More newbie Qs

"ohfuk24" wrote

These are questions that EVERY student pilot has. Hence the reason
that you are a student pilot. You need to talk face to face with an
instructor and/or take a ground school at your local FBO. ALL of your
questions will be answered, as well many other things.

Going back to Ramapriya's first posts, I don't recall him ever stating
that he is/was a student pilot or has any intention of becoming one.
His questions arise from a trip during which he rode in the cockpit of
an Airbus jetliner and overhearing the conversations between the pilots.

It is ridiculous to think that you can try to get your groundschool
knowledge and studying done by writing to a usenet group.

Again, (I might be wrong) I don't think that groundschool is his goal.
As a retired airline pilot, I understand where his questions are coming
from. Many of those responding to his questions do so from a Private
Pilot perspective, not understanding that his line of questioning began
with jet Transport Category aircraft... thus many answers that he finds
to be in conflict.

Out of curiosity, I had just as many questions after my first trip to
the cockpit of a Piedmont DC-3 back in 1955. I had no intention of ever
becoming a pilot. Now, after 25 years of airline flying, I'm glad to
answer some of Ramapriya's questions from the Jet Transport perspective
where his series of questions started.

and you won't be wasting everyone else's time either.

Speak for yourself, not everyone else.

"Ramapriya" wrote
1. How does a pilot get to know the distance to the airport that he
has to land in, so that he plans his descent accordingly,

Three miles out for every thousand feet of altitude works
quite well for most jetliners.

Bob Moore
CFI ATP B-707 B-727
PanAM (retired)

"Ramapriya" writes:

I wish you all a very cheery 2005. You really are a nice set of guys
here (those branding me a terrorist notwithstanding), mostly patient
even at clarifying elementary stuff

Some more Qs, if you don't mind.

This is not technically an answer to your questions, but I may be able
to answer all of them at once. :-) Go look on ebay.com for some books
on flying. People who have finsihed their training are selling them
all the time for dirt cheap prices. I managed to pick up an outdated
copy of the Jeppesen Private Pilot textbook for $5. This book would
answer every one of your questions, and more, with much more detail
and better pictures than you are likely to find on this newsgroup or
on the web.

You probably don't want an outdated textbook to work from if you are
currently studying for a license, but if you are merely curious, want
more information for playing with flight simulators, or may be
studying flying at some undetermined point in the future when you have
more cash (like me) then it is perfect.

Chris
--
Chris Colohan Email: PGP: finger
Web: www.colohan.com Phone: (412)268-4751

In article .com,
"Ramapriya" wrote:

I wish you all a very cheery 2005. You really are a nice set of guys
here (those branding me a terrorist notwithstanding), mostly patient
even at clarifying elementary stuff

Some more Qs, if you don't mind.

Since I have nothing better to do at the moment...

1. How does a pilot get to know the distance to the airport that he has
to land in, so that he plans his descent accordingly, in planes that
don't have an onboard computer? Maps I know would give the distance
between two fixed points, but how does he keep track of distance
covered in flight and that sort of thing?

It's a learned skill, a combination of keeping track of where you are
relative to the ground and using charts, and learning to judge distances
visually in the air.

To inquire ground stations
such info would be embarrassing, I guess

A little perhaps, but pilots get lost regularly. It's much better to be
a little embarrassed than totally lost.

2. What exactly is a VOR? Sounds like it's a constant all-direction
radio transmission from a fixed point

That's more or less correct. There are actually two different kinds of
such ground-based transmitters: VORs and NDBs. As others have mentioned
in this thread, Google is your friend.

on the airport

That's not correct. Some VOR transmitters are at airports. Others
aren't.

3. If a pilot needs to land at an airport that doesn't have a control
tower, how does he figure its elevation so that he may plan his
descent?

He consults a chart or an airport directory.

4. When a pilot says, "Give me a vector", what does he actually mean?

He's asking air traffic control to tell him which direction to fly.
(It's a less embarrassing way of saying, "I'm lost".)

5. When pilots use miles in conversations, does it mean the miles we
normally use, or is it always nautical miles?

It's supposed to be always nautical, but distance estimates are often
wrong by more than 10%, which is the different between nautical and
statute miles, so it often doesn't really matter.

6. The difference between airspeed and groundspeed is that airspeed is
the net of the plane's speed and opposing windspeed, while groundspeed
is just the plane's speed. Right?

Not quite. There's no such thing as "just the plane's speed." There is
only the plane's speed with respect to other things. Airspeed is the
plane's speed with respect to the air. Ground speed is the plane's
speed with respect to the ground.

7. What is "density altitude"

It's a way of expressing the air's capacity for supporting the
airplane's weight taking into account the effect of both altitude and
temperature. When the air gets hot it expands and effectively gets
"thinner". Aircraft performance figures assume a standard temperature.
When the air is hotter than that temperature you take that into account
by figuring out what the "effective" altitude is, that is, the altitude
which, at standard temperature, has the same capacity for supporting the
airplane's weight at whatever the temperature happens to actually be.

, and how to compute it?

It's usually done by looking it up in a table. There's a formula, but
few people actually use it.

If I'm not wrong,
its use is to plan the length of takeoff roll and angle of climb.

Yep.

rg

Christopher Brian Colohan wrote:

I managed to pick up an outdated
copy of the Jeppesen Private Pilot textbook for $5. This book would
answer every one of your questions, and more, with much more detail
and better pictures than you are likely to find on this newsgroup or
on the web.

Yep. That's really what you should do, Rama. That's an excellent book.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

5. When pilots use miles in conversations, does it mean the miles we
normally use, or is it always nautical miles?

It's supposed to be always nautical, but distance estimates are often
wrong by more than 10%, which is the different between nautical and
statute miles, so it often doesn't really matter.

how can that be.. a distance is a distance.. who said anything about
"estimates"..
If I measure 10nm then it is 10nm.. if my DME says I'm x miles from station
y, then that's where I am... there is no 10% error..

BT

In article SL5Bd.2351$232.844@fed1read05,
"BTIZ" wrote:

5. When pilots use miles in conversations, does it mean the miles we
normally use, or is it always nautical miles?

It's supposed to be always nautical, but distance estimates are often
wrong by more than 10%, which is the different between nautical and
statute miles, so it often doesn't really matter.

how can that be.. a distance is a distance.. who said anything about
"estimates"..
If I measure 10nm then it is 10nm.. if my DME says I'm x miles from station
y, then that's where I am... there is no 10% error..

Read the question again: "When pilots use miles in conversations..."
When a pilot says, "Five miles from the field" the actual physical
distance is never exactly five miles.

Even when your DME says x miles from station y that is *not* where you
are. At best, it is the slant-line distance, and at worst it's a
completely arbitrary number because your DME could be kerfliggered.
Furthermore, a VORTAC is more or less a point, but an airport isn't. A
typical airport is many tenths of miles (of either flavor) long/wide.
You'd have to pick an arbitrary point on the field and measure your
distance to that. What do you pick? The tower? What if there is no
tower? The middle of the runway? What if there's more than one runway?
The end of the runway? Which end?

So you see, the actual physical distance from your airplane to an
airport is not even well defined. So when a pilot says "I'm five miles
from the field" what he really means is "I'm somewhere in the vicinity
of five miles" at which point it doesn't much matter what kind of miles
are meant.

rg

Terry wrote:
Couldn't have said it better Dudley...

My personal opinion is "he" likes the attention from the
newsgroup vets
rather than the information from those trying to help. Most
questions are
easily answered on his own computer and using a search engine.


I respect both your and Dudley's views, though your "personal opinion"
couldn't have been more incorrect.

Bob Moore is closest to feeling my pulse on all this, with one little
difference - my Qs haven't exactly arisen only out of the Airbus
cockpit ride. In fact, I did whatever it took to get the pilots agree
to have me in the jumpseat with them because I really, really wanted
to. I've wanted to do that real-time for a very long time, and probably
would've, had it not been for restrictive reasons.

Thanks a lot to guys like Bob, Jim, Patterson and Sarangan. I'll pick
up "Sticks and rudder" from somewhere too, to supplement info from this
ng.

Cheers,

Ramapriya

"Ramapriya" wrote in message
oups.com...

Terry wrote:
Couldn't have said it better Dudley...

My personal opinion is "he" likes the attention from the
newsgroup vets
rather than the information from those trying to help. Most
questions are
easily answered on his own computer and using a search engine.


I respect both your and Dudley's views, though your "personal opinion"
couldn't have been more incorrect.

Bob Moore is closest to feeling my pulse on all this, with one little
difference - my Qs haven't exactly arisen only out of the Airbus
cockpit ride. In fact, I did whatever it took to get the pilots agree
to have me in the jumpseat with them because I really, really wanted
to. I've wanted to do that real-time for a very long time, and
probably
would've, had it not been for restrictive reasons.

Thanks a lot to guys like Bob, Jim, Patterson and Sarangan. I'll pick
up "Sticks and rudder" from somewhere too, to supplement info from
this
ng.

Cheers,

Ramapriya


If you want to deal with my opinion on something, deal with it directly
please, and don't couple me with what someone else has said which is
only related to a post of mine by THEIR inference .
Actually I offered you no opinion, which was the subject of my post to
you, but rather posed a question to you that you didn't answer.
I'm glad you obtained the information you were seeking and will now
supplement that information with what you ACTUALLY need to supply the
complex laundry list of information you require......a textbook! :-)

All the best to you,
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/CFI Retired
for private email; make necessary changes between ( )
dhenriques(at)(delete all this)earthlink(dot)net

I would not recommend stick & rudder. John Denker's online book is much
better. Stick & rudder is very old, and a lot of things presented there
as 'revolutionary ideas' have been well known for many years. It gets
dry pretty fast.



"Ramapriya" wrote in news:1104475759.841789.102900
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:


Terry wrote:
Couldn't have said it better Dudley...

My personal opinion is "he" likes the attention from the
newsgroup vets
rather than the information from those trying to help. Most
questions are
easily answered on his own computer and using a search engine.


I respect both your and Dudley's views, though your "personal opinion"
couldn't have been more incorrect.

Bob Moore is closest to feeling my pulse on all this, with one little
difference - my Qs haven't exactly arisen only out of the Airbus
cockpit ride. In fact, I did whatever it took to get the pilots agree
to have me in the jumpseat with them because I really, really wanted
to. I've wanted to do that real-time for a very long time, and
probably
would've, had it not been for restrictive reasons.

Thanks a lot to guys like Bob, Jim, Patterson and Sarangan. I'll pick
up "Sticks and rudder" from somewhere too, to supplement info from
this
ng.

Cheers,

Ramapriya

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
1...
I would not recommend stick & rudder. John Denker's online book is much
better. Stick & rudder is very old, and a lot of things presented
there
as 'revolutionary ideas' have been well known for many years. It gets
dry pretty fast.

I would agree with this. Stick and Rudder is a fine book; and it
performed a useful purpose in it's day, but there are much better books
out here that
contain much needed updated information on aerodynamics.
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/CFI Retired
for private email; make necessary changes between ( )
dhenriques(at)(delete all this)earthlink(dot)net