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So, I guess a phone holder should be standard equipment on F35s, so that you can have an artificial horizon , altimeter, gps speed, and terrain projection when
by K0balt 2y ago
So, I guess a phone holder should be standard equipment on F35s, so that you can have an artificial horizon , altimeter, gps speed, and terrain projection when the main system inevitably glitches out. I’d recommend one of the ones with built in wireless charging, they are pretty handy.
It’s unconscionable that the aircraft lacks a mechanical gyro, compass, altimeter, ball, and airspeed indicator. With just those simple mechanical instruments and a wristwatch you can fly any aircraft that still has flight control and power in nearly any conditions. Mostly, they can be replicated by your smartphone.
Makes me want to make phone app called “backup F35 instruments” “made specially for F35 pilots to keep handy for those potentially career ending awkward moments.”
As a bonus I could add WAZE style UAP reporting with adorable alien emojis to drive engagement, and banner ads at the bottom since the number of F35 pilots is too low for a subscription model at their salaries. I could throw the UAP data in a free Amazon bucket, since I don’t expect much traffic.
I’d imagine the ad space for F35 pilots could be pretty pricey if it was pitched to the right verticals (legal and life insurance, maybe?), and since the app should only take a weekend to throw together a few hundred bucks a month would probably be worth it.
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoWhich currently available app do you recommend for this purpose
- K0balt 2y agoProbably ForeFlight synthetic vision, if I’m being serious. But considering the pay scale of military pilots, A-EFIS would probably be better at €60. They even have a free version that punishes you for being poor by only showing black and white lol. But for my app, I’d copy the styling and instrument tics from the F35 instruments to make the transition less stressful. The last thing you’ll want to be doing is relearning your backup instruments every time the airplane BSODs. I love the idea of a free black and white version though, keep the strip ads in color, just to keep it annoying. Subscribe to put the screen in color lol.
- b_davis_ 2y agothe F35 has standby instruments that work on DC batteries. it also has a radio that is also powered by a battery supply. probably an hour of operation without aircraft power. no way it passed airworthiness without backup flight instruments and comm. every military aircraft for the past 50 years has this. (oh, and the standby instrument package probably cost a couple of hundred thousand. certified for flight, of course)
- K0balt 2y agoWell, that is good, at least. It sounds like those are Located between your legs? Could you actually do a 0/0 (not that it would be advisable) but -could- you even make a call safety at decision height with those? Even if you wouldn’t, would you feel like you -could-? I’d bet if there was an iPad with foreflight synthetic vision running in plain sight looking forward, that aircraft would still be flying. Bailing out is a matter of pilot confidence in the aircraft being flyable. Still, if he did have an operational horizon, HSI, turn and bank, altimeter, VSI, and turbine temp /RPM that he had presumably been trained to fly the aircraft with, I’m probably going to have to come down on the side of “he abandoned a presumably airworthy aircraft.” I mean, in that case, he had a (huge,catastrophically) failed system and he failed to use the backup for that system. I still think the app would be a hit among F35 pilots, even if only for ironic reasons and superstition lol. Probably some national security concerns there though, if you handled any location data at all. I mean, can fighter pilots even carry smartphones? Dr. Evil wants to know.