MythBusters airplane on a conveyor belt

Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

ManhattanMan wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote:
gatt wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
news:f92dnR-

I'll bet the Australians use something even better than either
of us :-))
Their conveyor belts go in the opposite direction.

-c
aiee, I need a vacation.


..and their airplanes fly upside down too :-))
They'd say you're entitled to your point of view....


It IS amazing when one stops to actually visualize it; the round
globe; the other side of it; and flying in the same sky upside
down relative to each other but right side up relative to the
individual localities. It's of course obvious to us in the macro
sense, but when you REALLY get down to the micro visualization of
it all................ :-))))



Bucky Fuller amy have said it best when he said that up and down
are completely innacurate. The correct terms for a pilot should be
in and out..

I think he was talking about flying, anyway..


Bertie
You run into this when you start explaining left and right vs inside
and top or outside rudder when dealing with slow rolls :-)


Yes, I've been doing that with one of my current students in
anticipation of the arrival of the airplane,
Or rather, he's been reading a lot and asking me questions about how
you know which way to twist the controls inverted. I just told him
it's easier to see when your head is upside down! For inverted
flight, you push the stick as normal for the direction of roll
without concerning yourself with L/R labels. and the rudder just goes
in the dirction you want the nose to go. Simple. For rolls, it's the
same with the addition of top/bottom rudder for the knife edge
transition.. Sound reasonable?

Bertie
Sounds good. Perspective in aerobatics inverted can be REAL confusing
to newbies. The one that I always found fascinating is the different
perspective in inverted spins as seen from the pilot's and ground
witness perspective. To the pilot the inverted spin will be left, but
when seen from the ground, the inverted spin appears to be to the
right
:-))
This drove the judges nuts on the international aerobatic competition
circuit until a pilot being judged for an inverted spin one way
realized he has spun the other way and corrected the judge :-))


I haven't done an awful lot of those, but I always determined them to be
in the direction I'd depressed the pedal. Not that it mattered! It was
only a thrill ride for me anyway. I never used them in competition as I
only competed in sportsman.

Bertie

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

ManhattanMan wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote:
gatt wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
news:f92dnR-

I'll bet the Australians use something even better than either
of us :-))
Their conveyor belts go in the opposite direction.

-c
aiee, I need a vacation.


..and their airplanes fly upside down too :-))
They'd say you're entitled to your point of view....


It IS amazing when one stops to actually visualize it; the round
globe; the other side of it; and flying in the same sky upside
down relative to each other but right side up relative to the
individual localities. It's of course obvious to us in the macro
sense, but when you REALLY get down to the micro visualization of
it all................ :-))))


Bucky Fuller amy have said it best when he said that up and down
are completely innacurate. The correct terms for a pilot should be
in and out..

I think he was talking about flying, anyway..


Bertie
You run into this when you start explaining left and right vs inside
and top or outside rudder when dealing with slow rolls :-)

Yes, I've been doing that with one of my current students in
anticipation of the arrival of the airplane,
Or rather, he's been reading a lot and asking me questions about how
you know which way to twist the controls inverted. I just told him
it's easier to see when your head is upside down! For inverted
flight, you push the stick as normal for the direction of roll
without concerning yourself with L/R labels. and the rudder just goes
in the dirction you want the nose to go. Simple. For rolls, it's the
same with the addition of top/bottom rudder for the knife edge
transition.. Sound reasonable?

Bertie
Sounds good. Perspective in aerobatics inverted can be REAL confusing
to newbies. The one that I always found fascinating is the different
perspective in inverted spins as seen from the pilot's and ground
witness perspective. To the pilot the inverted spin will be left, but
when seen from the ground, the inverted spin appears to be to the
right
:-))
This drove the judges nuts on the international aerobatic competition
circuit until a pilot being judged for an inverted spin one way
realized he has spun the other way and corrected the judge :-))


I haven't done an awful lot of those, but I always determined them to be
in the direction I'd depressed the pedal. Not that it mattered! It was
only a thrill ride for me anyway. I never used them in competition as I
only competed in sportsman.

Bertie


I've always considered Sportsman a difficult category. In many instances
the energy management problem is a handful for a newbie, and pilots who
do well in Sportsman have to fly extremely well and have a real handle
on the basics. A lot of times you can get away with a minor fluff in an
Extra and the excess power will cover your butt, but it stands out like
a sore thumb in a Citabria :-)

--
Dudley Henriques

Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

ManhattanMan wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote:
gatt wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
news:f92dnR-

I'll bet the Australians use something even better than
either of us :-))
Their conveyor belts go in the opposite direction.

-c
aiee, I need a vacation.


..and their airplanes fly upside down too :-))
They'd say you're entitled to your point of view....


It IS amazing when one stops to actually visualize it; the round
globe; the other side of it; and flying in the same sky upside
down relative to each other but right side up relative to the
individual localities. It's of course obvious to us in the macro
sense, but when you REALLY get down to the micro visualization
of it all................ :-))))


Bucky Fuller amy have said it best when he said that up and down
are completely innacurate. The correct terms for a pilot should
be in and out..

I think he was talking about flying, anyway..


Bertie
You run into this when you start explaining left and right vs
inside and top or outside rudder when dealing with slow rolls :-)

Yes, I've been doing that with one of my current students in
anticipation of the arrival of the airplane,
Or rather, he's been reading a lot and asking me questions about
how you know which way to twist the controls inverted. I just told
him it's easier to see when your head is upside down! For inverted
flight, you push the stick as normal for the direction of roll
without concerning yourself with L/R labels. and the rudder just
goes in the dirction you want the nose to go. Simple. For rolls,
it's the same with the addition of top/bottom rudder for the knife
edge transition.. Sound reasonable?

Bertie
Sounds good. Perspective in aerobatics inverted can be REAL
confusing to newbies. The one that I always found fascinating is the
different perspective in inverted spins as seen from the pilot's and
ground witness perspective. To the pilot the inverted spin will be
left, but when seen from the ground, the inverted spin appears to be
to the right
:-))
This drove the judges nuts on the international aerobatic
competition circuit until a pilot being judged for an inverted spin
one way realized he has spun the other way and corrected the judge
:-))


I haven't done an awful lot of those, but I always determined them to
be in the direction I'd depressed the pedal. Not that it mattered! It
was only a thrill ride for me anyway. I never used them in
competition as I only competed in sportsman.

Bertie


I've always considered Sportsman a difficult category. In many
instances the energy management problem is a handful for a newbie, and
pilots who do well in Sportsman have to fly extremely well and have a
real handle on the basics. A lot of times you can get away with a
minor fluff in an Extra and the excess power will cover your butt, but
it stands out like a sore thumb in a Citabria :-)

Actually, energy management was never a problem for me. I did most
competitions in a Decathlon or a Lakes. I ddn't do all that many,
anyway. Five, I think. Other things got in the way..

Bertie

"Robert Barker" wrote in message

No, I can perhaps understand the misconception in non-pilots. But for a
pilot not to understand tells me he slept through a lot of his ground
school...

Or just hasn't thought it through fully. If you don't properly visualize
the experiment it's easy to think "Well, that's stupid. The airplane's not
going to take off from a conveyor belt because it's not going anywhere.
Otherwise, it would take off if you were sitting on the ground and applied
full throttle..."

....which, of course, is exactly what it does. ...just not where you've
parked it. The discussion must specifiy the length of the conveyor belt
because when I heard it I visualized a treadmill about the same length as
the airplane and thought the experiment was talking about VTOL.

-c

"gatt" wrote in message
...

"Robert Barker" wrote in message

No, I can perhaps understand the misconception in non-pilots. But for a
pilot not to understand tells me he slept through a lot of his ground
school...

Or just hasn't thought it through fully. If you don't properly visualize
the experiment it's easy to think "Well, that's stupid. The airplane's not
going to take off from a conveyor belt because it's not going anywhere.
Otherwise, it would take off if you were sitting on the ground and applied
full throttle..."

...which, of course, is exactly what it does. ...just not where you've
parked it. The discussion must specifiy the length of the conveyor belt
because when I heard it I visualized a treadmill about the same length as
the airplane and thought the experiment was talking about VTOL.

-c

It wouldn't make any difference on the length of the treadmill. The
PROPELLER moves the airplane forward and has no relationship to the ground.
If we're talking stopping, that's different where the wheels are doing the
work and the wheels DO have a relationship to the ground. The confusion is
where people thing the wheels have something to do with forward motion like
in a car. This is a confusion that no PILOT should have.

In article ,
"Robert Barker" wrote:

"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
.. .
"Robert Barker" wrote:
wrote in message
..
. On Jan 30, 2:36 pm, Peter Clark
wrote:
For those interested in such things, the MythBusters show titled
"Airplane on a Conveyor Belt" is in TVGuide to air tonight at 9pm
Eastern US on Discovery/Discovery HD.

Any pilot (including the one that flew the plane on the show) and
believed they'd stand "like a brick" should fear their next BFR.

Why?

His conceptual confusion is obviously not uncommon or entirely without
cause - after all, consider the case of landing on that same treadmill and
applying the brakes. What do you think happens? Is it immediately obvious,
or do you have to spend some time thinking about it to get the resulting
motion correct?

No, I can perhaps understand the misconception in non-pilots. But for a
pilot not to understand tells me he slept through a lot of his ground
school...

It is possible that the pilot was told by the producers to say this even
though he knew better in order to create drama. I'm not saying this
happened, only that it's a possibility. This sort of thing does happen
in television.

rg

Ron Garret wrote:
In article ,
"Robert Barker" wrote:

"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
.. .
"Robert Barker" wrote:
wrote in message
..
. On Jan 30, 2:36 pm, Peter Clark
wrote:
For those interested in such things, the MythBusters show titled
"Airplane on a Conveyor Belt" is in TVGuide to air tonight at 9pm
Eastern US on Discovery/Discovery HD.
Any pilot (including the one that flew the plane on the show) and
believed they'd stand "like a brick" should fear their next BFR.
Why?

His conceptual confusion is obviously not uncommon or entirely without
cause - after all, consider the case of landing on that same treadmill and
applying the brakes. What do you think happens? Is it immediately obvious,
or do you have to spend some time thinking about it to get the resulting
motion correct?
No, I can perhaps understand the misconception in non-pilots. But for a
pilot not to understand tells me he slept through a lot of his ground
school...

It is possible that the pilot was told by the producers to say this even
though he knew better in order to create drama. I'm not saying this
happened, only that it's a possibility. This sort of thing does happen
in television.

rg


Most likely not. It's not surprising really. Many pilots don't have a
formal handle on physics. Many learn what they have to learn from the
books which mostly cover the specific reasons for a certain aerodynamic
behavior as that behavior relates to what the pilot "has to know".
In other words, many pilots can tell you what makes an airplane turn but
might not be able to list the simple machines or explain the mechanical
advantage of a pulley system.
This isn't meant to put pilots down in any way. In fact, one of the
finest air show demonstration pilots I ever knew was a high school drop
out. He couldn't explain much beyond what he learned to pass his
written, but what a stick he was. That guy could write his name in the
sky with a Pitts Special :-)

It's great to have a handle on physics, and indeed a great many pilots
have an above average amount of knowledge in this area, but finding
pilots who REALLY know the higher math and physics (and I mean knowing
these things at the level where they have a high degree of
comprehension) is a crap shoot.
As I say, they are out there for sure, but a high level of understanding
of physics definitely isn't a pre-requisite for the PPL.



--
Dudley Henriques