What flying was like fifty years ago
airfactsjournal.com
airfactsjournal.com
"Children of the magenta" should be required reading/listening for anyone interested in aviation.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen...
In college once I made a reference to "my red notebook over there" and the entire room (all women except for me) erupted in "that's not red; that's fuchsia" with one lagging voice adding, "or hot pink."
So yeah, I can spell it, if only because I had never heard of that color before then and I looked it up.
I have "several" quadcopters. I don't actually know how many I have at the moment, but in addition to enough components to fill a couple of five-gallon buckets, the three I use most regularly are:
* an Autel Evo 2 Pro * a 5" FPV quad * a 3" FPV quad
The Autel is a dedicated photo/video quad. It's stupidly easy to fly, to the point that I can put the controller down and come back 20 minutes later to find that it hasn't moved.
I use the 5" for fun, mostly freestyle stuff. The 3" has enclosed props and is intended for videography. Neither of these have GPS. While they do have flight controllers, they are optimized for minimal input latency and do not attempt to automatically keep themselves upright whatsoever. Flying them is much like balancing a dinner plate on top of a broomstick; it requires constant input adjustments. That's difficult at first, but after ~20 hours of practice it starts to become unconscious. I've been doing it for a few years now and really don't even think about it anymore.
Prior to the availability of ARM STM32-based flight controllers, I believe there were some fully analogue solutions out there that allowed similar flight characteristics.
At the most detailed level, all of them are sending a PWM signal to each individual motor. Controller input is translated from 4 axes (pitch, roll, yaw, throttle) to the appropriate changes in the PWM signal for each motor.
I _think_ I could probably set up a fully manual quadcopter and get it to fly predictably without a flight controller, by using the radio receiver on the quad to output PWM directly to the individual motors. I'd have to set up the controller so that input on each axis is "mixed" appropriately to the respective per-engine output channels. The result should be (barely) controllable. I bet wind and the dynamics of lift would be much more difficult to deal with, but I think it'd be doable.
Is that "manual" by your definition?
There's no manual mode per se with something like a quadrotor, even a simple one requires really unintuitive applications of thrust to affect things like yaw. You could fly one in 'rate' mode though - where the stick deflection commands pitch/roll/yaw rates directly.
Unlike a 172, it's pretty unstable flown like that, and most people would turn such a craft into a smoking crater shortly.
When you are flying a quad with a lot of power, it is fun to zoom up vertically, cut the throttle, and drop.
Normally, the motors have enough power to arrest the fall before you hit the ground but if you get into VRS no amount of power will save you.
If you realize you are in VRS before it is too late, apply forward thrust and fly out of it.
They should really be talking about the First officer. The captain knew exactly what to do but wasn't at the controls of the plane until after it had already been stalled.
If anything airline pilots should be taught to troubleshoot a plane more and fly it less. Maybe if the First Officer understood the correct way to exit a high altitude stall and that applying inputs to his control cancelled out the other pilot's inputs the plane likely would not have crashed.
A big plane in a normal condition doesn't require much attention and can fly itself. Humans are best at exceptional circumstances (in theory) and computers best at doing the boring and tedious work.
Flight hours in this context are pretty meaningless, they should be judged by percentage of abnormal incidents survived in a simulator instead.
When we train engineers for oncall, we take a look at incidents they saw while shadowing. Just X days shadowing doesn't really cut it, they have to be meaningful.
I see the comparison to flying pretty clearly.
Chaos engineering and game days are excellent ways to get engineers more experience in a system. Does the aviation industry have something similar?
Some professional pilots choose to engage in leisure activities that improve their aviation skills. Sullenberger was a glider pilot. I know a few ATPs that fly aerobatic aircraft on the weekend.
I mean, yeah, practice for when the automation breaks is good, but during the flight? That's just creating more mode-switching error cases.
Star Trek is a perfect example of how not to design ships, planes, systems and basically everything else.
Air France 447 is generally viewed as showing the opposite need.
The disaster happened because the pilots were not at all involved in the flying process and suddenly thrown into a problem situation without that situational awareness.
If anything training is already very focused on troubleshooting. And yes systems knowledge could be better. But there's many cases where there's just no time for it and that human awareness is no important. But they are kinda zoned out, similar to when you're a passenger in a car and have less geographical awareness due to not being involved.
A principle in safety is that you want things encoded in the "hardware", eg, you can't put your car in reverse without putting your foot on the brake, even though you are taught this in driver's ed. The Airbus designers forgot this major principle by using independent joysticks, a lesson not forgotten by the Boeing fly-by-wire craft.
The first officer and the relief first officer were the ones who were at the controls. The relief first officer (who was the most experienced with that airplane of the pilots) wasn't aware the first officer (the most junior of the pilots) was pulling up on the stick because of the independent inputs.
I rarely put a car in reverse while putting a foot on the brake. Handbrake on sure, but my foot is almost always on the accelerator when reverse engages, same as with forward gear
Apart from that the pilot flying the aircraft was totally confused and pulled the nose up while having stall warning and actually stalling. That is quite some remarkable screw up not understanding to stall and thinking having your nose at an high attack angle while having 100% engine thrust will solve anything in this situation. Sure with non-independent joysticks the other might have called the non nonsensical maneuvers earlier and prevented it. But the lack of awareness in instrument flight of that pilot is quite remarkable.
Blaming the pilots, or flatout stating that one design pholosophy is better than the other, is just ignorant. That's worse than all those soccer coaches knowing everything better on subdays, or whatever the US equivalent is, because at sport no lives depend on it.
And regardless of the latest Boeing fuck ups, everyone in aerospace knows that. And the people designing those planes and systems are fully aware of that, and know what they do.
Edit: The Vanity Fair piece also focuses on the stick behaviour and fly-by-wire systems. I cannot emphasize it enough, that pullong up silenced the stall alarm. The issue was that flight crew never realized that they were still in a stall. Pilot training aroubd that particular edga case, including simulator training, was ammended. As was the stall alarm behaviour. Fly-by-wire and stick behaviour had not much to do with it.
On a different note, for everyone blaming the pilots for being clueless amateurs (I exagerate, but I do get the impression): they died too on that flight. Inclusing the family of one of those pilots. Flight crew had as much skin in the game as possible. And before people start crying for remote controlled planes, how much risk does a pilot sitting in cubicle hubdreds of miles away from the plane actually take?
I work with safety, I study it. The Airbus was poorly designed. You want to have forcing functions in the hardware, not depend of operator training, the "software" in safety terminology. Airbus should have had the proper design philosophy so that the forcing function was in the "hardware", eg, the yoke of Boeing. The poor choice of having independent joysticks brought the plane down. Not certain why the FAA, which does know better, approved of the Airbus design. That alone is worthy of a study. Was it politics?
In summary, safety guidelines mandate putting safety in the "hardware" of real forcing functions and not "software" -- training. That is the reality. 447 crash occurred because of poor Airbus design and the FAA for approving this design that goes against safety principles.
But it's still not something anyone except the "I like direct control of the machine" types actually want, average users would probably prefer the safeguards.
I've never seen that kind of protection. I've only driven manual cars though.
> The first officer who had more experience than the pilot flying the plane was unaware that the pilot was pulling back on the joystick
To be fair he had a light flashing in front of him and a repeated "dual input" sound to tell him just that.
It is why some flight instructors actually carried a hefty stick into cockpit - sometimes the best solution was to physically hit the trainee pilot to get them out of nervous hold on controls that you couldn't always overpower.
That the instruments readings were contradictory is indisputable, but when the anti-stall alarms are blaring in the cockpit, and the plane is literally falling from the sky for 3.5 minutes, than pulling the stick full back is not the way to go. In fact, pulling the stick back, even when applying full power, never has been, and never will be the way to get out of a stall.
The Thales pitot tubes were clearly faulty. The flight system output was absolutely contradictory. But understanding which instruments and which readings a pilot could potentially rely on in such a situation goes down to fundamental, basic airmanship. And for that, the blame lays solely on Air France and on their pilot training.
Pulling back to avoid overspeed is important, but stalling is certain death. And if the VMO and flutter flight-test videos are anything to go by the plane will definitely let the aircrew know they are getting there.
Again, training, alarm logic combined with a, in itself trivial equipment failure, led to the disaster. Picking only one of those factors, and all those I didn't mention, is just ignorant.
It works perfectly well in an Airbus when operating in normal law AIUI because of envelope protection. The problem is that it doesn't work in alternate law which was the active mode at the time. It suddenly became necessary to control the aircraft like a "real" aircraft without a computer altering the inputs, and the pilots weren't prepared for that.
1. The Turn (1993) by the same William Langewiesche quoted in Children of the Magenta:
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.ht...
2. The Crash of United Flight 232 (1989):
https://www.iamcraig.com/2010/11/15/the-crash-of-united-flig...
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-f...
This doesn't make backup cameras bad but it does require that new drivers be trained for what happens when they fail. This idea is fairly new for driving instruction but it used to be mandatory for pilot training.
It'd be nice if the regulations would make designing clean sheet airframes a viable business again.
Nicer airplane, though. Nowhere as cramped as a 152.
There's probably an advisory circular around somewhere that expounds on this, but it illustrates well the over regulated[0] nature of GA in America[1] where the results of regulation do not necessarily effect safety. We have 50 year old (on average) airframes flying around with engines designed in the 1940s (on leaded fuel, no less). It costs $40,000+ to rebuild these engines, due largely to laws about who can work on them and the monopolies on who can provide which engines. It's only like this because the FAA is, for whatever reason, unable to work to a real solution.
[0] This is a specific complaint, not an argument for a general rollback
[1] Yes, I am aware that aviation is even more regulated elsewhere-- and that costs are increased while participation is decreased in those places
Consequently, a lot of the innovation that's happening in General Aviation, including avionics, safety systems, ignition and fuel systems, is happening in the EAB world, with the Certified world catching up later.
There are no airspeed restrictions on experimental amateur built aircraft, other than the 250kt limit under 10,000 feet that applies to all aircraft.
There is absolutely no restriction on engine power output for E-AB aircraft.
The only significant restriction for the second owner of an experimental amateur built aircraft is that they cannot get a repairman’s certificate for the aircraft. This means they will have to hire a licensed A&P mechanic to perform the annual condition inspection. Other than that they can still maintain or modify the aircraft exactly as the original builder could.
I refer you to FAA advisory circular AC 20-27G for further info.
https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/advisory_circulars/...
The same goes for root cause analysis behind those lives lost, clear cut for actual losses, fuzzy for hypothetical losses.
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2011/06/16/revitalizing-th...
In the US you still need to go and purchase a supplemental type certificate for your specific aircraft type for this, I believe.
GA is a much smaller phenomenon in Europe than it is in the US but that's not because regulators are out to make it more complicated.
Sure, they are slow and inefficient, but these are not airliners where the point is just to get passengers to their destination as effectively as possible. Here, flying is the entire point, who cares if it is slow? And the fuel costs are less than buying and maintaining a more modern airplane when you already have a 50 year old but still usable 172.
Clean sheet airframes exist of course, like carbon fiber, high performance machines, good for those who want high performance, but usually, that's not a priority for flight schools.
Cessna 150.
But had a GPS and ADSB in/out.
Correctly leaning a piston engine to balance the power output, manifold pressure, EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), CHT (Cylinder Head Temperature), Peak Pressure Point and RPM is a fascinating subject. After a series of mysterious spontaneous combustion events in my home flight simulator, I found a 1999 article by John Deakin of AVweb, and was finally able to investigate and resolve the issue and take my Constellation up to FL220 - and back down again - with all four engines intact!
https://www.avweb.com/features_old/pelicans-perch-18mixture-...
I've found no other more informative article on the topic!
Particularly interesting to me is that the 'engine getting rough' behaviour that the C172 author describes is actually due to the variation of fuel flow to the different cylinders. When you lean the engine, the fuel flow isn't reduced identically to all the cylinders, causing the power output to become unbalanced. John Deakin points out that "virtually all factory big bore engines suffer from this uneven power distribution, which sets an artificial limit on just how lean we can run." Radial engines have superior fuel flow, because the fuel is driven by centrifugal force into each cylinder equally from a central pipe!
The Lockheed Super Constellation in my flight simulator shows no roughness when leaned, because it has radial engines. However, it's still susceptible to detonation due to the higher combustion speed when leaned. That's what was causing the fires. Interestingly, one feature which my flight simulator doesn't replicate - but was present on the Super Constellations in real life - is a 'spark retard' control. That would allow power to be squeezed out of the engines even more efficiently by letting the engines run leaner without detonation, artificially delaying the spark to compensate for the more violent combustion.
You can get balanced injectors[1] to solve this, and then you can more aggressively lean before the onset of roughness.
1: https://www.avweb.com/ownership/gamijectors-for-lycomings/
https://gami.com/gamijectors/order.php
Looks like they're still in business - smooth running engines at the bargain price of just US$1000!
EGT, Manifold Pressure, etc.. were on planes before WWII IIRC.
He finds an empty seat, a flight attendant comes over and has him pay for the ticket, all while the other attendants are offering drink service before the flight takes off and everyone is smoking.
I don't know how period accurate it is, and maybe it was embellished to make the plot smoother, but I couldn't help thinking how different air travel was 50 years ago in regards to being a passenger.
There's nothing I would like better than being able to get hold of a proper timetable for a given airport, but sadly this doesn't seem to be easy. Airlines book their slots months in advance, so its not as if they don't know when they'll be flying.
It was nice as it connected to a major international airport on the far side of town. Instead of an hour long drive each way it was a 15-minute drive, barely leaving the neighborhoods. Free parking at a generally safe part of town. Really easy to get in and out, no hassle.
It operated until 9/11 happened. From what I understand pretty much all commercial operations there really died out, as it was also an air national guard and coast guard base.
I used that airfield to get to Bush international several times back in the day. It was strange flying from one airfield to another in the same city to connect to my regularly scheduled flight.
Thanks for the memories!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellington_Field_Joint_Reserve_...
There was apparently another airfield in Clear Lake a loooong time ago next to NASA.
http://airfields-freeman.com/TX/Airfields_TX_Houston_SE.htm#...
I do remember walking on the tarmac yes. I had my ticket before but could seat wherever. I could just show up 60 to 30min before take off. I was also - as a kid - always asked by the stewardess if i wanted to visit the cockpit.
I remember telling that to a friend of mine who was 10 years younger and never flew before 9/11 and he thought I was making it up.
I have walked on the tarmac plenty of times in the last 10 years either at smaller airports or at very large airports. At large airports it's because smaller flights don't get to park right up to the terminal so you have to board a little bus that takes you from the airplane to the terminal and vice-versa.
At smaller airports it's because planes that small (100 or fewer passenger jets) don't really need the big walkways.
> I could just show up 60 to 30min before take off
I do that every time I fly domestic out of SFO. Super fast airport :)
Many international airports do the tarmac thing for smaller regional-ish flights. In Europe those regional flights can easily be to a different country.
Sure large airports need bridges or buses, but not small airports.
In the early 90's I showed up at a check in counter for a domestic flight from SYD 1 minute before scheduled departure time and the lady there apologized and told me that I missed the flight because it had left a little early.
This principle still works for Swiss and Japanese trains, but it might be a little harder for people to relate to for air travel nowadays!
checks
Sunday.
Showed up 45 minutes before the flight and still lamented how early it was. Despite security and passport control the longest time was spent walking through the duty free section.
I did have a nominated seat though.
This would be impossible today.
I wonder how much of this was move to deregulate vs. increased consolidation in today's market.
When living in Redwood City, from 2000 to 2001 I could leave my apartment, park my car at SFO, get through security, and get to the plane's gate within 50 minutes.
Even Heathrow T5 it’s only 10 minutes from entering he building to getting to the gate, 15 it you’re in B or C gates. I’ve done 33 minutes from Paddington to a gate for a flight leaving T2 in the past.
The entire process when I flew from Spain on Sunday took 6 minutes from signing the rental car form to sitting next to the gate.
I flew all over the country working on the first CAT scanners in hospitals in the late 1970s. I would show up for work with my packed suitcase in the trunk of my car knowing I would be sent somewhere as soon as I walked in the door of work. I'd often travel to two or three cities every week.
Once I was told which hospital I was going to, I would pull out my flight book--a printed thin manual that contained all the latest flights for all the major airports in the USA. I'd select which time suited me and either call the airline to book my flight or just drive out to the airport, walk up to the airline's ticketing counter, and pay by company credit card.
Now I'm talking about a flight I intend to take within an hour or two of being told where I was going to go. Not tomorrow or next week or next month. I needed to go right now. And I wasn't paying extra to do it!
Being the seasoned traveler, I knew not to bother to board the plane till it was ready to go. There were times when I'd arrive at the airport, parked my car, walk to the door of the airplane just as they were closing the door. (No security checking involved.)
The "stews" could spot us frequent flyer business travelers a mile away. They knew we didn't ask for much and often preferred to just be left alone.
How much these flights cost back then? How much is that inflation-adjusted? How much to they cost now?
In theory, IIRC, the smoking area was at the back. But in practice, the smoke and smell carried everywhere.
They decided to put us in the cockpit in the DC-8, which had five seats, pilot, co-pilot, engineer (?) and two more seats. We got to partake in the takeoff and landing as observers, whilst using the flight attendant’s seats during the flight. I it was great as kid to experience that. That isn’t likely to happen today. (Cockpits probably don’t even have extra space.)
This is too bad, VT has some great airports. I used to enjoy flying from B01 (Granville, NY) up to B06 (Basin Harbor, VT) for lunch. They had a nice restaurant right off the runway. Then I'd head over to KLEB or KRUT, fuel up, and then back to B01. This was in a 1949 Piper Clipper ca. 2004, handheld radio, VFR. Wasn't much different than described in the article, but I never spent much time in controlled airspace except for however many hours was required in training (mostly at KLEB IIRC).
Having learned sailing in the GPS-and-chartplotter era, I sort of miss that. Time to get buy the HO tables for the sextant, I suppose…
I never got to fly with all the modern automations, though. Fuel prices shot up drastically around the time I got my license, and so I let it expire after a couple of years.
There's a good quote in that “Children of Magenta” article: “We appear to be locked into a cycle in which automation begets the erosion of skills or the lack of skills in the first place and this then begets more automation.”
Though this comment from that 2015 article aged like milk: “Airbus planes, by the way, are no more or less safe than their main rival, Boeing.”
In both cases things had not really progressed much at all beyond his experience 50 years ago. I learned the slide rules and the paper plotting and all that stuff just like him. I did have an electronic flight computer that was like a handheld calculator, but learning it all by hand was required. It is not hard to understand at all for anyone who was headed towards engineering. The radios were super primitive and didn't even have electronic displays, they had rotating dials inside the radio that just spun to the number.
By the time I took lessons at Hanscom it was a Big Airport (TM) and it kind of stunk. The quaint taxiway names were not in use. I'd sit there and wait 20 minutes in line to take off behind traffic and pay for the whole thing.
If I somehow got the bug to go back and do it again and actually finish I would want to go to a smaller airport. But I'd probably end up back at Hanscom field cause at this point I live like a mile away and it would actually be convenient, even if I did have to sit there and hemorrhage money sitting in line to take off.
I did not really get the old man yelling at clouds vibe from him about glass cockpits. More like he finds the complication challenging.
Augmented reality on the flight deck is nearly there... The Airbus A220 (also known as the Bombardier C-Series) may optionally be purchased with heads-up-displays. Similarly, the Dash 8 Q400 can be retrofitted with a HUD. Curiously, HUDs are actually required for some instrument procedures in the USA.
But the mechanics could not get them to produce the rated power. They were all set up exactly according to the manual. Finally, the AF resurrected a few geezer mechanics from WW2. These fellows simply listed to the engines, asked for a screwdriver, and had them working properly with a turn of a screw.
Filet mignon, garlic-chive mashed potatoes, cheddar broccoli.
Today, peanuts, if any.
Crashes, lucky then, lucky now.
Fuel burn per passenger mile has also gone steadily down. I wonder what’s gotten more efficient: the automobile or the aircraft.
At least very few go out of their way to choose unnecessarily large aircraft for their job.
Rows of people (much/most of the plane) smoking, with a flimsy curtain dividing them from the on-smoking section. Getting off with your clothes smelling like an ashtray.
Happily, there were empty seats in the back and I was able to move. Thank God, because it was a trans-Atlantic flight.
People have forgotten just how unpleasant the stink of tobacco smoke was.
Most pilots leave the flight deck door open until the boarding doors close and they're quite happy to receive visitors.
I’ve not been on an airline that served peanuts for at least a decade. Too many allergy concerns.
I do it myself when talking to an older software engineer for the first time, it has a purpose - but it's not super interesting to outsiders.
It is however super interesting to curious outsiders. The average Joe can go doom-scroll somewhere else for that "amusement" dopamine rush.
They didn't write it to amuse or teach the general population. Not everything posted has to.