Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Saturday, July 2, 2011

The Air Stinks

The summer air stinks around here. It smells of ozone and smog. You probably don't notice it. But on a summer day, when you fly up above the base of the clouds:


you fly where the air is cool and smooth. If you've trimmed up your airplane properly (and if it is in rig), you can just fly along without touching the controls.

But once you descend below the base of those puffy cumulus clouds, the first thing you notice is that the air stinks. You'll only smell it for a little bit before your nose adapts, but the smell is distinctive. Then, because the lower air is heated and turbulent, you have to keep correcting the airplane's flight path. A wing will be jostled up or down. You'll hit updrafts (which make birds and sailplane pilots happy) and downdrafts so that keeping to your desired course and altitude takes work. If you have passengers, they may not appreciate riding over an aerial washboard.

In the summer, when I take people up who are new to small airplanes, I do it either in the early morning or in the evening. There is no point in taking someone up and subjecting them to a miserable ride.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"If you've trimmed up your airplane properly (and if it is in rig), you can just fly along without touching the controls."

You are assuming a positive dihedral or high wing pendulum stability or both, perhaps?

F104=NOT, just to give 1 counterexample.

Comrade Misfit said...

Well, true, but the odds of me ever flying one of those Luftwaffe Widowmakers is pretty nonexistent.

Anonymous said...

FWIW, the EE Lightning (yes, I'm that old) was the better interceptor. The only Nato fighter to have caught and overtaken a Concorde in a tailchase from a scramble.
The only Nato fighter to have intercepted a CIA U2 at 80,000+ feet. 50,000 fpm initial climb, But only 800NM range, small, cramped, very short range radar, and the 2 AAMs were not much faster (M2,3 than the plane :-( ).

Anonymous said...

PS: My original blog about the EE Lightning was at
http://www.savory.de/blog_feb_09.htm#20090207