RangerMateo

Sounds pretty gay to me. I'll agree there were some things that needed to be changed...and the CTA role needed some definition (as does Field Training as a whole...is it really training? Not so much...), however, having CTAs march two abreast...retarded. Last summer at one of the Maxwell encampments a CTA was yelled at in front of a flight because he told them to stop talking in formation. The Camp CC chewed his ass in front of everyone about how the cadets were supposed to be "self-correcting" and the CTA was essentially there to baby-sit. If that's the truth then it's a waste of government funds. The CTA should be more than a yelling machine...but they should be treated more like a 3rd Lt than a cadet in that environment. They're chosen because they demonstrated some level of responsibility ahead of their peers and if they're doing their job they are working much harder than the cadets are. While I was at Maxwell I wouldn't have had time to jack around trying to find another CTA to walk from one building to another with me. UFB...

Anyone know how this voodoo grading system works, ie - what line items carry more weight, if they do? It doesn't really make a difference, I'll track however I track, but everyone seems to say something else. Most of what I've heard is that the checkrides count for more (40/25 split for the overall grade) and that the GK/EP line items are weighted more heavily on a line by line basis, but nobody seems to know the specifics...also whether it's your relation to the MIF that picks up points or the raw grade (ie - a G on a U MIF item is worth more than a G on a G MIF item) Just curious...thanks =) Also, tried a search, but it turns out that searching for "MASS" is a bad idea...ha!

I guess what you're saying then is to not forget to wear a reflective belt...

I gotta wonder what happens when you're dressed up in your ninja suit stealing a missile and then you get pulled over by SFS while driving it to your hideout. A1C Snuffy: "So you wanna tell me what that is in the back of your truck?"

You're kidding right? It's just typical politics. Compare that to the two dudes that no kidding slugged a guy and knifed another one here in Enid a few weeks back and the cops had everyone sign "Will not prosecute" paperwork when they found out that the two dudes were local firefighters. They pulled a FVCKING KNIFE and put a guy in the ER on purpose...I would call that intent to kill. Not pushing someone because they have no respect for rules/courtesy most likely because they were brought up that way by their big shot daddy. Also, my understanding of UCMJ is that they so much believe that you are innocent until guilty that they won't hold you unless you are an immediate threat...hence the Marine getting away to Mexico...

VN 0902 3 - T-38's 11 - T-1's 2 - T-44's 1 - UH-1 Navy got: 2 - T-44's 1 - T-45 1 - T-1 1 - Helo (Whatever it is they fly)

Heard from someone that the VN 0806 class was officially put on notice that there could be some Preds coming down the pipe to them and that those would be a one tour assignment. Anyone verify this here or at other bases? If that's the case, is that something that will stick through the FY09 classes, or is that just to account for the "excess" 38 drops that the mid-late FY08 classes got...?

Oddly enough they sell the stuff in both Claremore, OK and Stillwater, OK...crazy.

Completely agree, just wanted to know =)

We were told that you were required to deny the upgrade so that the GP didn't think you were flying around in luxury on the tax payers dime. Is that just USAF thing?

The bad logic here is "if they maintain the same speed". With penetrations you maintain a constant IAS, and therefore a heavier airplane must maintain a lower gradient to keep from overspeeding (since the ratio to gravitational force / drag is higher for the heavy airplane), and therefore a slower descent rate. In this situation, they will be at different speeds because V (L/Dmax) changes with weight. The optimum glide AoA for a lifting surface is always the same. So to keep the same AoA at different weights, it will require that the craft glide at different airspeeds. AoA is the angle between the relative wind and the chord of the wing. The heavier a/c at the same pitch attitude will generate a greater vertical component of relative wind, and hence a greater angle of attack. To counter this, the nose must be pushed over to seek that optimal AoA, and also generating a higher airspeed and sink rate. The lighter a/c holds a higher pitch attitude (same AoA), lower airspeed and lower sink rate. Here's the part I had a hard time believing until I put the math to it. For realistic values of weight, ie - empty to max gross, the range is the same. The heavier a/c will get there faster, but the light plane will end up in the same place assuming they are both flown at optimum AoA. In fact, most POH's give best glide at Max TO Weight, and if you glide at that speed regardless of weight, the heavier plane will actually make it further. Didn't believe that one till I saw the graph in my Dash One. That actually ends up being more of the situation that you were referring to with the penetration data...if you fly the airspeed and don't adjust for the angle of attack...the lighter plane actually develops a higher sink rate.

Anyone have any opinions on the PX4 from Beretta?

Forgot to mention, people seemed to fail the leg press and the chest/bench press, difficulty order seemed to be Leg Press Bench Press Lat Pull Leg Curls Arm Curls Sissy squats and Leg Press will also hurt if you've got a bad knee so make sure you've done what you need to do before that. I'm not saying you should take a handful of NSAIDs beforehand, but I'm not saying you shouldn't ;) I'm not in great shape (69.5"/34.5" and I run around a 12 min on the PFT usually) and I still eeked by into the excellent category. We had one or two failures though because of the leg press. Getting it off the stops was the hardest part on that one.

Outstanding > 200 Excellent = 181-200 Average = 120-180 Unsat < 120 One pt per rep, max of 15 on strength excercises, and 50 on endurance excercises.

Well evidently the Academy graduation *does* let you pick up a DUI *and* enter pilot training, so it's pretty nice for that I suppose ;)

It's really more a thought experiment in relativity and the differences in the way wheels are used in cars and aircraft. In aircraft wheels only serve to decouple the aircraft's motion along it's longitudinal axis from the ground (and to do it as efficiently as possible!) during takeoff. In a car, it's exactly the opposite...the wheels are intended to couple the car to the ground. That's why the car won't move and the plane will. Here's the extension. Our a/c in question just took off normally from said treadmill does a standard pattern and comes back around to land (Again in the opposite direction the treadmill is traveling)...does he land in the same distance, longer, or shorter.

Here's the one I really have a problem with...they told us in academics that gross weight has zero effect on your max glide range. Read carefully, not 'a negligible effect', but 'zero effect'. The argument goes that if you refigure L/Dmax and fly that speed for your new weight then you will arrive faster, but in the end you will go the same distance (You're falling faster, but you're also going forward faster so it all equals out...). So does that mean that a C-182 with no fuel and a scrawny kid piloting it will glide as far as one with my old CFI (Who weighed close to 280!) and a 55 gallon drum of Uranium in the back (About 8700 pounds)? It just seems to me that if you strapped a boxcar (and don't count the new wind friction on the boxcar, just it's weight) onto a DA-20, that plane isn't going to get a 11:1 glide ratio, no matter how fast you fly it. The only place I see an argument for this is that really in a glide you're converting your PE to KE and when you solve those two equations mass simply drops out (V=Sqrt(2gh) if I remember right), but there's the problem of which direction you're converting it into and how efficient you are at that. All falling objects have a terminal velocity and the 'lost' energy is accounted for as heating to the air through friction, etc. Wings help us to redirect that downward vector into a vector that is moving forward and down (at say, an 11:1 ratio...). I know the equations don't change, so I still think that the overall glide ratio would have to change. If I remember right, the heavier you are the further L/Dmax shifts to the right and the faster you have to fly, which means a steeper angle down....eventually that angle would have to approach and pass 45 degrees, and your glide ratio would flip around (1 foot forward for 2 feet down for instance now). Thoughts?

BINGO! What people are really getting caught up on is seeing the treadmill as that tether that holds the plane back. The discussion on wheel friction is as the "Only way it could ever possibly happen" sense. Unrelated to the solution of the original question.

By definition the speed of the belt/runway will always match the speed of the wheels, unless they are skidding. The whole principle behind anti-lock brakes is that you want to keep the relative velocity = 0 because Coefficient of Static Friction is >> than Dynamic or Sliding Friction. Explains part of why you have to goose the throttle to get the plane going then back off to idle and keep moving. =) As far as the other comment about the forward speed of the fuselage matching the backwards speed of the treadmill (Absolute values being equal, I suppose. Both in relation to the ground.), that's exactly what they did on Mythbusters. You just have to remember where your reference is. Truth is that you could do the same thing with the car, what would happen is that you would end up turning the treadmill up to 1/2 the cars original (speedometer) forward speed. So if the car was going 80 mph you would end up with the treadmill at 40 backwards, the car moving 40 forwards in relation to the ground, and the speedo showing 80mph. The real hangup (Including one of my Aero friends that is refusing to believe Adam and Jamie...lol) seems to be with the forward motion. He keeps saying, well, if there was no forward motion the plane wouldn't lift off. While that is true, it's not really the root question. The root question is will that plane move forward. How does the moving surface beneath the object affect the objects ability to create a net forward force? The argument against the mythbusters experiment is saying that the plane is overcompensating for the treadmill. In essence, with the car analogy, saying that the plane might need 40 mph to take off, so when they turn the treadmill up to 40 mph, the car accelerates it's wheels to 80 mph to still create that net forward force resulting with a 40 mph forward motion. The only way to take care of that is to create a profile that accelerates the treadmill to the cars max speed and have the car go to it's max speed as well. This leaves the car no headroom to create a power/thrust excess...the very argument being made for why the Mythbusters experiment was bad. Unfortunately, that was already accounted for. Takeoffs are always performed at Max Power (Maybe there are exceptions, but not in this experiment!), so the plane engine had no power excess to 'overtake' additional drag to the level that is purported in this argument. That is why the takeoff speed and distance were so important to the experiment. If you study the free body diagram for this, you can isolate the important parts as being the force pushing the aircraft forward and any forces acting contrary to that. You'll recall from Physics that F=m*a and one of the many ways to express acceleration is (Vf^2 - Vi^2)/(2 * dS/dT). Any deviation in net force will be directly noticeable in the distance used to accelerate (again at Max power for this situation) to a certain speed in a given distance. In our case, it's takeoff speed and takeoff distance both easily measured. Since the forward thrust was the same in both the control and test environments, we can easily isolate the opposing effects by measuring the distance required to attain the same forward velocity. Since the distance was effectively the same, we can calculate that the net force was unchanged...and in fact in a perfect world with massless wheels, perfect bearings and completely inelastic rolling surfaces, it would be exactly the same. You could maybe argue the gravitational waves side of things if you had an incredibly massive and fast treadmill...but I don't think Mythbusters will attack that one ;) In the real world, we do have rolling friction, bearing friction, and rotational momentum...and given a good enough experiment that would probably become evident in this experiment as a slightly increased takeoff roll. Since the friction increases with speed, we could postulate that there would eventually be a treadmill setting where the entire thrust of the engine was being used just to overcome the friction of the wheel bearings and the rolling friction of the wheels turning on the treadmill. When I used to pull planes around to fuel them, it would take about 20 lbs of force to break the wheels loose on the local training C-150, after that it only took about five pounds, at the most, to keep it rolling at a brisk walk. Figure the engine puts out about 165 lbs of force that means that only about 3% of the thrust is being used to overcome that rolling friction. The rolling friction equation is independent of velocity, but it still includes a coefficient of friction factor that would certainly change (increase) as things got hot and lubricants started breaking down or experiencing turbulent flow in the layer between where the bearing mating surface is. My guess is that the wheels would fly apart or the bearings would literally seize long before there was 165 lbs in backwards force due to friction.

I still think we need khakis and polos. I mean seriously, do you need to be in BDU's in Altus, Oklahoma sitting at a computer all day long? When's the last time you needed to hide in the bushes from your keyboard? I say we roll out like the folks at the fitness center busi cas style... =)

According to Einstein, it's all relative...no seriously =) All depends in what you're referencing against. With the car on the dyno you also have to take in account that the purpose of the dyno is to measure power output, so the car is pushing against the roller. The front wheels have to be blocked somehow I would think, I've no experience with those, however, so I can't speak to it. As far as the friction in the wheels goes, yes, that's one of those things for this experiment you would consider a negligible factor. Simply because we're only concerned with how the relative motion of the treadmill affects the capability of the aircraft to produce thrust that will move it forward relative to the air mass. So you assume massless wheels (ie - no rotational inertia), frictionless bearings, and completely inelastic rolling surfaces (ie - no rolling friction). As evidenced in the mythbusters episode, those are all minor considerations even for the real world. Here's the show if you missed it. May not be up for real long... Gotta love the "Copy That" after receiving his TO clearance too...

Okay, really all I've got under my belt is IFS, but still two good stories made it out of my class... First was the kid from the class before us that was on his solo about the time we got done with the short academic program. We were all sitting in the flight room listening on the radio so we could learn the radio calls. He calls tower for his takeoff clearance, receives it, then taxis out for lineup and throws the coal to it. The mic key is on the front of the stick in the DA-20 and he was so nervous that he was holding it down through his takeoff roll and the whole time you could hear "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god....etc" Second story is better. When we're flying dual we're a "Tiger" callsign then solo is "Kitty". Needless to say, you get pretty used to Tiger and during your solo you get a bit nervous and are thinking more about landing than your radios (Probably a good idea too!) Kitty 60: "Kitty 60, downwind 08R" Tower: "Kitty 60, report base" Kitty 60: Titty 60, base 08R" Tower: "Kitty 60, cleared full stop [Laughter in background]" There was also a story from before of us a guy that decided to add the Super Troopers "meow" to the end of his Kitty calls. Ended up having to write a paper on the importance of correct radio procedures... (Yes, I realize that was three stories...)

Good! I have to get my vote in then =) Assuming no mechanical breakdown in the wheels, plane takes off at normal IAS while wheel speed is equal to IAS+GS. (To account for any head/tail winds). This is basic Newton's Third here. Car's work by pushing against the ground and the only effect of wind is aerodynamic drag. Airplanes push against the air and the only effect of the ground is frictional drag. This is tantamount to claiming that a car placed in a wind tunnel where the opposing wind speed increased equal to your ground speed would never go anywhere. It'd still go... Here's another way of thinking about it. The only part of the treadmill that matters is the part that is immediately in contact with the wheel (ignoring any fringe gravitational effects the asphalt might have forward and aft...which would actually draw the aircraft forward since most likely there is a higher mass concentration ahead than behind...think you can't measure that? LIGO). Anyway, the only part that really matters is the patch of tire that is on the patch of treadmill...what is in effect spinning the tire in conjunction (opposition) with the thrust from the engines. So take a C-172 at 5,000 AGL and sneak up under it with a wheel mounted on an electric motor and put it in contact with the tires. Use it to spin the tires backwards at the forward speed of the aircraft. Will it fall out of the sky? Perhaps this is why most military aircraft have retractable gear, to prevent the enemy from using their SA-13 anti-wheel-spinnything missiles. The other logical extension of this illogical theory that the treadmill prevents flight is that you could take off by hoisting the a/c just above the ground then spinning the tires up by some external means. Maybe you could even do this internally...wonder if Skunkworks is already onto this...I hope we're not treading into OPSEC again... Bet you can't guess my major =)

TaxSlayer.com has been useful for me in the past, also free for AD and I don't think there is an income restriction.