I’m about 15 air miles from the antennas for most of the Bay Area TV stations, so with a decent quality “bow tie” looking thing as an antenna I get all the broadcast stations around. Most of them have multiple feeds, sometimes 4 or 5, so there’s a lot of crap to sift through. Hooked up the antenna, put an amp on the signal and connected it to the net of cables through the house from the old cable system. Works perfect.
And I’m still annoyed that it’s all a Boeing embarrassment. It shouldn’t be; it’s a Pratt & Whitney problem.
Yup. Growing up, our neighbor Simon was an aircraft mechanic. In fact, he was an inspector for Continental Airlines at LAX during that time. I remember him talking to my dad in detail about what went wrong when taking those short cuts and that he would not allow that revised procedure on his watch.
The airlines had the L-1011, which had an immaculate safety record until a flight crew became obsessed with a burned out bulb and CFIT’d one into the Everglades. The L-1011 cost too much with deregulation, so the bean counters created the DC(DeathCraft)-10 and the airlines pressed the FAA and MacDoug to put it into production, ASAP, thereby joining the Ford Pinto, Chrysler’s Volare and Aspen, and any Fiat ever built in that illustrious category known as BeanCounter Engineering.
They cut corners, redundancy everywhere they thought they could. IMO, without going through the whole design history, the dumbest idea they had was omitting blowout plugs from the the flight deck floors. If either the passenger or cargo compartment suffered a rapid de-compression these would pop and relieve the differential pressure, preventing the floor from buckling. The floor is where the controls, wires, lines run through. On the couple of occasions when the aft baggage door suddenly popped open on climb out the results were as predictable as Jan 6th.
If anyone heard or read the crew transcript of the Denver engine event you would of heard the Capt as a pro using CRM, talking to ATC while with the FO going through eng failure, eng fire, landing when over weight limit, preparing cabin passengers checklists.
There used to be three in the crew, now it’s two. Just this past week they’re starting to toss around proposals for having just one pilot.
It’s the customer’s choice which eng to outfit the airframe with. I’m sure there were pro’s and con’s with all the choices and they would be complicated. Emissions, respective ground clearance, cost to lease, cost to operate, noise, time to climb, cruise fuel burn, weather and mission anticipated, established relationship and supply chain with a current eng supplier are just some of the considerations for the airline.
The eng doesn’t just produce thrust. It must be hooked up to various ancillary systems, cockpit controls, cabin press, climate control, generators that keep a couple of hundred people alive in a tube traveling near the speed of sound in a harsh environment that could potentially kill all aboard in a couple of minutes. That’s on Boeing.
Yeh so Boeing gets as big or bigger black eye than does P&W.
I won’t be flying for a while but I like to look at the outside temperature sitting in my shirt sleeves. I figured I’d be frozen to death before I ever hit the ground. I’m in Minnesota and I’ve thrown a cup of coffee into the air when its below zero.
A lot of us retired pilots wouldn’t mind “sitting side saddle”, and working as F/E’s. I’m 65, and can never fly for a Part 121 carrier again. I’d be very happy to work as an F/E.
The F/E position was a great springboard for an airline pilot career in the 60’s. Many of us (not me, however) started off as A&P’s became flight engineers, and then started flying lessons, and upgraded to F/O.
It was much easier to land an airline pilot job in the 60’s, compared with the so-called pilot shortage of recent years. Many F/O’s flew with commercial certificates and got their ATR’s (now called ATP’s) later
The DC-10 was built on the cheap ergo the placement of the #2 eng. No ducting meant less weight, simplicity and reduced ‘c’ word - COST. The hyd lines don’t go past the #2 eng. They’re connected to the pump that’s mounted on the eng so their vulnerability is assured regardless where the eng is mounted. Each eng powers a hydraulic sys pump, three engs - three hyd systems. The problem was in the way they were made to interact, it was insane. They were preset to pump into the sys that lost press/fluid, in essence emptying all three systems overboard, insane. That left the Sioux City pilots with a mangled acft(rudder) that they could only control with a balancing act of differential thrust for direction and speed for climb and descent. With old school grit and stick and rudder skills they attempted to hole-in-one a par3 using a putter off of the tee. They got most of the cup and 184 people survived.
Well congrats on retiring even though it sounds like you’re not ready for the pasture just yet.
I thought the F/E position was eliminated long ago by automation. I’m curious when you last worked as a F/E.
What’s wrong with redundancy? Redundant systems are more reliable that single string systems. Also, you talk about weight savings in a later post. Redundant systems often almost double the mass of each instance.
Yeah, I remember the accident and issue. There was a big bracket between the wing-bottom and the top of the engine/nacelle. The proper procedure for changing engines was to unbolt the engine from the bracket and then the bracket from the wing. But A&P (aircraft and powerplant) mechanics had discovered that they could complete the job faster by putting a forklift under the engine and removing the engine+bracket as an assembly.
They never realized that they were causing occult damage until the NTSB/FAA investigation that resulted from the 1979(?) event.