) cause I can
C) I'm just so used to it PLUS i look good doing it
Once down throttle back to idle, STAND on the brakes then hit "end flight" then to the o'club for a few beers and count up my perky points.

Why you gotta make it seem like its sooooo hard.
I'm a expeeeerienced "virtual" pilot damnit!! I can do it!!
You supply the F4U <preferably the F4u-4 please> and ill show joos a perfect 3 point landing....I gots skillz!










 

[indy007]

I got a little bit of stick time in a Stearman PT-17. Fun stuff, getting to do rolls & loops over the Galveston seawall with dual controls so I couldn't do something crazy like hit the wings eject button. Hadn't been that simultaneously scared & excited in awhile. If I was asked to land it, we would have died. I have no idea how she could even see the runway.

[Hornet33]

The ONLY experiance I have with a real plane was my uncles Long-EZ that he built. Went up with him and he let me take the controls for a bit. I had no problem flying the plane, turns, a couple of rolls, clear sky, no other traffic, just going anyplace we wanted to go. He let me make an approach to the field we were flying out of and that's when it got tricky. I just couldn't keep up with the plane even with him coaching me along. I never realized how far ahead a pilot has to be thinking to make the plane do what it's supposed to do and keep it on track for landing. Every time I reacted to what the plane was doing we ended up further off course, above or below glide slope. It was hard. I could probably handle a takeoff (maybe), once in the air and cruising no problem, landing though I wouldn't want to try it for real.

And I'm an accomplished sim pilot. Yeah a PC game can teach you some procedures and if you really get into sims, you might even now what your looking for in the cockpit, but it is different when you have a real plane strapped to your butt.

[JAGED]

I knew I had read this at some point:

http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/061399/sta_061399031.shtml

"Moore, 56, said the young pilot had spent only 3 hours in the co-pilot seat on two flights and less than 90 minutes with Moore's desktop flight simulator.

Moore believes the simulator training may have saved the boys' lives."

Here's proof that simulators help!   

[culero]

snip
Mythbusters is a cool show And Karie Byron is really hot

Yeap

[uberslet]

i saw it, it was pretty eat. the coach wasnt a trainer, he was an air traffic controller weho had never told anyone how to land from the tower. thought it was pretty neat, i also realized that some of the gauges and displays wer fairly simple to pick out (and understand, from wer you sit watching tv).

[Dago]

Warning: British sense of humour alert.

British humor always involves men wearing dresses for some reason.

[CyranoAH]

I do think AH can cut down training time. It teaches spatial relationships and gives a reasonable understanding of how to corelate what you are seeing outside with what you are doing with the controls.

IE: When you outside view is upside down, the AH pilot has a reasonable understanding of what to do with the controls to get it right side up.

It's  a basic form of mental preparation.

I agree. When I first started in aerobatics, it took me little time to get used to outside references, since it's the same you do in any flight combat simulator. You just change the enemy plane for the horizon and the runway and off you go

Daniel

[Grayeagle]

Well.. trim on the P-51 is on yer left, dial for the rudder, one for the ailerons, and a wheel for pitch.
You get used to dropping left hand and adjusting what you need in very little time.

(like .. during first climbout .. f'rinstance)

I got a kick outta Lee tellin me 'You will have to *TRIM* thru this manuever' as we setup for a split-S from 8500' agl.

Yassir .. it takes approx 50 lbs of stick pull per G in the Stang. A 4g pull ..well .. you brace both feet on the pedals, both hands on the stick, and PULL .. HARD .. or .. you can drop left hand and crank in trim while keepin wings level for pullout ..then crank out trim as you level and slow down.

Lee informed me I could solo the Mustang with another hour of instruction .. after spendin an hour in it.. my only problem was finding the actual indicator that I needed right when I needed it ... LOL .. altimeter, airspeed, .. stuff like that .. took me a few seconds

As for takeoff .. well .. I was hands on .. you crank in 6 degrees of rudder, manifold pressure and rpm smoothly to 55" and 2700 rpm and you really gotta be on the rudder nudgin here an there as she rolls up to rotate speed.. we took off on grass ..Lee said it was a lot easier than pavement ..not as twitchy.

I *loved* 'departing pattern altitude' with a sharp break to right, roll left, and buzzin the field wavin the wings to those below as we left the area. (all well above 500agl of course)

-Frank aka GE

[Gumbeau]

I have almost 3000 hours of Heavy, Radial Engine Tail dragger time in Beech 18's, AT-6's, DC-3's and a little B-17 time and I can tell you without a doubt that the F4U would kill any pilot without serious HP tail dragger experience before the end of the runway.

PC sim pilot has almost zero chance of getting it started without setting it on fire. Chances are he wold set it on fire and blow a jug starting it and then flip it upside down taxiing out of the chocks.

[Denber]

Hope no one posted on this yet. I was out of town and couldn't log in here with my laptop for some reason.

Anyone see the Mythbusters show on Discovery Channel yesterday night? They wanted to see if it was true (as in the movie Airplane) that a commercial airplane could be piloted by a passenger and landed if they were coached by someone on the ground. This is similar to the thread someone started that went along the line of wondering if ww2 pilots could play this game or us players could do well in real ww2 planes. Remember that recent thread?

Anyway, Mythbuster guys( MG) found that it's never been done with a commercial aircraft. Never happened before, although I remember watching a real thing on TV where a lady's husband died in a Cessna and she was coached down.

So, these guys end up using a NASA aircraft simulator. They're give a scenario and they go at it, not even playing this game before. Both MGs try it and crash the plane pretty quick. One thing I noticed is I had a slight idea of what the main display was and also thought the first guy was going too fast to land (+300mph).

So both the guys try it again. This time they have the experienced trainer coach them and both of them land real well, first time. Pretty impressive. Coach did a great job.

Coach then explained, and demonstrated, how the plane can just about land itself. Most planes are like that nowadays. He just set some dials, punched a few buttons and said that was all someone really needed to do, rather than try and land manually.

Neat stuff. I'd love to try that test blind myself. Wish there was a ww2 plane simulator like that. It made it seem like you were in the real thing.

I couldn't find the show on their web site. Maybe it's not on there yet? www.discovery.com/mythbusters

Keep an eye out and it will probably be aired again. Anybody else see the show?

Just stumbled accross this. havent seen the movie airplane so I dont know how that was done, but someone with no experience in a passenger jet, will not be able to land it MANUALLY. That is just not possible.

However, some planes are equiped with an autoland equiped autopilot. To guide someone by RT to programm the FMC (flight management computer) to fly a certain pre-programmed route and follow it by an instrument approach and landing (ILS Cat IIIC) is possible. Airport has to be equiped for this aswell though. The person isnt flying the plane, it simply tells the autopilots (yes it must have more autopilots) what to do.

[Dago]

Just stumbled accross this. havent seen the movie airplane so I dont know how that was done, but someone with no experience in a passenger jet, will not be able to land it MANUALLY. That is just not possible.

However, some planes are equiped with an autoland equiped autopilot. To guide someone by RT to programm the FMC (flight management computer) to fly a certain pre-programmed route and follow it by an instrument approach and landing (ILS Cat IIIC) is possible. Airport has to be equiped for this aswell though. The person isnt flying the plane, it simply tells the autopilots (yes it must have more autopilots) what to do.

How many autopilots you want?

Someone is needed in that cockpit to throw switches for the landing.

But, autolanding is impressive.

[Denber]

How many autopilots you want?

Someone is needed in that cockpit to throw switches for the landing.

But, autolanding is impressive.

Actually, 3. Normal autopilot operation has 2. If the 2 autopilots parameters are not the same (1 fails), autopilot disengages. For autolanding you need 3 for failsave. Then if one fails, the other 2 override the malfuntional one.