csubl

Members
  • Content

    42
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Feedback

    0%

Everything posted by csubl

  1. There's a nice tribute to Chuck on the inside back cover of the September issue of Parachutist.
  2. Lena was having trouble deciding what she should give up for Lent. Finally, she decided to give up sex, but she didn't get a chance to tell Ole. Ole came to bed and proceeded to get frisky with Lena. "No, Ole, we can't" said Lena. "It's Lent". "To who?" wailed Ole. "And for how long?"
  3. The Hittites established an empire around 1600 BC. Their power declined after 1274 BC, and the Hittite kingdom vanished from historical records after 1180 BC. Therefore, a reference to a Hittite can be made without offending anyone. So there were these two Hittites named Ole and Lena....
  4. Some years ago my wife and I went to a road production of an off-Broadway play called "Charlie Victor Romeo". The dialog is taken from the cockpit voice recorder transcripts of six airline accidents. Sounds kind of ghoulish, but I thought that it was very well done. It was interesting to see a depiction of the way the crew interacted when things started going bad. One segment was of an airliner that had been painted, and the maintenance personnel neglected to remove the tape that they had used to cover the static ports, so the crew had inaccurate readings of airspeed and altitude. The producers recently created a video version. I bought a copy on iTunes, but it looks like WalMart sells it as too, with a possibility of more sources in the works.
  5. A well-dressed eighty-year-old lawyer arrives at a brothel in Nevada. The madam asks if he has a preference, and he says he wants to spend time with Violet. The madam says that maybe he should reconsider, because Violet commands $1,000 per visit, but the little old guy insists, pays the money, and spends an hour with Violet. Next night, same thing: Little old guy arrives, wants a session with Violet, and pays a thousand dollars. Third night, again he shows up, and only Violet will do. He pays a thousand dollars and spends his time with her. After three sessions, she feels she should find out a little more about him, and asks where he is from. He says he is from Cleveland. "Oh", she says. "I have a sister in Cleveland". "Yes", he replies. "She passed away, and I'm the executor of her estate. She left you three thousand dollars".
  6. csubl

    Where Were You?

    November 22nd, 1963 I was a couple months into the 8th grade, in a one-room school in a tiny town in fly-over country. One room, eight grades, one teacher, twenty-some students. The mother of one of my classmates came to the school and said that Kennedy had been shot. I can't recall whether we were dismissed early, but I do remember going home and watching the news coverage on TV. January 28, 1986 I had a job doing application programming, and heard about the disaster. I lived a few blocks from work, and decided to go home and see what TV was reporting. One of the things that sticks in my mind from the TV coverage was an elderly scientist type rambling on about how the white clouds that resulted from the explosion were snow clouds. I remember thinking that he was a doofus. September 11, 2001 I was on my way to the airport, and heard on the radio that an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center. I initially thought about the WWII accident when a B-25 flew into the Empire State Building, but when I got to the airport the news was reporting that a second airliner had impacted. I had planned to conduct a flight lesson, then make a flight to visit my dad in the hospital, a hundred miles away by air. That day was his 91st birthday, and he was awaiting surgery for a broken hip. All flights were grounded, so I drove there to see him. He died about three weeks later.
  7. In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft. (H. L. Mencken)
  8. I didn't find any reference to this by searching the forum, but my apologies if it's a repost: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1124545/
  9. Fred and Barney are sitting in a bar having a few beers, and discussing calculus. Barney says its such a difficult subject that not many people understand it, but Fred disagrees. When Barney leaves to use the restroom, Fred calls the barmaid over and says "When Barney comes back, I'm going to ask you a question. I want you to answer X squared divided by two". The barmaid says she can do that. Just to be sure, Fred has her repeat it a few times to make sure she's got it right. When Barney returns to the table, Fred calls the barmaid over and asks "What's the integral of X?". She replies X squared divided by two, and starts walking back to the bar. Barney is totally amazed, Fred is totally amused, and the barmaid, halfway back to the bar, turns and says "Plus a constant!".
  10. I think it was a B-17, and it seems to me that it was longer ago than 2-4 months.
  11. After reading Calvin19's post, I see that he's right. I found a mistake in my calculations. Rotation at 25 miles north of 45 S. Lat should be 1087.069 feet/sec, so a one-minute flight time would result in a deflection of 60*6.763 or about 400 feet.
  12. Just from some rough ballpark calculations, assuming earth is a perfect sphere of 25,000 miles circumference at the equator: Circumference of 45 South Latitude is 17677.68 miles; Rotation speed at that latitude is 1080.303 feet/second; Moving 25 miles north (about 40 km), circumference is 17688.78 miles, and rotation is 1080.981 feet/second; Assuming 1 minute flight time for a shell (due to speed of shell decreasing from 800 m/sec and increased distance due to trajectory), I get 60*.678 or about 40 feet offset due to Coriolis.
  13. From the website http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit4/movearth.html "Another likely-sounding but ultimately fallacious Coriolis Force myth is set during the First World War at the Battle of the Falklands between British and German naval forces in the South Atlantic. The story goes that early in the battle, British shells kept falling consistently about 100 meters to the left of the German ships because the gunners neglected to take into account the opposite sign of the Coriolis effect in the Southern hemisphere (most of their experience was in the North), and so they were inadvertently correcting for the Coriolis effect in the wrong direction, resulting in twice the deflection that would occur if no correction had been made! While this story has made it into at least one physics textbook that I used back in the 1980s, and is now a common-place on the Internet, I've have never yet read an account of this story in historical accounts of the Battle of the Falklands, which was an important engagement and much discussed. A straightforward calculation, beyond the scope of this introductory course, readily shows that this is a bit of physics mythology."
  14. Here's a link to the full movie, called "Master Hands", from which the excerpt above was taken, and a link to the Wiki article about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bT6txm4RpA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Hands
  15. If he has a current pilot certificate (recreational, private, commercial, or ATP) and has not been denied a medical certificate, he can fly a light sport aircraft, but must comply with sport pilot limitations. If his last application for a medical certificate was denied, he must get a special issuance medical first. In either case, he can exercise sport pilot privileges using only a driver's license in lieu of a medical certificate.
  16. Here's a link to a good description of the contributions of work done by Bernoulli and Newton as it relates to the analysis of lift: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/bernnew.html
  17. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/04/bear-vs-bison-alex-wypysz_n_778576.html Supposed to be authentic pictures. The injured bison outran the bear, but was put down by park rangers the next day.
  18. According to IMDB, the "Solomon Kane" movie has been played in theaters in various parts of Europe since early this year, but I'm beginning to think that it's not going to be shown here in the US. Did any of you over there go to see it, and if so, was it any good?
  19. Another alternative would be to get a Sport Pilot license. It is more restrictive than a Private, but you only need 20 hours to take the checkride, and you don't need a medical certificate. If you decide to get a private license: A good compromise between owning your own airplane and renting one is a flying club. You still have your own set of keys, but there are other people to help pay the bill when something breaks. I'd suggest that you get a medical certificate before you start flying. That way if there are any issues that make you ineligible, you'll find out before you've spent the money on pre-solo flight training. There are some TSA considerations. If you're a US citizen, you need to present either a current passport or the combination of an original birth certificate and a government issued photo ID. If you're not a US citizen, there's a process that you have to go through before you can start training. Here's a link: http://www.aopa.org/tsa_rule/alienft.html I tell my students to get the knowledge test done early in their training. That way they don't have to interrupt their flying near the end of their flight training in order to study for the written. Part 61 of the Federal Aviation Regulations requires 40 hours minimum for a private; Part 141 requires a minimum of 35 hours. Hope this helps.
  20. I figured that as a jump pilot, to other jumpers I'm one of the elements in the equation for lift. The coefficient of lift, the letter C with a subscript L (csubl), sounded better than S, rho, or V squared divided by 2.
  21. I enjoyed "The Lighthorsemen" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093416/ It's a World War I shoot-em-up with some wartime romance thrown in. Based on a true story, too.
  22. csubl

    Pissed-off eagle

    Here's a wildlife picture that was taken with a cellphone camera. I was in the woods hunting whitetail deer when a herd of elk ambled on by. The picture doesn't do justice to what I saw (they were a lot closer than the picture shows) but you can just barely make out a few animals in the center of the image.
  23. csubl

    Pissed-off eagle

    Regardless of the source, the pictures are very impressive and it was fun to see them again. Thanks for sharing!
  24. csubl

    Pissed-off eagle

    These pictures were circulating a while back, and Snopes has the story: http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/eaglefox.asp