4 ms·
I wonder how close they actually got to the ground. It says it engaged at a few thousand feet but at fighter plane speed that could have been seconds until hit
by jonplackett 6y ago
I wonder how close they actually got to the ground.
It says it engaged at a few thousand feet but at fighter plane speed that could have been seconds until hitting the ground.
- rkangel 6y agoThat was the most interesting bit to me. I am learning to fly an autogyro - 2000 to 3000 ft is our normal cruising altitude and I haven't been above 5000. The idea that you need to pull up at 4000 to not hit the ground says a lot about the speed.
- implements 6y ago> I am learning to fly an autogyro ... Just to say, HNs had a comment yesterday with a terrifying video illustrating ‘the one big safety problem’ with autogyros - rotor disk unloading followed by “bunt over” (I think). I hope you don’t mind me saying ... please don’t skip any safety training, particularly if you come from conventional aircraft.
- rkangel 6y agoI'm learning in the UK where you aren't permitted to skip anything. Even if you had a PPL for fixed wing (which I don't) it's only worth 15 hours of the required 45 in the gyro. I'd be curious to see the video, but modern gyros are less susceptible to it and it's simple to avoid as a pilot (far easier than stalls and spins). I find it alarming the degree to which US pilots can fly gyros with minimal specific training - they're very different to planes.
- implements 6y agoHere it is: “Gyrocopter low g power push over crash” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfjBzrSDrV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfjBzrSDrV0 Warning: From the description: “This is a pretty sobering piece of film and its pretty obvious the pilot didn’t walk away. So if this is likely to upset you please don’t watch.”
- revax 6y agoCan you link to the comment, that sounds interesting!
- throwanem 6y agoAssuming we're talking about the typical example (https://youtu.be/WkZGL7RQBVw https://youtu.be/WkZGL7RQBVw) - in the HUD, altitude is the right-hand vertical tape. (The left one is airspeed.) It looks to bottom out around 4400 feet during the AGCAS recovery.
- ceejayoz 6y agoLoses about 10k feet in about 13 seconds starting at the 0:23 mark. Yikes.
- throwanem 6y agoThe airspeed at the bottom of the dive is "yikes" all over again, too. Maybe four seconds tops if AGCAS hadn't kicked in.
- randerson 6y agoWith Altitude meaning feet above sea level, this could have been pretty close to the ground. (Arizona is largely around 4000' elevation it seems.)
- throwanem 6y agoI'd need to look it up to be sure, but I would assume by default that this is a radar, not a barometric, altimeter. (To expand on that: A barometric altimeter works via air pressure, and thus shows height above sea level; a radar altimeter measures the time taken for microwaves to go from it to the ground and back, and thus shows height above ground. I wouldn't be surprised to find both types in a fighter, but I would be very surprised to find that a radar altimeter wasn't the default, because it's going to be the one that provides the most accurate information and thus the most useful to a pilot who needs to worry about avoiding CFIT during complex maneuvers.)
- jki275 6y agoNo. The radar altitude is shown further down the right side (the box with the "R" next to it). It bottoms at 2970 as I saw it at with the tape showing 4370MSL. The right side of the tape is MSL. If you watch that box through the video, you can see why you don't use the radar altimeter for everything. Any time you don't have clear line of sight to the ground with the belly of the aircraft, the radar altimeter blanks out completely. If you're in a roll, it will give incorrect information as it's not pointed directly at the ground.