Wind turbines also use variable pitch blades.
Speaking of Cessna 172s, on the way home the other day I saw a 172 pilot (moron possibly a better word) doing a high speed slalom between a couple of wind turbines almost directly in front of me.
My rough estimate of altitude was a measly 75 feet and turbulence is apparently a foreign word to the pilot who cleared the blades by roughly a 100 yards.
The Eagle has…Oh, S**T!!!
That pilot is demonstrating God’s way of weeding out the gene pool.
Makes me think of that video from the nose camera of a military plane:
Pilot: Think I can fit between those poles?
GIB; No!
Pilot: Oh, ye of little faith
crunch
Pilot: “Oh %&@#!!” “Mayday, mayday!”
That’s the same thing I thought mountainbike. As I rounded a curve on the highway I saw that guy zinging out from between a couple of turbines and he crossed the highway right in front of me. My first thought was does this guy have a death wish or what?
On the other hand, a couple of Air Force pilots here bought the farm so to speak about 10 years ago from doing something equally stupid. Those 2 had the day off apparently and rented a Cessna 150 for some private stick time, or wheel time in this case.
The farmer plowing the field and who saw the crash said they were at about 35 feet of altitude and were zigzagging between the tree lines along a very narrow creek. At some point they clipped a tree top and at that altitude probably never knew what hit them. Both dead on the spot.
The last military pilot killed in this area was a Navy guy who had completed training and was soloing. He put a T-37 into a low speed 90 degree bank on approach at 300 feet. The plane dropped like a rock.
Some of the local military guys got in trouble a few years ago while doing a flyover at an Iowa football game in 4 T-38s. There’s a Youtube video on that one where they almost clipped the scoreboard at 400 knots.
I guess the hotdog exists in all of them but that football game flyover could have turned really, really bad very quickly.
I don’t know about small 4 passenger planes, but on every flight I have taken on a large airplane, when we approach an airport, I have felt the pilot downshift into landing gear.
@asecular–As I think about it, when the airliner reaches altitude, there is a change in the engine noise. It reminds me of riding in our neighbor’s 1949 Nash Ambassador years ago. When he reached highway speed, he would let up on the accelerator and the Nash would shift into what Nash called cruising gear (actually, the Borg-Warner overdrive engaged). I just assumed that the pilot upshifted to cruising gear at altitude and downshifted into landing gear when approaching the airport. I just figured that there must be a clutch and gearshift in the cockpit.
While we are pondering transmissions in airplanes, there is a scene in the movie “Inlaws” starring Peter Falk. His character is some kind of government spy. At any rate, he is piloting a small plane and doesn’t seem to know what he is doing. As he starts off, the plane goes backward. He messes with a couple controls and gets going forward and takes off. He then says, “Now I think I’ve got the hang of it”.
I have seen planes fly backwards…not rolling on the ground …but flying…backwards, landing on the same strip he took off from…back at the beginning of the srtip, straight back.
– because planes fly by virtue of airspeed over the wings, one can do this in a small low speed plane on a windy day.
At Oshkosh Wisconsin, at the annual gathering of the EAOPA ( experimental aircraft owners and pilots association ) it was a nice windy day ( I could not move a comb through my hair at the end of the day ).
But this particular day the wind was heading exactly straight down the airstrip so a demostration was performed in a little Piper Cub. Starting at the east end of the strip the cub advance forward for about the length of the strip becoming airborn in a bout 50 feet and gingerly heading toward the west end. Still at about 50 foot altitude he feathered back the prop and remaind airborn yet began drifting backward , still over the strip, and set the plane down again on the east end of the strip where he began.
— several times, to the crowd’s delight. –
I’ve also seen a rancher fly a Piper Cub on a windy day shooting rabits or something. His son would hop out of the still flying plane, retrieve the carcass, and hop back in the plane to fly away to the next target.
You also have the noise from turbulence as they partially deploy the spoiler so they can descend without picking up speed; high speed landing isn’t good customer relation. Then there’s the turbulence when they drop those landing gears-imagine your roof rack times 1000
I’ve done that ken green. When I was taking my pilot lessons, one of the things the instructor had me do was fly to a altitude that had a fairly decent wind speed, slow the plane down until I was JUST above stall speed with the stall horn squawking away, and acheive a negetive ground speed. “Shifting into reverse” as it were.
“Landing gear” isn’t a gear that you shift into or out of (like “cruising gear”), it is the “gear” (equipment) you use to land, i.e., the wheels. Gotta love that English language!
@David_L I was just having fun with the English language when I posted my earlier comments about shifting into “landing gear” and “cruising gear”. I think I stripped my gears trying to make a humorous comment.
@Triedaq , well, I had hoped so, but you never know. Remember the old cartoon character, Gyro Gearloose?
I can tell on a jetliner when we’re 30-45 minutes from landing.
The pilot gradually drops the engines output down to near idle.
OK4450, it sounds like that Navy guy stalled the T-37. Note to others, a “stall” in an airplane does not refer to the engine; it refers to getting the aircraft into an attitude wherein it loses pitch control and lift. That happens when the wings are at an angle that causes them to “push” a wall of air rather than flow the air over the surfaces and also causes a large low pressure area behind them and the horizontal stabilizer is in that low pressure area. Without pitch control it’s not possible to correct the wing “angle of attack” and the plane’ll drop like a stone out of control.
Triedaq, you’re feeling reverse thrust. Two or more panels from the engine’s rear cowling are closed over the exhaust, turning the thrust toward the front of the plane rather than the back, causing it to suddenly want to go backwards. Prop planes can, reverse their thrust by varying their prop angle. Perhaps that’s what was done in making that movie you refer to.
Ken. I’m thoroughly familiar with the “backwards” phenomenon you describe, but haven’t actually seen it.
Another misconception is that, if a plane loses all power, it drops from the sky. Actually, it enters a controlled descent.
Remember that 1HP is defined as 550 ft-lbs/sec. Thus, if a 5,500# plane is flying straight-and-level 150 kts on 200 HP of engine output…and suddendly loses all power…it’ll enter a 20 fps (1,200 fpm) descent at 150. Once the pilot gets the 400hp engine running at full power again, it’ll climb at 20 fps back to assigned altitude, where the pilot can throttle back, or whatever.
TSM and OK4450- the old saying “there are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are no old, bold pilots” comes to mind.
Triedaq-
when the airliner reaches altitude, there is a change in the engine noise
Yeah, he’s backing off on the throttle to cruise speed.
downshifted into landing gear when approaching the airport.
That’s probably the flaps going down and slats/spoilers deploying to rapidly drop altitude and speed without stalling. Watch the wings, you’ll see a flap or two go down on the back of the wing and the slat on the leading edge of the wing slide forward and down. This allows them to drop altitude rapidly and slow the plane for landing.
Pilot: Folks, we’ll be on the ground shortly.
Passenger: Can you be more specific?!?
Can’t go wrong with that initial statement. The condition of the airplane once back on the ground is what I’m interested in!
I used to frequent Oshkosh and the most humorous situation I recall was when the stealth fighter came for the first time. The plane hadn’t yet arrived but there was a fully uniformed and armed soldier guarding the roped off area, keeping the anxious crowds at bay. Dang, this stealth stuff is impressive!! Even the soldier busted out laughing 
Most impressive is harder to say but I guess it was the demonstration of what a 747 cargo plane could actually do. Very low pass stood on a wing was a sight to behold.
@David_L and @TwinTurbo
I guess I will never learn not to make comments that I intend to be humor–in this case the “landing gear” and the “cruising gear”. One of the worst off-hand remarks that I made was when I taught an upper-division and graduate course in computer architecture and hardware. I had made the comment to the class that if we could design a circuit to do the binary addition tables (0 + 0 = 0; 0 + 1 = 1; 1 + 0 = 1; 1 + 1 = 10) we could built circuits to do any addition problem (and subtraction by addition of the two’s complement) up to a specified number of digits. I then told the class that each of them did something analogous to that when they learned their addition tables in base 10 and that once they had learned the 100 addition facts from 0 + 0 to 9 + 9 (fifty facts if they believed in the commutative law), they could do any addition problem. I then went on to say “Remember learning the addition table? I sure do. When I was in first grade, we would get off the school bus in the morning, drill on our addition table for a couple of hours, go out for recess, have a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and then come back and hit the arithmetic table again”. After the class period ended, one female graduate student came up to me with eyes as big as silver dollars and said "Did they really let you smoke in first grade?"
At any rate, don’t take my comments seriously, and for heaven’s sake, don’t put any faith in my automotive diagnoses–give credibility to the real mechanics like tester, ok4450, transman618 and a host of others who post on this board.
@thesamemountainbike, yes, the Navy pilot stalled the T-37 and it fell like a ton of lead. The newspaper story stated that the T-37 was not designed to be put into a 90 degree bank at high speed, much less on a low speed final approach.
On another note, a T-38 Talon taking off one afternoon augured in with both afterburners blazing and hit about 1/4 mile from the dealership I was working at. Luckily, both pilots got out and this one was not pilot error. A turbine blade failure severed the controls on a high speed takeoff while in a steep left bank to the west and the pilots had about a second to make a decision as to whether to get out or not.
No, the T-37 certainly isn’t designed for that.
The T-38 is a gorgeous aircraft. I got a close up peek in one once when a acquaintance’s friend (both astronauts) came up from Texas to pick him up in one. They use them for training. Did the crew eject from the one that bounced the pavement?
The crew of the Talon made it out fine. Just from sheer luck the plane hit an open area between a supermarket and housing addition. Four houses caught on fire and one woman received some minor burns when her patio door blew in as she was watching TV.
The day was low clouds, dreary, and the wind was howling out of the north at 40. We watched the pilots drift through the smoke from the fireball with one landing over half a mile south and the other about 1.5 miles before his chute got hung up on a utility pole.
It was just sheer luck the plane hit that small open spot; otherwise the civilian fatality count would have been high.
A new Wal Mart was being built at the time and the guys on scaffolds laying brick were leaping from 10-15 feet up and hitting the ground running because it appeared the plane was going to hit them.
The pilots had no choice but to bail; the controls were locked and they only had a second to decide. Another second or so and they would have been ejecting upside down at low altitude.
The following week one of those pilots who ejected had to call in a Mayday and get back on the ground when the next Talon he was flying starting puking out hydraulic fluid which was leading to loss of control He made it back in with that one.
The Talons used to be painted white but some years back they were all repainted in two-tone gray and it makes them look a lot cooler.
There’s a dirt road at the end of the runways and I’ve gone out there many evenings to watch them doing the touch and go stuff. It’s pretty impressive when they pass over at a few hundred feet; especially when they’re launching to the north over the road.