Night flying in the mountians in a cessna 150,

Mike Rapoport wrote:

If you were cruising along at the MEA
and lost an engine, and the MEA was 5000' above the single engine service
ceiling, it would take tens or hundreds of miles to lose 2000' of altitude
and impact terrain.

*If* there are no downdrafts. Remember, we're talking mountains.

Stefan

Alan wrote:
On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:33:36 -0500, Matt Whiting
wrote:


I like to tour on a motorcycle. It certainly isn't the safest way to
get from point A to point B, but it is very rewarding.



But, would you make that journey to point B in a pitch black night,
with no headlight or tail light?

I'm not risk averse, I'm stupid averse.

No, because that would constitute riding with broken equipment. I
wouldn't fly a single at night in IMC without cockpit lights or radios
either, but I will and have with all equipment working. Sure, if the
engine quits it will be ugly, but that is a very remote possibility and
one that I accept every now and again if the trip is important enough.


Matt

Downdrafts are always balanced by updrafts over any meaningful distance.. In
any event, if there were significant downdrafts, it wouldn't make much
difference if the plane could climb 50fpm or sink 50fpm in still air.

Mike
MU-2


"Stefan" wrote in message
...
Mike Rapoport wrote:

If you were cruising along at the MEA and lost an engine, and the MEA was
5000' above the single engine service ceiling, it would take tens or
hundreds of miles to lose 2000' of altitude and impact terrain.

*If* there are no downdrafts. Remember, we're talking mountains.

Stefan

Mike Rapoport wrote:

Downdrafts are always balanced by updrafts over any meaningful distance.. In

Make that "mostly". Mountains sometimes bear some surprizes, if you
don't know the region. Anyway, we were talking about night flying. Not
easy to find the right ridge ad night...

any event, if there were significant downdrafts, it wouldn't make much
difference if the plane could climb 50fpm or sink 50fpm in still air.

My point exactly.

Stefan

In article ,
"Peter Duniho" wrote:

Likewise, there is no length of time you can fly that will guarantee an
engine failure. Just as important: it doesn't matter how many hours you
have, the chance of an engine failure is exactly the same (all else being
equal) on each flight. Once you successfully complete a flight without an
engine failure, you can ignore that flight (and every single one prior) for
the purpose of assessing your risk on the next flight.

That's true, but the longer you fly (or play the lottery) the closer
your probability of experiencing an engine failure (or a lottery win)
some time your career approaches 1.

Of course, you might have to fly/play for a *very* long time before that
probability actually gets close to 1, but sooner or later it will be 1
to any desired degree of accuracy. So the statement "fly long enough and
you will experience an engine failure" is pretty close to being true.
The question is how long is "long enough."

rg

"Matt Whiting" wrote

Sure, if the
engine quits it will be ugly, but that is a very remote possibility and
one that I accept every now and again if the trip is important enough.


Matt

Do me a favor, and settle a bet. Would you mind telling us how old you are?
--
Jim in NC

In article ,
wrote:

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 17:16:35 -0800, Ron Garret
wrote:

That's true, but the longer you fly (or play the lottery) the closer
your probability of experiencing an engine failure (or a lottery win)
some time your career approaches 1.

Of course, you might have to fly/play for a *very* long time before that
probability actually gets close to 1, but sooner or later it will be 1
to any desired degree of accuracy. So the statement "fly long enough and
you will experience an engine failure" is pretty close to being true.
The question is how long is "long enough."

rg


This just ain't so.

Every time you play the lottery, it's like the first time you ever
played it.

It doesn't matter whether you won a jillion yesterday, or haven't won
in 50 years, or never played. The odds are exactly the same.

The odds of winning any particular lottery are (approximately) the same.

The odds of winning a lottery sometime in your lifetime are much better if you
play the lottery every day of your life (assuming a nice long life) than if you
just play the lottery once.

--
Bob Noel
looking for a sig the lawyers will like

wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 17:16:35 -0800, Ron Garret
wrote:

That's true, but the longer you fly (or play the lottery) the closer
your probability of experiencing an engine failure (or a lottery win)
some time your career approaches 1.

Of course, you might have to fly/play for a *very* long time before that
probability actually gets close to 1, but sooner or later it will be 1
to any desired degree of accuracy. So the statement "fly long enough and
you will experience an engine failure" is pretty close to being true.
The question is how long is "long enough."

rg


This just ain't so.

Every time you play the lottery, it's like the first time you ever
played it.

It doesn't matter whether you won a jillion yesterday, or haven't won
in 50 years, or never played. The odds are exactly the same.

Agreed.
Take a look at a probability text book.

Adam
N7966L
Beech Super III

I love statisticians. They argue over odds and probablilities.

Seems there were these three math professors from Purdue, the one
specialized in statistics. They decided to go duck hunting. So they got
them a boat, shotguns, etc.

So here they are sitting in the boat when they see a duck flying toward
them. The one in the bow fired at the duck and the shot went above the
duck. The one in the middle shot under the duck. The stats prof in the
back of the boat yelled, "Got 'em!"

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

In article ,
wrote:

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 17:16:35 -0800, Ron Garret
wrote:

That's true, but the longer you fly (or play the lottery) the closer
your probability of experiencing an engine failure (or a lottery win)
some time your career approaches 1.

Of course, you might have to fly/play for a *very* long time before that
probability actually gets close to 1, but sooner or later it will be 1
to any desired degree of accuracy. So the statement "fly long enough and
you will experience an engine failure" is pretty close to being true.
The question is how long is "long enough."

rg


This just ain't so.

Yes it is, you just didn't read what I wrote very carefully. Pay
particular attention to the phrase "some time in your career."

Every time you play the lottery, it's like the first time you ever
played it.

Yes, that's true.

It doesn't matter whether you won a jillion yesterday, or haven't won
in 50 years, or never played. The odds are exactly the same.

That depends on what you mean by "the odds". The odds on any one play
are the same, but the cumulative odds of experiencing a win or an engine
failure *at some point in your life* goes up with every play/flight.
Specifically, if the odds of winning on a single try are P then the odds
of winning some time in your career are 1-(1-P)^N where N is the number
of times you play. As long as P is strictly greater than 0 this number
approaches 1 as N grows large. In fact, it is an elementary algebraic
exercise to solve for N given P and the desired cumulative probability
P1.

The behavior of this formula is somewhat counterintuitive. For example,
if P is 0.01 (1 chance in 100 of winning/engine failure on any
particular try) then to have a 99% chance of winning you have to
play/fly about 460 times. To have a 50% chance you only need about 70
tries.

A special case of this formula is when P is very small and N is not too
huge (N1/P). Then (1-P)^N is approximately 1-NP, and the cumulative
probability is approximately 1-(1-NP)=NP. In other words, if the
probability of winning is small then the probability of winning in N
plays is very nearly N times greater than the probability of winning in
1 play. This is a pretty good approximation until the cumulative
probability gets around 10-20% (at which point N is off by 5-10%), which
is to say, it's a pretty close approximation in realistic scenarios for
both lotteries and engine failures.

rg