Although getting hit with a taser while wearing one
Electrical charge stays on the outside of a conductive sphere.
See (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/potsph.html)
So In theory, wrapping yourself in a conductive nanotube mesh would prevent the charge from hurting you.
And wrapping yourself in tinfoil would protect you from the police even better!
2002 called. They want their impending-IPv6-transition stories back.
The proper term for what they're describing is a mountain wave or wave action. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave contains a good description of the effect.
Mountain waves can be felt in small piston powered aircraft even flying significantly above the tops of the mountains, even several thousand feet above the peaks on either side of the valley you're crossing.
If you're holding altitude, you see that you speed up when you're crossing falling terrain and slow down when you're crossing rising terrain -- because as you cross the rising terrain, you're in the downdraft and so to maintain altitude, your airplane "feels" like it has to climb to stay at the same altitude in the falling air. Climbing requires additional power over simple cruise flight, or you slow down.
I've seen airspeed of an aircraft that should cruise at 150 knots, range from 90-180 knots, depending on whether you're on the uphill or downhill side of the wave. In severe conditions, you just cant' maintain altitude without slowing down too much, and you have to vary altitude to ride the waves.
It can be a scary experience knowing you don't have enough power to out-climb the wave -- That's the reason that you typically fly significantly higher in the mountains, even with good visibility -- You're not worried about hitting the mountains because you can't see them, you're worried about getting sucked by these waves and not having enough altitude to ride them out.
EVE solved this problem by creating a big world to start with then artificially cordoning off certain regions.
Technically accurate but irrelevant.
The expansion opened up approximately 25% more space, in a game that has grown from 5,000 peak concurrent users to 45,000 PCU since launch. When you have 9x the customers online, 25% more space to put them in doesn't even begin to make a dent.
Further, the space added is 0.0 space, which due to its dangerous environment, something like half the players in the game have never even been to. Essentially, they expanded the PK zone of the server without expanding the non-PK zone of the server. To the PK-fearing population (Carebears in EVE-speak), the new drone regions did nothing.
EVE has solved (mitigated?) the single server concept by sharding, but in a special hierarchical case. Each solar system is its own server, and has a means of transferring users from one server to another within the EVE cluster. A proxy server at their public internet connection funnels data from each user to the appropriate server, based on knowledge of which solar system each user is in. It's a hierarchical server-of-servers. Essentially, each solar system is a shard, but is a guaranteed singleton shard with constant portals to other nearby shards. Thus the illusion of an unsharded world is preserved.
The (relatively) recent Fossett crash is a prime example of this -- His aircraft was not equipped with a ELT beacon at all (in violation of law) and had he been ELT equipped, he would have been found within a day.
First, it isn't against the law unless he was carrying passengers. The plane he was flying did not fall under those regs.
14 CFR 91.207 states that you need an ELT unless you fly an "aircraft equipped to carry not more than one person". The Decathalon having having the second seat installed requires the ELT. Occupancy of the seat is irrelevant.
Past that, agreed with all you say.
14 CFR 91.207 - Emergency locator transmitters.
(a) Except as provided in paragraphs (e) and (f) of this section, no person may operate a U.S.-registered civil airplane unless--
[An ELT is installed and maintained as described]
(f) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to--
(9) Aircraft equipped to carry not more than one person;
If your aircraft has a second seat installed, you need an ELT. Occupancy of the seat is irrelevant.
The ELT is on the aircraft's MEL (Minimum equipment list), a set of equipment required for lawful operation of the aircraft. If an item on that list breaks, say, a radio, you're required by law to fix it before you fly again.
If your driver's seat belt in your car tore, it's illegal for you to operate it until you fix it. That said, there's nothing that keeps you from doing so, until you get pulled over and a cop notices. Much the same in the aircraft, except 'ramp checks' as they're called, are very uncommon, typically only administered as added pain after you already got caught for screwing up for other reasons.
ELTs are maintained yearly as part of the required annual inspection. If it fails, you might be tempted to fly for a while without it until you get it sorted, and then just forget and let it go. Stupid, but sometimes things get missed. Bravado might have had something to do with it too.
Yes, the existing ELT (Emergency Location Transmitter) beacons are no longer monitored by satellite. That does not mean they become useless. They broacast an audio tone on a radio frequency all civil and military aircraft can tune to.
Many pilots fly with their second radio continually tuned to this frequency, and I have been on flights in a general aviation flight where we have picked up beacons and reported them to ATC. More often than not, it's a hard landing that trips the beacon and the aircraft is parked on the ramp.
Finally, when your aircraft does go missing, these beacons are deliberately tuned by authorities doing search and rescue work, such as the Civil Air Patrol. Aircraft listen for and locate the general location of the beacon, and ground personnel locate the beacon with good directional antennas.
The (relatively) recent Fossett crash is a prime example of this -- His aircraft was not equipped with a ELT beacon at all (in violation of law) and had he been ELT equipped, he would have been found within a day.
The big thing that changes here is that, with the sattelites no longer monitoring, ATC will not get an automatic alert when a beacon turns on. This tech is spotty at best, however, and of course, 90% of ELT activations are false alarms anyways.
The new 406 Mhz beacons include a GPS reciever and actively transmit their location, such that rescue units simply get a waypoint on their GPS where the transmitter is downed. They are a far better technology, but the existing system does work well.
Overall, more hype than needed.
Nonsense. The air is thin but not THAT thin. B-29 Superfortresses routinely flew at that height, via human piloting. You don't "need" an autopilot.
Firstly, the B-29 had the wings of a glider and cruised at 220 knots. The Airbus by contrast has swept wings optimized for cruise at
Secondly, the B29 was flown by autopilot in cruise. Preview "Bringing the Thunder" on Google books, page 155, for the memoirs of a B-29 pilot.
That said, this is not even an autopilot issue. The true source of this problem is the flight control system of the Airbus, which features a "self protection" system that intends to prevent the aircraft from stalling at any expense, and in this case, actively threatens the safety of the aircraft itself.
The truly frightening thing about this is that the air data computer clearly resumed normal operation at some point during the dive, and the aircraft was recoverable. Had this been a permanent failure of the air data computer, an airbus pilot has no way to override the aircraft's intentions and recover from the dive. An airbus pilot can only watch, as the airplane says, "No, really, I'm stalling, I have to hold the nose down and pick up airspeed!". With a failed ADC computer constantly and erroneously telling flight controls that the aircraft is in stall, an Airbus would dive, trying to recover, until it impacts the ground.
By contrast, A pilot of a Boeing aircraft can tell his aircraft that it's worldview is wrong and fly it by hand in any circumstance.
This represents a fundamental difference in philosophy. Airbus trusts the computer and the system more than it trusts the pilot -- It says that the probability of a systems failure causing incorrect control commands and threatening the aircraft is less than the probability of a confused, tired, or impaired pilot losing control of the aircraft. Boeing, by contrast, trusts the pilot more than it trusts the system.
There have been aircraft accidents where an Airbus aircraft has crashed in situations where a Boeing aircraft would have been flyable by a human pilot.
There have also been aircraft accidents where a Boeing aircraft has crashed due to incorrect pilot procedures which could have been overridden by an Airbus aircraft's flight control system.
Each philosophy has its risks and rewards.
HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!
