Flying things done when bored, or...

[flywithastick]

"hold my beer and watch this".

a buddy sent me thie pic attached. Wonder what this guy's doing? Checking the oil? going to reach out and try to get the engine started again?

http://www.geocities.com/aggiepilot87/Cub.jpg

anyone have any good stories or pics of things done when bored that really had no point or weren't too smart?

 

[rfeathe1]

I think someone worked some photo magic on this picture--study the shadows carefully & you will see what I mean. The shadow angles are not the same for the man as they are for the airplane.

 

[crash-proof]

Gotta love geocities! Ain't working.

When i was down in Rio last year I was told there was this legendary instructor from back in the day who taught in PT-19s. He had a student that was repetetively doing the same bad habits over and over (don't remember what), despite this guy's screams. So, he gets out on the wing, walks to the student on the wing and calmly points out the student's bad habits!!! This is in mid-air, mind you. Seems like that student quit flyin after that one.


Ah, here's another good one! There's a russian firm that specializes in ballet dancers....that dance on an AN-2 in midflight!!!
Here's the link:
http://www.itsrussian.com/ballet/about.htm

Good subcaption:
"We take our russian mail-order bride service to new heights!!!"

 

[flywithastick]

doesn't look like you can attach pics on this board. Sorry about it being unavailable... guess the free web services have limited number of hits/day - would make sense. anyone have a page where it can be posted?

 

[bigD]

flywithastick - send me an e-mail with the picture attached, and I'll post it.

 

[crash-proof]

Flying things done when bored, or...


(oops now i realize my previous post was a lil off-topic)


Not to make this turn too serious but...

Wasn't there a DC-10 crew who had nothing to do so they wound up one of the turbines to see how fast they could turn it? Seems like they overspun it and had a rotor burst, spraying shrapnel all over the fuselage. All in the name of boredom.

 

[Typhoon1244]

Wasn't there a DC-10 crew who had nothing to do so they wound up one of the turbines to see how fast they could turn it? Seems like they overspun it and had a rotor burst, spraying shrapnel all over the fuselage. All in the name of boredom.

It was a National Airlines DC-10 back in '73. The F/O was tending to a call of nature and the Captain and F/E got talking about the auto-throttle system...what would it do if the N1 tachometers were unpowered? They checked it out by engaging the autothrottles and pulling the breakers for all three N1 tachs. Nothing happened. They decided the auto-throttles must get their data from somewhere else and pushed the breakers back in.

All three engines immediately ran up to about 110% N1. Number 3 couldn't handle the strain and the fan wheel came apart, throwing shrapnel into the fuselage. One passenger was blown out when his window disintegrated.

They got the airplane on the ground in Albuquerque. The whole front end of the number 3 engine was gone.

...and that's why we have rules governing in-flight experimentation.

 

[bigD]

Here's flywithastick's image. Hopefully this will work better than Geocities!

Cub.jpg

 

[Typhoon1244]

1. Establish best glide speed.
2. Attempt to restart if feasible...

Well, a lot of us are flexible about the definition of "feasible!"


(I think it's a fake...)

 

[crash-proof]

Fake.
Look at the dark line separating his shiny head and the plane.

Creative, though!

 

[Typhoon1244]

Fake. Look at the dark line separating his shiny head and the plane.

Actually, I think the man and the plane are real, but the background has been altered to make it look like they're at altitude. (Why is the gray area at the bottom "digitized" white the rest of the picture is so sharp?)

 

[bigD]

Why is the gray area at the bottom "digitized" white the rest of the picture is so sharp?

Actually, that I can understand. JPEG compression does the most damage to areas of consistent color or hue. With heavy compression you'll commonly see areas of banding and blockiness. Take a picture with a lot of sky in the background, compress it heavily with JPEG, and you'll see similar banding in the sky. You don't see the banding in the rest of the picture because JPEG can't compress it as much.

I dunno - I've doctored a lot of images in Photoshop over the years. If this one is a fake, it's pretty good.

 

[flywithastick]

I dunno - I've doctored a lot of images in Photoshop over the years. If this one is a fake, it's pretty good. [/B]

I got a little follow up from a friend of a friend who said he'd seen an act in an airshow many moons ago where someone would strap themselves to the fuse tubing and climb out like this. It's supposed to be a legit picture.

 

[KickSave]

His pant leg appears to be flapping in the wind, the door is open and the shadows are all correct. But my question is, how fortunate is it to have a nearby plane and a camera handy just as your engine quits in flight to capture the moment... unless the guy staged the whole thing. Plus, what happens if he -does- get it restarted?

Cool pic though.

 

[bigD]

One bored pilot trick that seems to always get mentioned around here is renting a twin, taking it to some reasonably high altitude, and then shut down both engines, and feather the props. Then just glide for a bit.

Nobody has actually done it before, or at least admits to it.

 

[FastCargo]

Being bored...

Being bored in an airplane can be a dangerous thing...

Here's my story...not dangerous, but amusing.

Back when I was on active duty, instructing in the T-38, I was stationed at a base in CA, basically at sea level with 12k of runway. When T-38s (or most fighter-type aircraft) want multiple landings, they do closed patterns.

Think of a closed pattern as simply a compressed 'box' pattern, with the crosswind and base legs compressed...deconfiguring, pulling up to inside downwind, then configuring, and doing a descending 180 turn to final. Looks neat, plus saves a lot of time.

It was a nice, clear morning, and I had the first flight of the day...solo in fact (don't these stories always seem to start this way)! Being that I had done just about everything that could legally be done with a T-38, I was up for exploring new things. So, taking off, I started asking tower if I could proceed direct to inside downwind for an opposite direction touch & go.

Of course, there was no one else in the pattern...so why not? Basically, I was doing a closed pattern, except instead of a 180 climbing turn, I would do a 90, then a opposite direction 90 to get displacement and altitude to configure. Being the runway was so long, the field at sea level, and the temp cold, the aircraft easily met the minimum airspeeds to do these patterns.

Well, to make a short story long...I ended up doing approximately 30 patterns in about a hour...roughly a 'pass' every 2 minutes. My handheld GPS shows I never got outside about a mile from the base...and the trace looks like someone decided to redraw the symbol for infinity (a figure 8 on its side) about a billion times!

I felt pretty proud of myself...until I found out that afternoon the OG (basically my bosses' boss) was wondering who the hell was performing an airshow over his base with one of his aircraft. The good thing was I never was called directly, because enough people explained that what I did was legal and safe...if not exactly standard. As one of the squadron commanders put it..."You're having too much fun..."

You never know who is watching...

Fly safe!

FastCargo

PS I was flying T-38s in ACC at the time...different rules than AETC...

 

[dmspilot00]

Being bored in an airplane can be a dangerous thing...

So can being bored in a nuclear power plant...

...what would it do if the N1 tachometers were unpowered? They checked it out by engaging the autothrottles and pulling the breakers for all three N1 tachs. Nothing happened. They decided the auto-throttles must get their data from somewhere else and pushed the breakers back in.

All three engines immediately ran up to about 110% N1. Number 3 couldn't handle the strain and the fan wheel came apart, throwing shrapnel into the fuselage. One passenger was blown out when his window disintegrated.

They got the airplane on the ground in Albuquerque. The whole front end of the number 3 engine was gone.

...and that's why we have rules governing in-flight experimentation.

Reminds me of Chernobyl!

 

[wickedpilot]

bigD
Here's flywithastick's image. Hopefully this will work better than Geocities!

Cub.jpg

Interesting...that N-number came back w/ no results on landings expanded search.

Personally, I agree with Typhoon1244. The cub & pilot are real, but the backround is superimposed (sp). Doesn't look like there's much wind effect on that guys pants/shirt. And as for the tire "not" being compressed, that could easy be "inflated" with a little black smudge in photoeditor.