I am an instrument rated private pilot, an electrical engineer, and a ham radio enthusiast with nearly 30 years experience.
If most electronic gagetry is working properly, there is usually no hazard or concern for anyone. However, we have no guarantee that everyone's PDA/Cell Phone/Laptop/GameBoy/MP3 Player or whatever hasn't been stressed in some funky way which still leaves it operational.
Phones get dropped, dunked in water, cracked, and so forth. They may still "work" though. It's things like that which can accidentally radiate all sorts of unintentional things. Is it frequent? Thank goodness, no. But it can happen and it does happen.
That's why you're likely to see the FAA continue to keep 14CFR91.21 on the books for a long time to come.
In the real world, the Pilot In Command is responsible for taking whatever measures are needed to maintain the safety of flight. That means that while in the air, they have much the same authority as a captain of a ship at sea. Thus, a Pilot In Command who doesn't feel comfortable because the navigation gear seems to be acting up is allowed to use whatever means necessary to stop all gadget use.
I know most of you think "what could go wrong?" and feel you know more than the Pilot flying your airplane. But having occupied all the various seats myself, I can honestly say that while I'm cruising down an ILS in low visibility, I'll tell you to shut off the damned phone.
If you don't like it, go get a pilot's license and risk your own life. But I'll be damned if I'll risk mine just so that my passengers can yak about meaningless drivel on their phones for just a few more minutes.
I'm old enough to remember the 1970's and I DO remember my science teacher preaching the global cooling hooey.
Let's review for one more time: Do we know the earth is warming? Yeah, it probably is. But do we know what efforts will be effective or how to measure the results? No. The models just aren't that good yet.
First, if you've ever looked at what she probably sprays on her hair to hold it in place, you'd have to agree that just about anything could do that. Hint: I use hairspray to launch spuds more than 500 Feet in the air.
Second, the more dense the energy content of the battery, the more likely it will exhibit extraordinary exothermic tendencies if shorted. It could be dropped in water and still "work". Yet, it's not healthy.
Put two and two together and what could happen?
Look, we already have warnings in manuals and such. We are drowning in warning labels everywhere. Would yet another warning get noticed?
We place warnings on bleach not to mix it with other cleaners such as ammonia. Yet every so often some fool does it anyway. It's such a routine event that it barely makes the news most of the time. Things like this show me that there are limits to warning labels.
The fundamental issue is that if you use allow a product with any latent energy in it to be used millions of below average people, someone is going to get hurt. I'm sorry, I really doubt it has as much to do with the battery as it does the user's lack of caution or awareness. And frankly, we can only stick so many warning labels on daily life. Let's save the labels for the non-intuitive hazards that matter.
Despite their four decades of technology back then, tubes still had relatively short lifetimes compared to relay technology. When building a device with thousands of these little things, one has to take in to account the likelihood of individual component failure.
One of the famous tweaks which made ENIAC possible was the use of reduced filament voltage so that the tubes would last longer, and that power to the system was never turned off. Still, the best they were ever able to achive was about 116 hours without a tube failure.
I agree that some perspective is appropriate here. However, allow me to ask you one question in return:
Of the ELTs you've searched for, how many were the real thing that went off when an aircraft crashed and the survivors were rescued alive?
Wait, wait, don't tell me: Damned few. If it was greater than 1% I'll be surprised. I have to argue that the whole ELT concept for private civil aviation was a crock. But it was mandated by a bunch of ignorant congresscritters because of one terrible accident and therefore it had to happen.
Frankly, I think regulation to require private aviators to carry a handheld radio with a spare set of batteries in a durable case is probably a better idea than the ELT concept. It's more survivable, it's more useful, and frankly, given the lousy record those G switches have had, it's far less prone to false alarms.
I'd rather spend $400 on a really good handheld radio in a pelican case to be kept under my seat than spend three times that on an ELT which probably won't go off when I'll need it the most.
For the rest of you folks chew on this: Private civil aircraft are designed to crash land. The cabin integrity is designed to withstand forces up to nine Gs during a crash. Many a forced landing does not have anything close to that level of force. Thus, even if you eliminate all the false alarms, a real crash landing might set off the G switches maybe half the time at best.
This is not a design of the G switch problem. It's the wrong assumption that most crashes have an impact strong enough to set off the ELT but can allow for the occasional rough landing or Clear Air Turbulence. The difference between the two simply isn't that great.
Anyway, a backup handheld radio is also useful in case you suffer a total electrical failure in the airplane...
For those of you who might be wondering what this costs: Replacing an ELT on an aircraft is not like replacing an EPRIB on a ship. You need to ensure the shock switches fire appropriately, and that the unit is mounted such that it will survive a crash.
The last time I explored that option for our airplane we were staring at something around $1200 to do this upgrade. It's hardly chump change.
Further, we need to get our navigation gear coordinated so that the 406 MHz signal has GPS to feed to the world. That's not easy to do for aircraft without panel mounted GPS navigation receivers.
Also, new regulations regarding the pointless ADIZ around Washington DC practically require pilots to monitor 121.5 to respond to an intercept if one happens. If you hear callsign "huntress" on the air and they're operating in your vicinity, remember to be on your very best behavior.
I was talking about sludge, which is quite a bit removed (and concentrated) from the state of raw sewage. As for the soap, if you can separate that and feed it through thermal depolymerization it would be good. Lauryl sulfate (derived from dodecanol) ought to be just the kind of thing that produces good hydrocarbons as output. Ditto stearates.
Uhh, what about bleach? What about phosphates? Yeah, I know, the really widespread uses of phosphates has been banned, but you'll still see some evidence of it here and there.
Anaerobes seem to require days (high-temperature) or even weeks (low-temperature). The literature I've seen on producing "gobar gas" from manure talks about cycles on the order of 60 days. On the other hand, you are not going to be feeding raw sewage through this process; it's going to take the settled solids and enough water to make a slurry, and that's pretty much it. What's your ratio of solids to total volume?
Even if you were talking about sludge, we can manage to get enough storage together for a few days. It might be feasible to hang on to about a week's worth of that stuff if there were a motive to do so --but not a month or more.
I don't have typical solids to total volume number handy, but it is normally only a few percent of the total volume of water. Even then, if you have to accumulate this stuff over weeks for it to produce much energy, you're still looking at an extremely large and potentially dangerous storage problem (from the explosive gas it would produce).
The CARB is already requiring afterburners on bakeries to destroy "organic vapor" produced by yeast, so I suspect that burning the vapor may be a requirement. As for what it is, who knows; do you have any idea what organic byproducts of methanogens have a high enough vapor pressure to come off with the gas? I don't. But if you burn them with the methane (and they don't contain sulfur) you ought to be just fine. The people living nearby would probably like it better than the current vapors.
Most neighbors don't even know what those sewage smells are. They expect to smell decaying feces and they don't. So they're happy.
As for burning this stuff, we have one plant with a sludge furnace. We try to dewater the sludge enough so that we don't incur ridiculous transportation costs. This one plant was requried to install several afterburner rings to help get rid of the organic vapors.
If that's the sort of organic vapor these folks are talking about, it's going to cost an awful lot of that energy they produce to safely get rid of these things. Afterburners don't run cheap.
I don't see any reason why dewatered sludge couldn't be fed through an anything-into-oil plant and converted to energy more cleanly than by incineration.
My employer is a water and sewer utility. Allow me to inject some ugly realities in to this beautiful theory.
First, while most of us think of toilet output when we think of sewage, the reality of most municipal wastewater is that it has loads of soap in it. In fact, the smells you encounter most often at a wastewater plant are really kind of a musty perfume-like smell of soap. Most of what we get is not manure-like as it might be if it came from a chicken farm.
Second, did anyone notice that little item on the technology and products part of the web site marked "organic vapor"? What is that? Is it recoverable? Can you burn it for fuel without incurring the wrath of the EPA? Who would want to live anywhere near that kind of thing?
Third, there needs to be a plan for what happens in case of a storm. The composition of the watewater can change dramatically in situations like that.
OK, so maybe this particular idea isn't so hot. What about other co-generation ideas? Well, in today's growing cities the wastewater doesn't spend enough time in the pipes for anerobic digestion to get a significant start. So, we'd need a storage facility somewhere. Reality check: A typical plant in our system processes around 20 to 30 Million Gallons per Day (MGD). We also support a large regional facility which can process 200 MGD. Where in the world are you going to find a holding tank to store that much sewage for any length of time? The beauty of aerobic processes is that most of the water is back in the river in about eight hours. Can the same be done with Anerobic digestion?
Also, what does one do in the winter when temperatures get low enough to inhibit or slow bacterial activity? Heating that much water is not cheap in anyone's book.
Believe me, for what we spend on sludge hauling contracts, if there were any better solution, we'd jump at it even if it were more expensive in the short term. The problem is that they all have serious flaws when you take a closer look. We all wish there were some sort of magic bullet here, but there really isn't.
Fact: Moller has been making flying car claims since the mid 1970s at least. Not one has been on a manned test flight. His claims about engine performance look awfully suspicious.
Fact: Propellers make most of the noise. It's not just the engine, it's the tips of the propeller getting close to or even breaking the sound barrier. Some of this noise could be mitigated with ducted fans, but this technology has some difficult weight penalty and efficiency issues to overcome.
Fact: Engine technology will have to make yet another leap in efficiency and weight before any of these new aircraft will come about.
And finally: If anyone thinks flying is simply a matter of driving through the sky while following a moving map display, think again. There are still major hazards for those who do not understand vehicle performance, weather, wake turbulence, traffic management, and so forth.
Expect pilot licenses of these new vehicles to remain at some above average level of proficiency for years to come. No, I would not expect a typical suburban family to pile their kids in to an aircraft and take off from their back yard any time soon.
But on the average an SAT score (under the right circumstances, meaning they weren't taught to take the test) do provide a pretty good identifier as to who can and will keep their motivation and who can grasp knowledge at the appropriate level.
Most who take the SAT with any aspirations toward getting in to college will take the silly prep courses. Second, I disagree with the last half of what you said. Most of the research I've read (and I'll admit that it wasn't an exhaustive search) indicates that the SAT is only a useful predictor for the first year of college. After that its utility falls on the floor. It's not even a good indicator of who will graduate. Now, if that's not an indictment of the silly test, I don't know what is.
If a college degree was a good predictor of such things I might agree with you. Hell, if a Professional Engineer certificate were some sort of predictor that a person were a good engineer, I might ask for one of those too.
However, I've known just as many idiots with these "merit badges" as I've known good people. Basically the degree is just about as worthless a predictor as the SAT was/is with college performance.
The only certificates which mean much to me are those which require a certain degree of apprenticeship and demonstrated performance --not just a diploma showing that you've graduated from class.
Speaking as one who has a degree, my response to you is BALDERDASH!
Some people are simply very well organized and know what they're doing even before they get to college. I was one of them. My degree is in electrical engineering. But most of what I learned, I got from building ham radio gear.
Likewise, most of what I know from computer science is from playing with it as it evolved from mainframes to the S100 CP/M systems, to early versions of DOS and so on and so forth.
Yes, I have a degree that says I know something. Yes, I did learn some useful mathematics. However the rest of the experience was really OJT.
The problem is getting an employer to recognize and reward such experience and independent learning. We are stuck in a society where Human Resources maggots label us by virtue of what scouting badges we have achived --not what we can actually do or understand.
And then so many turn around and wonder at the mediocrity of today's graduates...
I agree and I'll add this little tidbit of data: The motor needs to be wired anyway. The electricity has to get in there somehow. Why not standardize on a fiber connector and an ASIC powered off of a CT in the peckerhead?
Geeze. It's not the cost of the wire, folks, It's the labor you spend pulling it.
I've seen similar things said about aircraft. The concept isn't wrong, but it does miss an extremely important feature: Privacy.
Right now, anyone, including insurance companies, can take this evidence gathered by the car and use it against you. There needs to be a clause of some sort which limits the use of this information strictly to accident investigators for the purpose of designing better cars --not for prosecuting or penalizing the driver. The only work around which I think might be socially acceptable is if a court explicitly subpoenas the data because it has reasonable cause to suspect that the parties in the accident are lying.
Our two party system is too vulnerable to corruption.
Umm, last I looked, the two party system in the US was no worse than most other multi-party democratic governments. The problem is the sheer size of government, making it hard to track and hard to assign blame. People need to remember that party affiliation is merely a guide, not a prediction of what a specific person will do once in office.
The law exists because the radio airwaves are theoretically a public trust. The government has parcelled out those wavelengths on your behalf, which is why you don't get to use them for your own broadcasts.
Whoa! You're mixing an awful lot of stuff in the same pot here.
First, according to current policy at the FCC, the airwaves are NOT a public trust. They're more like real-estate zoned for business.
Second, the FCC zones various bands and assigns licenses so that listeners can know where to "go" to hear what they're seeking. They don't regulate content. They are a zoning board of the airwaves.
Here's the rub: If a few small groups end up controlling access to most of the available channels in an area of the US, that's their investment. It's hardly any different than a city zoning for newspaper printing and allowing only enough such slots that one or two publishers is pretty much all that anyone can expect to find.
Now, regarding the new payola: Well, if you put your name on it, it's no different than someone placing an ad designed to look just like regular news print on one whole page of the newspaper. The key is that people understand that it is not the newspaper publisher, but a customer who is writing this stuff.
I happen to take a very dim view of most broadcasters. NPR is innovative, but they still seek listeners just like everyone else.
The problem is that radio is such a big business that everyone is trying to be everything to all listeners. It doesn't fly. Real creativity is not something that most people appreciate much. Real creativity will annoy most people but enthrall a few.
However, as a mass media source, radio can't afford to broadcast stuff like that. Any attempt to please everyone all the time is likely to please nobody most of the time.
Groan. This is not as unique as most would have you think.
First, most PCS phone antennas don't have to be shortened. The wavelength is such that it's not hard to get 1/4 wave across your typical portable phone. It's a mere 4.1 cm.
Just so that most of you understand, a monopole antenna is really half of a folded dipole. It has a wire going up and then it goes back down the pole to a field of radials. It has a characteristic impedance of half what a folded dipole would be --about 150 ohms.
In contrast, a normal quarter wave vertical has a characteristic impedance of about 37 ohms (assuming a very good radial system).
Now, remember the part about heating up the antenna? The reason it happens with very short vertical antennas is because there is a current node right there at the base feedpoint. Even a small amount of resistance will generate heat. As you shorten the antenna the characteristic impedance drops. For anything less than a tenth of a wave long, it can drop to less than an ohm. At that point, ANY antenna resistance, even the normal resistance of copper or silver, becomes very relevant. If someone were to use a superconductor, it might make a very big difference.
So a shortened vertical isn't such a good deal. We use them because sometimes that's all we can afford to install on a mobile system. This is why most hams who operate on longer wavelength bands try to locate the loading coil closer to the middle of the antenna. It gets the loading coil away from the worst of the current node, reducing i^2r losses, and increasing efficiency.
Now, take the monopole: The current node is near the top of a quarter wave monopole, not the bottom. We still need a loading coil, however, so that we can match the impedance to something we'd expect a transmission line to have. If we shorten the monopole, we move the current node. The key is to move the current node away from the loading coil, because loading coils don't radiate well.
Thus, what this designer has done is to distribute the loading coil of a shortened monopole so that he avoids the current node.
There are problems, however. First, you still need an effective radial system. Without one, you simply won't have anything that radiates worth a damn. Second, while coil Q factor is less relevant where it stays away from the current node, it still has to be damned good. Further, the current node at the top needs to have very good surface conductivity.
Finally, no matter what, a shortened vertical antenna will have a shortened bandwidth, proportional to how much the antenna itself is shorter than a regular 1/4 wave. TNSTAAFL.
Don't misunderstand, a short antenna doesn't have to be inefficient. However efficiency is not the same thing as gain. Short antennas can not have much gain. That's a matter of physics and mathematics. And the shorter an efficient antenna gets, the less bandwidth it can cover. Despite the steady parade of publicists, that's the reality. Don't buy any snake oil, folks... This isn't really that novel.
Just because the FCC is doing its job poorly does not mean the job shouldn't be done.
I've seen similar trollish opinion pieces before. In Mr. McCullagh's piece he makes arguments based upon "what would have beens" and blames bad policies on the FCC though they were clearly instructed by Congress how to act.
As far as broadcasting is concerned, we need standards so that others can manufacture radios. One of the big problems with the Software Defined Radio designs is that the more bands you try to cover, the harder it is to keep the sensitivity and dynamic range performance (never mind the price) reasonable. We need some organization to take care of allocating and standardizing band usage so that we can expect a certain performance from our radios. We also need to protect communications for things such as air traffic control, marine distress frequencies, police, fire, and other such emergency activities. There is also a need to reserve bands for radio astronomy.
The idea that we can simply let the market run things is utterly unworkable. Who do you call if and when interference happens? At what point is it simply inadvertent radiation and at what point is it truly interference?
Most courts of law are ill equipped to handle the technical details of describing interference intensity and it's effect on signal to noise ratios, coverage areas, and so forth. That's why the FCC regulates things.
On another note: The FCC didn't write the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1996. Congress did. Likewise, the FCC looked to Congress for clarification of how far the jurisdiction of the federally backed Bell System should extend.
Mr. McCullagh has it wrong. Though there are plenty of things they do poorly, the problem isn't so much with the FCC. The problem is Congress. And because he didn't take the time to look up the facts, Mr. McCullagh's trollish opinion piece does nothing to illuminate the situation.
...he's a very wiley and literate twit. The prose he makes up (and it is really no more than that) does have a certain self consistency which reads very convincingly if you didn't know any of the background.
I have to admire the careful way he dances around the issue of Intellectual Property Rights. It's a fact of life that when your IP hits digital media, it becomes very easy to make perfect copies on an individual basis for next to nothing besides the cost of bandwidth.
Unfortunately, that fact of life is becoming a serious concern to everyone with a stake in intellectual property of their own. Ken Brown uses this fear very adroitly by saying that giving away software for free devalues other software.
What he doesn't realize is that the software industry really isn't about software. It's about service. Anyone who has ever had a plumber visit their house to make repairs knows that the vast majority of the bill has almost nothing to do with the parts, and everything to do with getting someone there armed with tools and experience to fix the problem.
Similarly, the RIAA would have us think that it's all about the parts, not the performers. But ask any professional musician across the economic spectrum and they'll all tell you that they make their real money going on tour.
Ken Brown would have us think it's about the parts, not the people. He may be pushing an agenda full of half truths, but he's not stupid.
His view is panders to those who insist on thinking that the plumber is just selling them bits of pipe, a valve and a washer or two; the electrician is just selling wire, boxes, outlets, and wire nuts; and the software industry is selling a box with a CD in it.
As with any open source system, water is not free. If you want water pure enough to drink safely with confidence, you have to filter it yourself.
The TCO of Open Source packages such as OO is not free. However, the point needs to be made that SOMEONE is going to have to administer this package no matter where it comes from. Microsoft would like most business managers to think that these administrators could be high school kids. Consultants of various colors and sizes would have them think that Open Source requires real talent and experience.
So, the air traffic controller gets to send instructions in a text form straight up to the airliner in a format acceptable for the FMS to use. The autopilot is slaved to the FMS and so I guess the air traffic controller is telling the aircraft where to go.
My question is why anyone thinks this is a good thing? What happens here that saves fuel?
It may come as a surprise to most of you, but air traffic controllers know shockingly little about what performance to expect from the aircraft they "control". They know even less about the weather those aircraft fly in. Their radars aren't designed to show weather. They're designed to show little bits of metal in the clouds.
Air traffic controllers don't often have a feel for ice formation aloft. They don't know what the cloud formations look like ahead, so they can't know in advance if they're likely to send you in to severe turbulence. Terrain is not often mapped on their scopes, and sometimes they make mistakes. Thats why TCAS and GPWS are found in nearly all the large airliners and why the Capstone project with ADS-B has been such a big success in Alaska.
I'm not belittling air traffic controllers. They have some incredibly complex staging and sequencing work to do to bring large fleets of airliners in to an airport in a timely fashion, while allowing for transitory traffic through the vicinity. They do this job amazingly well with very few problems. But the reasons I just cited are honest and valid situations where ordinary pilots routinely refuse the traffic instructions given to them by the center and terminal controllers.
Finally, I don't suppose most of you know what it's like to be IFR in the goo, receive a hand-off to the next sector and then play 20 questions with the new air traffic controller because s/he has no idea who you are, where you came from, or where you're trying to get to. Even as good as these folks in ATC are, they screw up just like the pilots do.
Pilots have a reason for being just as Air Traffic Controllers. I don't understand why mixing the two professions in to one saves anyone anything.
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I am an instrument rated private pilot, an electrical engineer, and a ham radio enthusiast with nearly 30 years experience.
If most electronic gagetry is working properly, there is usually no hazard or concern for anyone. However, we have no guarantee that everyone's PDA/Cell Phone/Laptop/GameBoy/MP3 Player or whatever hasn't been stressed in some funky way which still leaves it operational.
Phones get dropped, dunked in water, cracked, and so forth. They may still "work" though. It's things like that which can accidentally radiate all sorts of unintentional things. Is it frequent? Thank goodness, no. But it can happen and it does happen.
That's why you're likely to see the FAA continue to keep 14CFR91.21 on the books for a long time to come.
In the real world, the Pilot In Command is responsible for taking whatever measures are needed to maintain the safety of flight. That means that while in the air, they have much the same authority as a captain of a ship at sea. Thus, a Pilot In Command who doesn't feel comfortable because the navigation gear seems to be acting up is allowed to use whatever means necessary to stop all gadget use.
I know most of you think "what could go wrong?" and feel you know more than the Pilot flying your airplane. But having occupied all the various seats myself, I can honestly say that while I'm cruising down an ILS in low visibility, I'll tell you to shut off the damned phone.
If you don't like it, go get a pilot's license and risk your own life. But I'll be damned if I'll risk mine just so that my passengers can yak about meaningless drivel on their phones for just a few more minutes.
Very well, anonymous coward.
I'm old enough to remember the 1970's and I DO remember my science teacher preaching the global cooling hooey.
Let's review for one more time: Do we know the earth is warming? Yeah, it probably is. But do we know what efforts will be effective or how to measure the results? No. The models just aren't that good yet.
So, what's all this information good for?
First, if you've ever looked at what she probably sprays on her hair to hold it in place, you'd have to agree that just about anything could do that. Hint: I use hairspray to launch spuds more than 500 Feet in the air.
Second, the more dense the energy content of the battery, the more likely it will exhibit extraordinary exothermic tendencies if shorted. It could be dropped in water and still "work". Yet, it's not healthy.
Put two and two together and what could happen?
Look, we already have warnings in manuals and such. We are drowning in warning labels everywhere. Would yet another warning get noticed?
We place warnings on bleach not to mix it with other cleaners such as ammonia. Yet every so often some fool does it anyway. It's such a routine event that it barely makes the news most of the time. Things like this show me that there are limits to warning labels.
The fundamental issue is that if you use allow a product with any latent energy in it to be used millions of below average people, someone is going to get hurt. I'm sorry, I really doubt it has as much to do with the battery as it does the user's lack of caution or awareness. And frankly, we can only stick so many warning labels on daily life. Let's save the labels for the non-intuitive hazards that matter.
Despite their four decades of technology back then, tubes still had relatively short lifetimes compared to relay technology. When building a device with thousands of these little things, one has to take in to account the likelihood of individual component failure.
One of the famous tweaks which made ENIAC possible was the use of reduced filament voltage so that the tubes would last longer, and that power to the system was never turned off. Still, the best they were ever able to achive was about 116 hours without a tube failure.
I agree that some perspective is appropriate here. However, allow me to ask you one question in return:
Of the ELTs you've searched for, how many were the real thing that went off when an aircraft crashed and the survivors were rescued alive?
Wait, wait, don't tell me: Damned few. If it was greater than 1% I'll be surprised. I have to argue that the whole ELT concept for private civil aviation was a crock. But it was mandated by a bunch of ignorant congresscritters because of one terrible accident and therefore it had to happen.
Frankly, I think regulation to require private aviators to carry a handheld radio with a spare set of batteries in a durable case is probably a better idea than the ELT concept. It's more survivable, it's more useful, and frankly, given the lousy record those G switches have had, it's far less prone to false alarms.
I'd rather spend $400 on a really good handheld radio in a pelican case to be kept under my seat than spend three times that on an ELT which probably won't go off when I'll need it the most.
For the rest of you folks chew on this: Private civil aircraft are designed to crash land. The cabin integrity is designed to withstand forces up to nine Gs during a crash. Many a forced landing does not have anything close to that level of force. Thus, even if you eliminate all the false alarms, a real crash landing might set off the G switches maybe half the time at best.
This is not a design of the G switch problem. It's the wrong assumption that most crashes have an impact strong enough to set off the ELT but can allow for the occasional rough landing or Clear Air Turbulence. The difference between the two simply isn't that great.
Anyway, a backup handheld radio is also useful in case you suffer a total electrical failure in the airplane...
Mod parent up.
For those of you who might be wondering what this costs: Replacing an ELT on an aircraft is not like replacing an EPRIB on a ship. You need to ensure the shock switches fire appropriately, and that the unit is mounted such that it will survive a crash.
The last time I explored that option for our airplane we were staring at something around $1200 to do this upgrade. It's hardly chump change.
Further, we need to get our navigation gear coordinated so that the 406 MHz signal has GPS to feed to the world. That's not easy to do for aircraft without panel mounted GPS navigation receivers.
Also, new regulations regarding the pointless ADIZ around Washington DC practically require pilots to monitor 121.5 to respond to an intercept if one happens. If you hear callsign "huntress" on the air and they're operating in your vicinity, remember to be on your very best behavior.
Uhh, what about bleach? What about phosphates? Yeah, I know, the really widespread uses of phosphates has been banned, but you'll still see some evidence of it here and there.
Even if you were talking about sludge, we can manage to get enough storage together for a few days. It might be feasible to hang on to about a week's worth of that stuff if there were a motive to do so --but not a month or more.
I don't have typical solids to total volume number handy, but it is normally only a few percent of the total volume of water. Even then, if you have to accumulate this stuff over weeks for it to produce much energy, you're still looking at an extremely large and potentially dangerous storage problem (from the explosive gas it would produce).
Most neighbors don't even know what those sewage smells are. They expect to smell decaying feces and they don't. So they're happy.
As for burning this stuff, we have one plant with a sludge furnace. We try to dewater the sludge enough so that we don't incur ridiculous transportation costs. This one plant was requried to install several afterburner rings to help get rid of the organic vapors.
If that's the sort of organic vapor these folks are talking about, it's going to cost an awful lot of that energy they produce to safely get rid of these things. Afterburners don't run cheap.
My employer is a water and sewer utility. Allow me to inject some ugly realities in to this beautiful theory.
First, while most of us think of toilet output when we think of sewage, the reality of most municipal wastewater is that it has loads of soap in it. In fact, the smells you encounter most often at a wastewater plant are really kind of a musty perfume-like smell of soap. Most of what we get is not manure-like as it might be if it came from a chicken farm.
Second, did anyone notice that little item on the technology and products part of the web site marked "organic vapor"? What is that? Is it recoverable? Can you burn it for fuel without incurring the wrath of the EPA? Who would want to live anywhere near that kind of thing?
Third, there needs to be a plan for what happens in case of a storm. The composition of the watewater can change dramatically in situations like that.
OK, so maybe this particular idea isn't so hot. What about other co-generation ideas? Well, in today's growing cities the wastewater doesn't spend enough time in the pipes for anerobic digestion to get a significant start. So, we'd need a storage facility somewhere. Reality check: A typical plant in our system processes around 20 to 30 Million Gallons per Day (MGD). We also support a large regional facility which can process 200 MGD. Where in the world are you going to find a holding tank to store that much sewage for any length of time? The beauty of aerobic processes is that most of the water is back in the river in about eight hours. Can the same be done with Anerobic digestion?
Also, what does one do in the winter when temperatures get low enough to inhibit or slow bacterial activity? Heating that much water is not cheap in anyone's book.
Believe me, for what we spend on sludge hauling contracts, if there were any better solution, we'd jump at it even if it were more expensive in the short term. The problem is that they all have serious flaws when you take a closer look. We all wish there were some sort of magic bullet here, but there really isn't.
Sewage is usually the term used for the wastewater that comes from homes. Wastewater is more generic and it can include industrial wastes as well.
Fact: Moller has been making flying car claims since the mid 1970s at least. Not one has been on a manned test flight. His claims about engine performance look awfully suspicious.
Fact: Propellers make most of the noise. It's not just the engine, it's the tips of the propeller getting close to or even breaking the sound barrier. Some of this noise could be mitigated with ducted fans, but this technology has some difficult weight penalty and efficiency issues to overcome.
Fact: Engine technology will have to make yet another leap in efficiency and weight before any of these new aircraft will come about.
And finally: If anyone thinks flying is simply a matter of driving through the sky while following a moving map display, think again. There are still major hazards for those who do not understand vehicle performance, weather, wake turbulence, traffic management, and so forth.
Expect pilot licenses of these new vehicles to remain at some above average level of proficiency for years to come. No, I would not expect a typical suburban family to pile their kids in to an aircraft and take off from their back yard any time soon.
Most who take the SAT with any aspirations toward getting in to college will take the silly prep courses. Second, I disagree with the last half of what you said. Most of the research I've read (and I'll admit that it wasn't an exhaustive search) indicates that the SAT is only a useful predictor for the first year of college. After that its utility falls on the floor. It's not even a good indicator of who will graduate. Now, if that's not an indictment of the silly test, I don't know what is.
If a college degree was a good predictor of such things I might agree with you. Hell, if a Professional Engineer certificate were some sort of predictor that a person were a good engineer, I might ask for one of those too.
However, I've known just as many idiots with these "merit badges" as I've known good people. Basically the degree is just about as worthless a predictor as the SAT was/is with college performance.
The only certificates which mean much to me are those which require a certain degree of apprenticeship and demonstrated performance --not just a diploma showing that you've graduated from class.
Speaking as one who has a degree, my response to you is BALDERDASH!
Some people are simply very well organized and know what they're doing even before they get to college. I was one of them. My degree is in electrical engineering. But most of what I learned, I got from building ham radio gear.
Likewise, most of what I know from computer science is from playing with it as it evolved from mainframes to the S100 CP/M systems, to early versions of DOS and so on and so forth.
Yes, I have a degree that says I know something. Yes, I did learn some useful mathematics. However the rest of the experience was really OJT.
The problem is getting an employer to recognize and reward such experience and independent learning. We are stuck in a society where Human Resources maggots label us by virtue of what scouting badges we have achived --not what we can actually do or understand.
And then so many turn around and wonder at the mediocrity of today's graduates...
Mod Parent up, please.
I agree and I'll add this little tidbit of data: The motor needs to be wired anyway. The electricity has to get in there somehow. Why not standardize on a fiber connector and an ASIC powered off of a CT in the peckerhead?
Geeze. It's not the cost of the wire, folks, It's the labor you spend pulling it.
There is some dispute as to whether the "Luxembourg Effect" was really there. It may have been IMD mixing with nearby corrosion or other radios.
I've seen similar things said about aircraft. The concept isn't wrong, but it does miss an extremely important feature: Privacy.
Right now, anyone, including insurance companies, can take this evidence gathered by the car and use it against you. There needs to be a clause of some sort which limits the use of this information strictly to accident investigators for the purpose of designing better cars --not for prosecuting or penalizing the driver. The only work around which I think might be socially acceptable is if a court explicitly subpoenas the data because it has reasonable cause to suspect that the parties in the accident are lying.
Umm, last I looked, the two party system in the US was no worse than most other multi-party democratic governments. The problem is the sheer size of government, making it hard to track and hard to assign blame. People need to remember that party affiliation is merely a guide, not a prediction of what a specific person will do once in office.
Actually, I was just trying to be funny. Clearly I need to work on my delivery...
Whoa! You're mixing an awful lot of stuff in the same pot here.
First, according to current policy at the FCC, the airwaves are NOT a public trust. They're more like real-estate zoned for business.
Second, the FCC zones various bands and assigns licenses so that listeners can know where to "go" to hear what they're seeking. They don't regulate content. They are a zoning board of the airwaves.
Here's the rub: If a few small groups end up controlling access to most of the available channels in an area of the US, that's their investment. It's hardly any different than a city zoning for newspaper printing and allowing only enough such slots that one or two publishers is pretty much all that anyone can expect to find.
Now, regarding the new payola: Well, if you put your name on it, it's no different than someone placing an ad designed to look just like regular news print on one whole page of the newspaper. The key is that people understand that it is not the newspaper publisher, but a customer who is writing this stuff.
I happen to take a very dim view of most broadcasters. NPR is innovative, but they still seek listeners just like everyone else.
The problem is that radio is such a big business that everyone is trying to be everything to all listeners. It doesn't fly. Real creativity is not something that most people appreciate much. Real creativity will annoy most people but enthrall a few.
However, as a mass media source, radio can't afford to broadcast stuff like that. Any attempt to please everyone all the time is likely to please nobody most of the time.
And now you know why radio sucks.
Groan. This is not as unique as most would have you think.
First, most PCS phone antennas don't have to be shortened. The wavelength is such that it's not hard to get 1/4 wave across your typical portable phone. It's a mere 4.1 cm.
Just so that most of you understand, a monopole antenna is really half of a folded dipole. It has a wire going up and then it goes back down the pole to a field of radials. It has a characteristic impedance of half what a folded dipole would be --about 150 ohms.
In contrast, a normal quarter wave vertical has a characteristic impedance of about 37 ohms (assuming a very good radial system).
Now, remember the part about heating up the antenna? The reason it happens with very short vertical antennas is because there is a current node right there at the base feedpoint. Even a small amount of resistance will generate heat. As you shorten the antenna the characteristic impedance drops. For anything less than a tenth of a wave long, it can drop to less than an ohm. At that point, ANY antenna resistance, even the normal resistance of copper or silver, becomes very relevant. If someone were to use a superconductor, it might make a very big difference.
So a shortened vertical isn't such a good deal. We use them because sometimes that's all we can afford to install on a mobile system. This is why most hams who operate on longer wavelength bands try to locate the loading coil closer to the middle of the antenna. It gets the loading coil away from the worst of the current node, reducing i^2r losses, and increasing efficiency.
Now, take the monopole: The current node is near the top of a quarter wave monopole, not the bottom. We still need a loading coil, however, so that we can match the impedance to something we'd expect a transmission line to have. If we shorten the monopole, we move the current node. The key is to move the current node away from the loading coil, because loading coils don't radiate well.
Thus, what this designer has done is to distribute the loading coil of a shortened monopole so that he avoids the current node.
There are problems, however. First, you still need an effective radial system. Without one, you simply won't have anything that radiates worth a damn. Second, while coil Q factor is less relevant where it stays away from the current node, it still has to be damned good. Further, the current node at the top needs to have very good surface conductivity.
Finally, no matter what, a shortened vertical antenna will have a shortened bandwidth, proportional to how much the antenna itself is shorter than a regular 1/4 wave. TNSTAAFL.
Don't misunderstand, a short antenna doesn't have to be inefficient. However efficiency is not the same thing as gain. Short antennas can not have much gain. That's a matter of physics and mathematics. And the shorter an efficient antenna gets, the less bandwidth it can cover. Despite the steady parade of publicists, that's the reality. Don't buy any snake oil, folks... This isn't really that novel.
New NIMBY slogan: Jimmy Neutron Go Home!
Just because the FCC is doing its job poorly does not mean the job shouldn't be done.
I've seen similar trollish opinion pieces before. In Mr. McCullagh's piece he makes arguments based upon "what would have beens" and blames bad policies on the FCC though they were clearly instructed by Congress how to act.
As far as broadcasting is concerned, we need standards so that others can manufacture radios. One of the big problems with the Software Defined Radio designs is that the more bands you try to cover, the harder it is to keep the sensitivity and dynamic range performance (never mind the price) reasonable. We need some organization to take care of allocating and standardizing band usage so that we can expect a certain performance from our radios. We also need to protect communications for things such as air traffic control, marine distress frequencies, police, fire, and other such emergency activities. There is also a need to reserve bands for radio astronomy.
The idea that we can simply let the market run things is utterly unworkable. Who do you call if and when interference happens? At what point is it simply inadvertent radiation and at what point is it truly interference?
Most courts of law are ill equipped to handle the
technical details of describing interference intensity and it's effect on signal to noise ratios, coverage areas, and so forth. That's why the FCC regulates things.
On another note: The FCC didn't write the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1996. Congress did. Likewise, the FCC looked to Congress for clarification of how far the jurisdiction of the federally backed Bell System should extend.
Mr. McCullagh has it wrong. Though there are plenty of things they do poorly, the problem isn't so much with the FCC. The problem is Congress. And because he didn't take the time to look up the facts, Mr. McCullagh's trollish opinion piece does nothing to illuminate the situation.
...he's a very wiley and literate twit. The prose he makes up (and it is really no more than that) does have a certain self consistency which reads very convincingly if you didn't know any of the background.
I have to admire the careful way he dances around the issue of Intellectual Property Rights. It's a fact of life that when your IP hits digital media, it becomes very easy to make perfect copies on an individual basis for next to nothing besides the cost of bandwidth.
Unfortunately, that fact of life is becoming a serious concern to everyone with a stake in intellectual property of their own. Ken Brown uses this fear very adroitly by saying that giving away software for free devalues other software.
What he doesn't realize is that the software industry really isn't about software. It's about service. Anyone who has ever had a plumber visit their house to make repairs knows that the vast majority of the bill has almost nothing to do with the parts, and everything to do with getting someone there armed with tools and experience to fix the problem.
Similarly, the RIAA would have us think that it's all about the parts, not the performers. But ask any professional musician across the economic spectrum and they'll all tell you that they make their real money going on tour.
Ken Brown would have us think it's about the parts, not the people. He may be pushing an agenda full of half truths, but he's not stupid.
His view is panders to those who insist on thinking that the plumber is just selling them bits of pipe, a valve and a washer or two; the electrician is just selling wire, boxes, outlets, and wire nuts; and the software industry is selling a box with a CD in it.
The TCO of Open Source packages such as OO is not free. However, the point needs to be made that SOMEONE is going to have to administer this package no matter where it comes from. Microsoft would like most business managers to think that these administrators could be high school kids. Consultants of various colors and sizes would have them think that Open Source requires real talent and experience.
This is why Open Source needs advocates.
So, the air traffic controller gets to send instructions in a text form straight up to the airliner in a format acceptable for the FMS to use. The autopilot is slaved to the FMS and so I guess the air traffic controller is telling the aircraft where to go.
My question is why anyone thinks this is a good thing? What happens here that saves fuel?
It may come as a surprise to most of you, but air traffic controllers know shockingly little about what performance to expect from the aircraft they "control". They know even less about the weather those aircraft fly in. Their radars aren't designed to show weather. They're designed to show little bits of metal in the clouds.
Air traffic controllers don't often have a feel for ice formation aloft. They don't know what the cloud formations look like ahead, so they can't know in advance if they're likely to send you in to severe turbulence. Terrain is not often mapped on their scopes, and sometimes they make mistakes. Thats why TCAS and GPWS are found in nearly all the large airliners and why the Capstone project with ADS-B has been such a big success in Alaska.
I'm not belittling air traffic controllers. They have some incredibly complex staging and sequencing work to do to bring large fleets of airliners in to an airport in a timely fashion, while allowing for transitory traffic through the vicinity. They do this job amazingly well with very few problems. But the reasons I just cited are honest and valid situations where ordinary pilots routinely refuse the traffic instructions given to them by the center and terminal controllers.
Finally, I don't suppose most of you know what it's like to be IFR in the goo, receive a hand-off to the next sector and then play 20 questions with the new air traffic controller because s/he has no idea who you are, where you came from, or where you're trying to get to. Even as good as these folks in ATC are, they screw up just like the pilots do.
Pilots have a reason for being just as Air Traffic Controllers. I don't understand why mixing the two professions in to one saves anyone anything.