Most people keep "best" and "worst" case scenarios within about a standard deviation of the middle,
Then most people don't know what "best" and "worst" mean. It certainly isn't "status quo", when there are much worse possibilities than just status quo.
Because battery prices depend upon factors that are much easier to track than the weather?
Weather a week from now is pretty easy to track. Demand for the raw materials of a battery five years out is not. New data that shows something is horribly fatal is not. We're comparing five years to one week. I think one is a lot easier than the other, and even one week turns out to be hard.
Keep in mind that I wasn't predicting battery prices down to the cent,
Did I say you were? If you were the one talking about "worst case" that wasn't even close, then you should have noted that I wasn't saying anything about what the numbers would be, but that "worst case" is hardly that.
Who knows where the calls come from? The phone company. Who makes money for each call placed? The phone company.
The originating phone company.
Let me file a complaint that a call was bogus, and if shown true I get $1.
Who pays the $1? How do you prove that a call was "bogus"? Do you record every call, including all associated caller ID data? If the call starts "we're calling you back about your recent request for pain relief braces...", how do you prove that you never contacted anyone about pain relief braces?
Even better if each phone owner can establish his or her own price. I'd probably set mine my inbound threshold at 25 cents to see how that goes, initially.
How do you propose notifying the caller of the price you've set for the privilege of calling your esteemed self? I know: "You've reached the bank account of epine. If you agree to a $1 charge to talk to epine, please press '314'".
So I'm calling to tell you that the faucet on the front of your house is broken and spewing water, you might want to check it out. You want $1 for the privilege of helping you? Screw that...
Mostly these small tithes would just slosh back and forth and be largely a wash for many people.
No, there will always be self-entitled people who put a huge charge on their incoming calls to unbalance the system.
(which they will surely justify as as a necessary economic response to the lower call volumes).
They can easily justify it based on the increased costs of providing this service to you, and handling the money involved. They'd also have to deal with nonsense of people who choose a ridiculous charge on every incoming call and then demand that every incoming call result in money for them, even if the phone company cannot determine who to charge for it.
They could use their monitoring tools to track call levels by number, and assign weights to the caller based on call frequency during a time period.
So spammers do exactly what they already do, just more often: change the spoofed number they use.
Send callers that are not in your contact list directly to voicemail. Don't even ring your phone.
I haven't decided which is more annoying. 1) Pulling the phone out of my pocket and seeing three missed calls from different, valid-looking numbers or 2) seeing the voicemail notification icon and calling to retrieve them just to hear tele-scams. No, I've decided -- the voicemail is much more annoying.
If it's important, they can leave a message.
Every telescammer thinks their message is important, and many of them do leave messages. A much larger waste of time than just a missed call.
The phone company could easily plant a few honeypot numbers in each exchange. Land on one of those and it's $9.95 plus $4.99 per additional minute.
So, a 40 digit phone number and a potential $10 charge for a wrong number. It's like you want to give money to the phone company.
There are enough wrong numbers with just 7 or 10 digits (and 3-6 of them usually predictable), you think needing to dial 40 correct digits in a row is going to be a solution to any problem and not a huge problem all by itself?
Not those where the caller uses his real number, but those using faked numbers.
A large percentage of the scammers who call me these days use realistic looking numbers. How do you tell the real from the fake just by looking at caller ID?
Why would this be rated 'funny'? It, and all the others who say "I like making them cry" or scream or whatever are just saying that they value their time so little that they think talking to people that don't care what you do is better than reading a book or doing something actually productive.
Really. These people don't care what you say as long as there is some chance that they can con you, and they get paid to talk to you. They aren't as stupid as you think. Like, the guy who agreed that 127.0.0.1 was the source of a cyber attack was saying what he thought would lead to a successful con. He'd agree that the sky was lavender and the moon was made of green cheese if he thought you'd eventually be a profit for him.
Why in hell do I want to remove that catharsis?
You need a more productive hobby. Might I suggest a nice game of chess?
This has nothing at all to do with Trump. Knock off the TDS.
the caller pays a few cents/min to call a mobile phone
We have more than just mobile phones. We have landlines, too. If it is long distance, the caller pays for both. If it is local, not.
You can tell the difference between local and long distance, or at least you used to be able to. (With the implementation of ten-digit dialing to allow the creation of more exchanges this is harder now.) The bit you are missing is that you can't tell before hand that you are calling a mobile. You can't tell afterhand, until the bill comes if calling a mobile were to cost the caller.
This has been how it works here since the system first began. My first mobile number was in the local area code. That was twenty years ago or more. For routing, specific exchanges were assigned to each mobile carrier, just like exchanges cover a certain geographic (city) area. E.g., area code 541 is routed to Oregon. Exchange 367 is routed to the central office in Sweet Home.
Now we have number portability so it is impossible to know from the phone number whether you're calling a land-line or mobile. Or what state, or what city. (I have a number from a city 2000 miles away for my VoIP line.) Number portability came about through consumer demand, not corporate greed.
1. Block all international calls...
2.... except for this country where relatives live...
Uhhhh... maybe you shouldn't be specifying the reason why someone wants to allow calls from Mozambique or Botswana. It is sufficient that someone can say "allow calls from Switzerland" without having to lie about having relatives there.
When you listen to the message,
By the time you're listening to the phone spammer's message, the damage is done. It's a win for them.
have the system offer, "Press 1 to return the call
Thus increasing the wasted time as you get to listen to that for the spam call, too.
But it's worth pointing out that if they fail to act, they are becoming actual accomplices in whatever fraud you might fall victim to.
Care to rethink that? You're making the carrier responsible for the content.
Each time the law firm mailed out invoices to their clients with over-stated claims for hours worked, that constituted mail fraud.
Do you think suing the USPS for the legal firm's criminal activity is the right solution? Or do you want USPS opening up your mail so it can scan for potential criminal acts and refusing to deliver any mail that appears to be fishy? That's what making the telephone carrier an "accessory" to any spam caller fraud would equate to.
Music isn't interactive. It doesn't demand the drivers attention.
Finding the right radio station does. Concentrating on singing along does. Changing the playlist on your phone does. The difference is that the "stereo" (radio) that is not covered by distracted driving laws is built into the vehicle and thus the buttons and knobs don't move around alot. Most (many?) people can change stations on the radio by touch alone, and don't need to look at the radio to do it. Changing playlists on a phone requires attention.
It's not "music" that's the distraction, it's dealing with the music source that is.
Passengers share the driver's situational awareness.
They can. They can also be completely oblivious. If I'm riding in the back seat of the car I won't necessarily be able to see a hazard ahead to have "situational awareness". They may also be likely to ask "why are we slowing down?", which is a pretty close equivalent to the "are you still there" question that apparently causes accidents for phone users.
What's really funny about this distracted driving issue is the insurance company that runs (at least used to run) an ad showing a clearly distracted driver who drops his phone while driving and is bending over to search under the seat when he rear-ends someone else. The insurance company actually claims that "if you are using another insurance company" they won't cover you, but this one will. It's like they are promoting distracted driving by saying they don't care if you are breaking the law and the accident is your fault.
Or, that the police can subpoena the phone company and ask if the phone was active on their network.
My phone is "active on the network" all the time it is within service range and turned on. That means even while it is in my pocket untouched by human hands, ignored completely.
My phone can be completely inactive on the network (e.g. out of range of a tower) and I can still be reading or sending email or texts.
It can be "active on the network" and I'm using Skype or Facetime or reading Facebook or using Google Maps to search for stuff. Do you really want the telco recording every site and packet so it can respond to a subpoena regarding use of a mobile electronic device correctly?
In other words, "active on the network" means nothing when it comes to using a mobile electronic device, and nothing when it comes to use handsfree. Since the law covers USE of a mobile electronic device "for any purpose" (Oregon law) except in handsfree mode, the cell provider can actually provide no useful information at all. Or at least, should not be able to.
Someone on the other end of a phone conversation has no such awareness, and can choose exactly the wrong time to say "Are you still there?"
Perhaps a driver who is so distracted by someone asking "are you still there" that he has an accident shouldn't be driving AT ALL? Are we blaming a lack of driving ability on a telephone scapegoat?
Why speculate on battery prices. Worst case you will be spending 20K after 5 years.
No, I think you mean "status quo" case.
Worst case is that the materials to make the battery you need for your car have been determined (by the state of California?) to cause cancer and have been banned. You can't buy a battery for your car at all. And you and your entire family are part of the class that got cancer and died from the old battery. No, they all died, but you didn't. You hired a teenage tech geek to build you a replacement battery from COTS parts, it overheated while you were driving the car, the power door locks wouldn't disengage, and you die trapped in your car in a horrible fire. That would be "worst case".
Best case is that technology improves and the cost drops. Not so best case is that demand increases and the cost goes up.
Weathermen cannot predict weather a week out accurately. Why expect to be able to predict battery prices in five years?
The latest issue of IEEE Spectrum has an article from a quantum computing expert who opines that true quantum computing for any serious task will never happen. It's an argument based on how many qubits are required to create a computing element and how precise the measurments of the wave functions have to be. That's paraphrasing it, but that's the idea.
They don't let us blind people fly, but I do believe that the sequence is aviate, navigate, communicate.
That mantra is not a list of exclusive tasks, it is a list of priorities. Having a first priority of "aviate" does not mean nobody can "communicate", nor does it mean nobody can "navigate". It means that if either of the latter are getting in the way of the first one, you abandon them.
There is a reason why commercial passenger operations have two pilots.
The problem is that a pilot needs to know how to recover from runaway stabilizer trim and know that the situation is happening. Since the system was poorly documented, this was a problem.
Recovery from runaway stabilizer is the same if the autopilot does it or this MCAS thing does it. The symptoms are also the same: uncommanded and radical trim changes. If the airplane starts heading towards the ground because the trim is going nose-down, you pull up on the yoke and it stops, and then it starts doing it again, you're seeing a runaway stabilizer. The flight manual, and recurring training, cover how to stop this. Any pilot who can't figure it out and stop it is not going to pass their checkrides.
Also, the FAA issued an emergency AD last November, and Boeing sent a notice to the customers last November, documenting this. The AD specifies that when you see this happen, you follow the Runaway Stabilizer procedure, which is basically -- TURN OFF THE ELECTRIC TRIM SYSTEM. You can turn it back on long enough to manually adjust the trim back to level flight, but then TURN IT OFF AGAIN. You certainly don't say "gee, it is working now, I'll trust it with my life, and the lives of my passengers, and not do anything about it."
MCAS cannot command nose-down trim to a trim actuator that has no power. Well, it can, but the actuator isn't going to do anything.
Stall the thing, you *know* you're losing control.... Apparently this lack of viscerality is how air france 447 managed to fly into the sea and nobody noticed.
You've equated "stall" and "loss of control", and that's not correct. Not every stall results in an uncontrolled aircraft. You're maybe thinking of a stall that progresses into a spin?
One of the most important lessons I got as a progressing ASEL student was during stall training. I was trying to enter a power-on stall, IIRC, and the plane would not "break". That is, it would not make the radical leap from "flight" to "not flight" to indicate a stall. The horn, of course, was blaring. I kept trying to make it break.
The CFI pointed to the VSI which was showing a very healthy rate of descent. What? I hadn't stalled yet! Well, yes I had. It just wasn't as visceral experience as when a wing drops.
"Stall" means the wings stop providing the lift you need to stay in the air. It doesn't mean the aircraft does anything radical at all. In my "stall", the wings were level. The heading wasn't changing. I just didn't have lift anymore.
I expect in a huge, heavy aircraft that the "visceral" clues are less because of the inertia of the airplane. Of course, things like stall warning horns and stick shakers (a quieter version of the former) operate before the stall happens, so viscerality may be lacking altogether when they start yapping.
On the original article, well, d'oh. The first comment here talks about "children of the magenta line". It's not a line on a chart, it a magenta line on a flight display showing the desired course based on GPS and autopilot. When you learn to give control to George, and then trust George, and then not spend the time actually flying by hand, of course your hand-flying skills will deteriorate. But that's why ATP pilots working for major airlines have recurring simulator training and company checkrides.
This had the nasty effect of putting the thrust line directly under the wing, changing the handling characteristics of the aircraft, particularly making it possible for the engines to increase the angle of attack.
Oh my, this is unconscionable.
Oh wait. Every aircraft I have ever flown has an engine in a place where changing thrust will either cause a pitch up or down. It depends on where the center of thrust is compared to the center of mass. And learning how and why it happens is part of learning how to fly.
The engines need to be moved back under the wing so that the thrust line is not going under the wing any more.
Ummm, moving the engines "back under the wing" certainly is going to have the "thrust line" going under the wing. Please explain why you think an engine under a wing isn't producing thrust centered under the wing. Magic? Thrust happens ten feet above the engine, maybe?
But the worst is to come: the lawsuits could do to them what it did to Pan-Am back in the day. This is shaping up to look like gross negligence on the part of Boeing.
The FAA issued an emergency AD back in November on this specific issue. Boeing contacted all customers back in November on this specific issue.
Airlines that do not comply with AD are at fault. Airlines that ignore notices from aircraft manufacturers are at fault. Airlines that defer maintenance of safety-critical systems, as happened with the Lion Air crash, are at fault.
Yes, people are going to sue the deepest pockets they can find. That doesn't mean they will win, or that they are right.
Someone posted a link to the preliminary report of the first crash yesterday. You should read it. It contains copies of the FAA and Boeing actions, as well as a slew of stuff from the airline that was involved.
That is not entirely true. If FAA certifies an airplane as airworthy, it's recognized by other certification authorities worldwide
And then the AD that FAA issues are also recognized worldwide. Which clearly wasn't followed in this case, since the Nov, 2018 Emergency AD was ignored by Ethiopian Airlines, just as they ignored the Boeing notice the same month.
So: if FAA said it can fly and the. It crashed all over the world itÃ(TM)s defjnitdly FAA problem.
First, it's not FAA's fault that non-US airlines ignore ADs and notices from the aircraft manufacturer. Second, it's not FAA's fault that you can't use a simple apostrophe or write a complete sentence.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people keep "best" and "worst" case scenarios within about a standard deviation of the middle,
Then most people don't know what "best" and "worst" mean. It certainly isn't "status quo", when there are much worse possibilities than just status quo.
Because battery prices depend upon factors that are much easier to track than the weather?
Weather a week from now is pretty easy to track. Demand for the raw materials of a battery five years out is not. New data that shows something is horribly fatal is not. We're comparing five years to one week. I think one is a lot easier than the other, and even one week turns out to be hard.
Keep in mind that I wasn't predicting battery prices down to the cent,
Did I say you were? If you were the one talking about "worst case" that wasn't even close, then you should have noted that I wasn't saying anything about what the numbers would be, but that "worst case" is hardly that.
Who knows where the calls come from? The phone company. Who makes money for each call placed? The phone company.
The originating phone company.
Let me file a complaint that a call was bogus, and if shown true I get $1.
Who pays the $1? How do you prove that a call was "bogus"? Do you record every call, including all associated caller ID data? If the call starts "we're calling you back about your recent request for pain relief braces...", how do you prove that you never contacted anyone about pain relief braces?
This will cost the phone company money
The destination phone company.
Even better if each phone owner can establish his or her own price. I'd probably set mine my inbound threshold at 25 cents to see how that goes, initially.
How do you propose notifying the caller of the price you've set for the privilege of calling your esteemed self? I know: "You've reached the bank account of epine. If you agree to a $1 charge to talk to epine, please press '314'".
So I'm calling to tell you that the faucet on the front of your house is broken and spewing water, you might want to check it out. You want $1 for the privilege of helping you? Screw that ...
Mostly these small tithes would just slosh back and forth and be largely a wash for many people.
No, there will always be self-entitled people who put a huge charge on their incoming calls to unbalance the system.
(which they will surely justify as as a necessary economic response to the lower call volumes).
They can easily justify it based on the increased costs of providing this service to you, and handling the money involved. They'd also have to deal with nonsense of people who choose a ridiculous charge on every incoming call and then demand that every incoming call result in money for them, even if the phone company cannot determine who to charge for it.
They could use their monitoring tools to track call levels by number, and assign weights to the caller based on call frequency during a time period.
So spammers do exactly what they already do, just more often: change the spoofed number they use.
Send callers that are not in your contact list directly to voicemail. Don't even ring your phone.
I haven't decided which is more annoying. 1) Pulling the phone out of my pocket and seeing three missed calls from different, valid-looking numbers or 2) seeing the voicemail notification icon and calling to retrieve them just to hear tele-scams. No, I've decided -- the voicemail is much more annoying.
If it's important, they can leave a message.
Every telescammer thinks their message is important, and many of them do leave messages. A much larger waste of time than just a missed call.
The phone company could easily plant a few honeypot numbers in each exchange. Land on one of those and it's $9.95 plus $4.99 per additional minute.
So, a 40 digit phone number and a potential $10 charge for a wrong number. It's like you want to give money to the phone company.
There are enough wrong numbers with just 7 or 10 digits (and 3-6 of them usually predictable), you think needing to dial 40 correct digits in a row is going to be a solution to any problem and not a huge problem all by itself?
Not those where the caller uses his real number, but those using faked numbers.
A large percentage of the scammers who call me these days use realistic looking numbers. How do you tell the real from the fake just by looking at caller ID?
Really. These people don't care what you say as long as there is some chance that they can con you, and they get paid to talk to you. They aren't as stupid as you think. Like, the guy who agreed that 127.0.0.1 was the source of a cyber attack was saying what he thought would lead to a successful con. He'd agree that the sky was lavender and the moon was made of green cheese if he thought you'd eventually be a profit for him.
Why in hell do I want to remove that catharsis?
You need a more productive hobby. Might I suggest a nice game of chess?
outside of Trumpistan
This has nothing at all to do with Trump. Knock off the TDS.
the caller pays a few cents/min to call a mobile phone
We have more than just mobile phones. We have landlines, too. If it is long distance, the caller pays for both. If it is local, not.
You can tell the difference between local and long distance, or at least you used to be able to. (With the implementation of ten-digit dialing to allow the creation of more exchanges this is harder now.) The bit you are missing is that you can't tell before hand that you are calling a mobile. You can't tell afterhand, until the bill comes if calling a mobile were to cost the caller.
This has been how it works here since the system first began. My first mobile number was in the local area code. That was twenty years ago or more. For routing, specific exchanges were assigned to each mobile carrier, just like exchanges cover a certain geographic (city) area. E.g., area code 541 is routed to Oregon. Exchange 367 is routed to the central office in Sweet Home.
Now we have number portability so it is impossible to know from the phone number whether you're calling a land-line or mobile. Or what state, or what city. (I have a number from a city 2000 miles away for my VoIP line.) Number portability came about through consumer demand, not corporate greed.
1. Block all international calls... 2. ... except for this country where relatives live...
Uhhhh ... maybe you shouldn't be specifying the reason why someone wants to allow calls from Mozambique or Botswana. It is sufficient that someone can say "allow calls from Switzerland" without having to lie about having relatives there.
When you listen to the message,
By the time you're listening to the phone spammer's message, the damage is done. It's a win for them.
have the system offer, "Press 1 to return the call
Thus increasing the wasted time as you get to listen to that for the spam call, too.
But it's worth pointing out that if they fail to act, they are becoming actual accomplices in whatever fraud you might fall victim to.
Care to rethink that? You're making the carrier responsible for the content.
Each time the law firm mailed out invoices to their clients with over-stated claims for hours worked, that constituted mail fraud.
Do you think suing the USPS for the legal firm's criminal activity is the right solution? Or do you want USPS opening up your mail so it can scan for potential criminal acts and refusing to deliver any mail that appears to be fishy? That's what making the telephone carrier an "accessory" to any spam caller fraud would equate to.
Music isn't interactive. It doesn't demand the drivers attention.
Finding the right radio station does. Concentrating on singing along does. Changing the playlist on your phone does. The difference is that the "stereo" (radio) that is not covered by distracted driving laws is built into the vehicle and thus the buttons and knobs don't move around alot. Most (many?) people can change stations on the radio by touch alone, and don't need to look at the radio to do it. Changing playlists on a phone requires attention.
It's not "music" that's the distraction, it's dealing with the music source that is.
Passengers share the driver's situational awareness.
They can. They can also be completely oblivious. If I'm riding in the back seat of the car I won't necessarily be able to see a hazard ahead to have "situational awareness". They may also be likely to ask "why are we slowing down?", which is a pretty close equivalent to the "are you still there" question that apparently causes accidents for phone users.
What's really funny about this distracted driving issue is the insurance company that runs (at least used to run) an ad showing a clearly distracted driver who drops his phone while driving and is bending over to search under the seat when he rear-ends someone else. The insurance company actually claims that "if you are using another insurance company" they won't cover you, but this one will. It's like they are promoting distracted driving by saying they don't care if you are breaking the law and the accident is your fault.
Or, that the police can subpoena the phone company and ask if the phone was active on their network.
My phone is "active on the network" all the time it is within service range and turned on. That means even while it is in my pocket untouched by human hands, ignored completely.
My phone can be completely inactive on the network (e.g. out of range of a tower) and I can still be reading or sending email or texts.
It can be "active on the network" and I'm using Skype or Facetime or reading Facebook or using Google Maps to search for stuff. Do you really want the telco recording every site and packet so it can respond to a subpoena regarding use of a mobile electronic device correctly?
In other words, "active on the network" means nothing when it comes to using a mobile electronic device, and nothing when it comes to use handsfree. Since the law covers USE of a mobile electronic device "for any purpose" (Oregon law) except in handsfree mode, the cell provider can actually provide no useful information at all. Or at least, should not be able to.
Someone on the other end of a phone conversation has no such awareness, and can choose exactly the wrong time to say "Are you still there?"
Perhaps a driver who is so distracted by someone asking "are you still there" that he has an accident shouldn't be driving AT ALL? Are we blaming a lack of driving ability on a telephone scapegoat?
Why speculate on battery prices. Worst case you will be spending 20K after 5 years.
No, I think you mean "status quo" case.
Worst case is that the materials to make the battery you need for your car have been determined (by the state of California?) to cause cancer and have been banned. You can't buy a battery for your car at all. And you and your entire family are part of the class that got cancer and died from the old battery. No, they all died, but you didn't. You hired a teenage tech geek to build you a replacement battery from COTS parts, it overheated while you were driving the car, the power door locks wouldn't disengage, and you die trapped in your car in a horrible fire. That would be "worst case".
Best case is that technology improves and the cost drops. Not so best case is that demand increases and the cost goes up.
Weathermen cannot predict weather a week out accurately. Why expect to be able to predict battery prices in five years?
Turns the MCAS off as in cuts power to it, or just sends a computer a signal to stop trimming?
Doesn't matter. "stop" is what matters. While one pilot holds the yoke back, the other one pulls the breakers on the offending circuits.
You clearly are just obstinate now. Shame on you.
Being obstinate in the course of being right is no sin.
If the system goes apeshit near the ground, will there be enough time to work the problem and trip the breakers?
Considering that the immediate action item -- pulling back on the yoke -- turns the MCAS off, yes, I believe so.
Is it JUST full nose-down trim,
Don't let it get there and it won't be.
That sounds optimistic
The latest issue of IEEE Spectrum has an article from a quantum computing expert who opines that true quantum computing for any serious task will never happen. It's an argument based on how many qubits are required to create a computing element and how precise the measurments of the wave functions have to be. That's paraphrasing it, but that's the idea.
I tried finding an online link to it but can't.
It's usually all manual when taking off and landing down there.
Since autoland requires a CAT III certified airport AND airplane AND aircrew, it's usually all manual when landing here in the continental US, too.
They don't let us blind people fly, but I do believe that the sequence is aviate, navigate, communicate.
That mantra is not a list of exclusive tasks, it is a list of priorities. Having a first priority of "aviate" does not mean nobody can "communicate", nor does it mean nobody can "navigate". It means that if either of the latter are getting in the way of the first one, you abandon them.
There is a reason why commercial passenger operations have two pilots.
The problem is that a pilot needs to know how to recover from runaway stabilizer trim and know that the situation is happening. Since the system was poorly documented, this was a problem.
Recovery from runaway stabilizer is the same if the autopilot does it or this MCAS thing does it. The symptoms are also the same: uncommanded and radical trim changes. If the airplane starts heading towards the ground because the trim is going nose-down, you pull up on the yoke and it stops, and then it starts doing it again, you're seeing a runaway stabilizer. The flight manual, and recurring training, cover how to stop this. Any pilot who can't figure it out and stop it is not going to pass their checkrides.
Also, the FAA issued an emergency AD last November, and Boeing sent a notice to the customers last November, documenting this. The AD specifies that when you see this happen, you follow the Runaway Stabilizer procedure, which is basically -- TURN OFF THE ELECTRIC TRIM SYSTEM. You can turn it back on long enough to manually adjust the trim back to level flight, but then TURN IT OFF AGAIN. You certainly don't say "gee, it is working now, I'll trust it with my life, and the lives of my passengers, and not do anything about it."
MCAS cannot command nose-down trim to a trim actuator that has no power. Well, it can, but the actuator isn't going to do anything.
Stall the thing, you *know* you're losing control. ... Apparently this lack of viscerality is how air france 447 managed to fly into the sea and nobody noticed.
You've equated "stall" and "loss of control", and that's not correct. Not every stall results in an uncontrolled aircraft. You're maybe thinking of a stall that progresses into a spin?
One of the most important lessons I got as a progressing ASEL student was during stall training. I was trying to enter a power-on stall, IIRC, and the plane would not "break". That is, it would not make the radical leap from "flight" to "not flight" to indicate a stall. The horn, of course, was blaring. I kept trying to make it break.
The CFI pointed to the VSI which was showing a very healthy rate of descent. What? I hadn't stalled yet! Well, yes I had. It just wasn't as visceral experience as when a wing drops.
"Stall" means the wings stop providing the lift you need to stay in the air. It doesn't mean the aircraft does anything radical at all. In my "stall", the wings were level. The heading wasn't changing. I just didn't have lift anymore.
I expect in a huge, heavy aircraft that the "visceral" clues are less because of the inertia of the airplane. Of course, things like stall warning horns and stick shakers (a quieter version of the former) operate before the stall happens, so viscerality may be lacking altogether when they start yapping.
On the original article, well, d'oh. The first comment here talks about "children of the magenta line". It's not a line on a chart, it a magenta line on a flight display showing the desired course based on GPS and autopilot. When you learn to give control to George, and then trust George, and then not spend the time actually flying by hand, of course your hand-flying skills will deteriorate. But that's why ATP pilots working for major airlines have recurring simulator training and company checkrides.
This had the nasty effect of putting the thrust line directly under the wing, changing the handling characteristics of the aircraft, particularly making it possible for the engines to increase the angle of attack.
Oh my, this is unconscionable.
Oh wait. Every aircraft I have ever flown has an engine in a place where changing thrust will either cause a pitch up or down. It depends on where the center of thrust is compared to the center of mass. And learning how and why it happens is part of learning how to fly.
The engines need to be moved back under the wing so that the thrust line is not going under the wing any more.
Ummm, moving the engines "back under the wing" certainly is going to have the "thrust line" going under the wing. Please explain why you think an engine under a wing isn't producing thrust centered under the wing. Magic? Thrust happens ten feet above the engine, maybe?
But the worst is to come: the lawsuits could do to them what it did to Pan-Am back in the day. This is shaping up to look like gross negligence on the part of Boeing.
The FAA issued an emergency AD back in November on this specific issue. Boeing contacted all customers back in November on this specific issue.
Airlines that do not comply with AD are at fault. Airlines that ignore notices from aircraft manufacturers are at fault. Airlines that defer maintenance of safety-critical systems, as happened with the Lion Air crash, are at fault.
Yes, people are going to sue the deepest pockets they can find. That doesn't mean they will win, or that they are right.
Someone posted a link to the preliminary report of the first crash yesterday. You should read it. It contains copies of the FAA and Boeing actions, as well as a slew of stuff from the airline that was involved.
Probably not, 1 in any base is 1.
I assume you meant that 1 base anything is 1 base 10. If so, then you are wrong. 1 base zero is infinity base ten.
That is not entirely true. If FAA certifies an airplane as airworthy, it's recognized by other certification authorities worldwide
And then the AD that FAA issues are also recognized worldwide. Which clearly wasn't followed in this case, since the Nov, 2018 Emergency AD was ignored by Ethiopian Airlines, just as they ignored the Boeing notice the same month.
So: if FAA said it can fly and the. It crashed all over the world itÃ(TM)s defjnitdly FAA problem.
First, it's not FAA's fault that non-US airlines ignore ADs and notices from the aircraft manufacturer. Second, it's not FAA's fault that you can't use a simple apostrophe or write a complete sentence.