onetrack

....... fur-lined flying gloves, and demonstrated his little trick of pouring beer into them, and them skolling the contents, in 5 seconds flat. But no-one does that today, after learning of the volume of bacteria that hide inside all gloves, particularly flying gloves.

Then there was the bar stunt initiated by the Captain - who was the greatest show-off the BOB has ever seen - when the Cappy would jump up on the bar, and lower his.....

.... she was a lawyer, rather than just some actors wife. But the Portsea set claim they have the original rights to stuffing up on typing words, with their claim that they produced "covfefe", long before Prez Trump did.

But Captain Rat, always noted in the school yearbooks, as the school dunce, thinks that "covfefe" is a perfectly good English word, and he used it in his last game of Scrabble with the Ladies from the Wangaratta CWA - who protested loudly that it was not a known or accepted word.

"It sure is!", stated the Rat proudly - "If the Current Supreme Prez of the U.S. uses it, it's a formally acceptable word, along with his other great, useful words, such as, "od", "s***hole", "smocking", "weak", and "fake"!"

But Turgid, as well as the CWA ladies, wasn't impressed either. "You lost every school debate you ever went into, because you didn't even know the meaning of all the big words you used, let alone how to spell them!", he said.

"Look", said the Rat, "If it's good enough for the Greatest Prez the world has ever seen, to stuff up words and phrases and utterings, to make up new words, and to simply pour scorn on people to win arguments, then it's good enough for me!!".

With that, the Rat turned on the assembled Ladies and poured withering scorn on them, that made Trump look pale by comparison - and the Ladies were so shocked, they.....

If you want some good reading as regards the rampant corporate executive greed, up until just after the GFC - get a hold of the book, "Pigs at the Trough", by Adam Schwab.

The sad part is, nothing has changed since the book was written (in 2010). Only the names have changed, the salaries and bonuses and perks have just continued to increase, to astronomical levels.

These people all claim they are worth the money they are paid, because of the long hours they work, the stress they are under, and the family life they forgo.

But they seem to conveniently forget, a lot of low-paid people endure equally long hours, a great deal of job stress, and are shortchanged on a lot of their family life, too.

...when Cappy had to get permission from the marshalls to take the trainer wheels off the Suzuki. It was bad enough that he'd drag his feet on the ground for the first 400M, fearful of putting them on the footpegs, in case he lost his balance and fell over.

He'd go to great lengths to explain, that dragging your feet on the ground, when you're moving on your bike, helps greatly with bike control - because you don't have to waste time putting your foot down, when you become fearful of falling off - your feet are already down!

But what caused the Rat's demise at Phillip Island wasn't anything to do with riding whilst dragging his feet on the ground - nor wearing a leather jacket with a rat patch on it - nor stealing other bike competitors fuel while they were at the bar (because he was too tight to buy his own racing fuel) - no, it was that fateful exercise, when the Rat decided to.....

There is not a single CEO of any corporation who can claim to be single-handedly responsible for the companys increased profits (or losses, for that matter, too).

The reason being that the CEO is only responsible for the general management and direction of the corporation, and is reliant on the support and direction of the Board of Directors - and the management ability of often hundreds of lower-level managers below him - as well as proper supervision of every employee in his/her job.

The CEO often has minimal control over many of the corporations inputs - such as fuel costs, currency exchange rates, capital expenditure costs, interest rates. His job is a juggling act, at best.

The CEO often has to get the approval of the BoD to carry out decisions involving company direction, purchases, and major management changes.

It's not lost on many people that every CEO is essentially an accountant, intent on "watching the numbers".

The "numbers" do not always represent the position of the company, how it is viewed by its clients, and how good the morale of the company employees is.

Many corporations operate with very poor employee morale, leading to a lack of conscientiousness on the part of the employees, losses caused by poor supervision, and failure to address ongoing problems that eventually lead to the corporation going into insolvency.

It's also telling that many CEO's demand high rates of renumeration, and high levels of bonuses and perks, and rarely suffer greatly if the corporation does not meet profit levels or performance levels.

It has also been noted that senior management renumeration has been increasing at double the rate of the renumeration of the average employee, for at least 25 years.

It's an all-too familiar story that a "leading" CEO is head-hunted for a corporation, runs the corporation for 2-5 years, causes the corporation to lose value and incur losses - and the CEO moves on to another corporation, bragging about his/her "great track record".

Who can remember the American CEO of Telstra who demanded - and got - a "pension" of AU$1M a year, for life, after retiring from the board with a massive "golden handshake" as well. We are still paying for that greed. Talk about lending a whole new level of meaning to the word, "pension".

And the greatest upper management rort of all? The Chairman of Exxon-Mobil who demanded - and got, in 2005 - a $400M golden handshake on retirement.

How did he manage this? He rode on the back of soaring oil prices, it was absolutely nothing to do with his management ability providing superior levels of senior management.

Does anyone regularly sit in an aircraft on the ground and run the engine for hours on end?

 

The answer to that is - Yes. There are applications where aircraft engines are run for extended periods on the ground, for equipment testing purposes.

I well remember one crash of an Aero Commander, which was caused by fuel starvation, and related to unrecorded time running the engines on the ground.

https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/27392/aair198600131.pdf

The circumstances were that the Aero Commander was set up with extensive on-board aerial survey equipment. The aircraft was fully fueled by the pilot early the previous day to the flight - but unbeknowns to him, during the day, ground crew carried out intermittent ground testing of the onboard equipment, which involved running the engines for an extended period of time. They did not log this engine run time.

The pilot turned up at 08:00HRS to take the aircraft for a flight involving aerial survey, and he failed to physically dip the tanks, because he obviously believed they were full, as he last left them - and no aircraft use had been recorded.

In addition, the fuel gauges were inoperative, a fact that the pilot was apparently aware of.

He took off with tanks low on fuel, and ran out of fuel after around 90 minutes of operation, and crashed in the Darling Scarp near Canning Dam, above Perth, resulting in total destruction of the aircraft, 2 fatalities and 1 seriously injured passenger.

Re the measurement of engine hours done, I have seen engine manufacturers who measured wear rates and engine operating time, as the total number of revolutions of the crankshaft.

I believe TTIS should be measured by any aircraft actual movement, on the ground or in the air.

....supply a well-worn HJ Holden Sandman van (for Erdogan to use as a recreational vehicle during the expedition), and 4 used, but repairable F-111's (recently dug up from the Swanbank Landfill during a night raid by Turgid, who was convinced that the F-111's being buried was the greatest waste of good aircraft he'd seen, since the RAAF burnt all the surplus WW2 Mosquitoes).

Turgid was aided in the F-111's recovery by Cappy, who was always ready to get involved in something shady - and he'd brought along several brown paper bags of money to pay off any security guards or other nosey individuals who might start asking awkward questions about digging in the Swanbank Landfill during the dead of night. 

The whole idea was to offer the F-111's to Erdogan so he could boost his airpower, seeing as he'd lost a few aircraft in recent years, with military excursions and other unrelated incidents.

But then came the problem of getting the Sandman and the F-111's out of the country. Ever since Border Force had been ramped up, and Surveillance Aust got new aircraft, it was getting harder and harder to get stuff both into and out of Australia. Suddenly, Cappy said, "Hey, I know a bloke....

CASA listed the pickle fork AD, direct from the FAA, on the 3rd Oct 2019, without any CASA modification or comment.

The AD is simple - if cracks in the pickle forks are found upon inspection, the aircraft is grounded until they are repaired.

IMO, the cracks are of concern - but I note that the cracks found, do not appear to be extending past the first rivet hole, meaning the rivet hole is effectively dispersing the stresses causing the initial cracking.

Under general engineering practices, minor cracks can be prevented from propagating by drilling a hole in the component, which under the laws of fracture mechanics, spreads the stress concentration, and stops the crack from continuing - unless the stress levels are exceptionally high, whereby a crack will then commence again, somewhere around the hole circumference.

It's not unusual to have cracks in highly stressed components. They are a warning, that the component has inadequate fracture toughness, or is fabricated from inadequate strength material, or it has an initial flaw, which has led to the crack propagation. Often, just a scratch, or a chip, or a depression in the surface of the highly stressed component, is the commencement point for a crack.

The problem with metals is that increasing their strength by adding small percentages of alloying metals, or heat-treating the metal, usually leads to reduced fracture toughness.

It's a fine balancing act, developing high strength components that still have adequate fracture toughness, so they can resist cracking.

If the crack in the pickle fork was found to be extending beyond the first rivet hole, I would be greatly concerned about the problem.

As it stands, the crack stopping at the first rivet hole is effectively showing us there is a high level of stress in that component - but at this point, it is not alarming enough to ground every 737 NG ever built.

http://services.casa.gov.au/airworth/airwd/ADfiles/over/b737/2019-20-02.pdf

It's also interesting to find that the cracking was not discovered during routine maintenance and inspections, it was discovered during passenger-to-freighter conversion work.

I found the full description of the operation of the International Harvester "MD" series of petrol/diesel (gas/diesel to our U.S. friends) engine, which I have cut and pasted below.

The MD IH petrol/diesel was first released in 1941 in the IH wheeltractors and the system was later used in IH crawler tractors as well.

It was a system designed as an alternative to Caterpillars petrol starting engine, which Cat used on their diesel engines from their first diesel in 1931, right through to the mid-1980's, on some of their models.

"To start the (IH gas/diesel) engine, the driver operated a compression release lever opening a third valve in the cylinder head, called the starting valve, uncovering a separate combustion chamber that both increased the combustion chamber size and exposed the spark plug. With the starting valve open, the engine had a 6.75:1 CR and used a tiny, fixed-orifice carburetor designed only to run the engine at a fast idle. At the same time, the control disengaged the distributor ground, opened a fuel valve in the carburettor, and a butterfly valve that connected the gas cycle combustion chamber to inlet air, and closed the diesel intake.

The engine was cranked over using a 12-volt starter and would idle at 6-800 rpm. This was enough to warm the engine up as long as needed for diesel combustion to be possible. Though there was a choke, idle speed was not controllable by the driver. After warming the engine up for one to three minutes, the compression release lever was pulled back briskly. That closed the starting valve, shut off the gas to the carb, grounded the distributor (killing the spark), closed the gas intake manifold and enabled the diesel injection pump. The engine then began running on diesel with barely a hiccup. For the shut down, you switched back to gas, and shut the engine off with the ignition switch, making it ready for the next start.

This all seems pretty onerous today, but it was one of the more effective ways to start a diesel before batteries and starting systems had enough oomph to spin a diesel over in cool weather, let along cold. Practical glow plug systems were still a decade or more in the future, again limited by battery capacity. The direct start diesels were a big deal when they debuted in the mid 1950s."

The bloke with the webpage linked below, has done an excellent history "write-up" on the Rotary engine.

It is just amazing how many companies invested huge amounts into their version of the rotary engine  - both petrol and diesel versions - and apart from Mazda, they have all been commercially unsuccessful.

One thing I never knew, was that Mazda cut a deal with GMH in 1974, to buy new HJ Holden Premiers - without engines - which were shipped to Japan, and fitted with a Mazda Rotary engine.

Unfortunately, the Mazda Rotary struggled with the HJ Holden Premier weight, and only 799 of the oddball HJ Holden Premiers were ever sold.

Then there's the Moller Skycar, which rates as the best way to pick as many losing design ideas as you can, to pack into one unsaleable product.

https://www.carthrottle.com/post/w3roj27/

All the petrol/kero tractors had a special intake manifold that directed exhaust gases onto the underside of it, to ensure the kero was vapourised enough to ignite.

In addition, the petrol/kero engines had lower compression to enable kero to be burnt reasonably satisfactorily.

Most petrol/kero tractors had radiator shutters, because it was important the engine temperature was kept high to ensure the kero burnt well.

Even at that, the old International tractors had two petcocks on the crankcase - every 10 hrs of operation, you had to drain the kero-diluted oil to the lower petcock, and refill with new oil to the upper petcock level!

Then, of course, there were two types of kerosene - Power Kero, which was specifically for burning in engines, and Lighting Kero, which was much lower grade and far less volatile, and which was used for lamps and heaters.

Then there were the petrol/diesel International engines that had a lever that adjusted a plunger in the combustion chamber, that altered the compression ratio.

You started on low compression using petrol, then when you switched over to diesel, the lever was shifted to increase the compression to the level required for diesel ignition.

.....service a very wide range of clients. The ships motto was, "Knock Them and Dock Them", with the docking part referring to Doctors ability to empty anyones wallet. Meantimes, Yudai was very interested in the ship that Nob had mentioned - mostly because it was one of his ships, and it had recently disappeared, with the ship and the crew reportedly taken hostage by a group of raghead Uighurs, who were intent on forming a Muzzie Caliphate in China. You won't hear much about this on the news, because the Chinese Commies are very good at suppressing news about events such as this - usually by sinking the ship without trace, along with the crew and the ragheads. But President Erdogan got word that some ethnic Turkish Muzzie long-distant cousins were under threat of annihilation somewhere in China, so he assembled his top military brass, and said, "Listen, men ....

......slaving away in the bowels of a Japanese oil tanker to raise enough money to rebuild the worn-out Zero, upon his return. But then, the ancient Japanese Gods smiled upon Nobishi-san, and he fell in love with a Japanese businessmans daughter, whose name was Saiko (pronounced Pyscho). The Japanese businessman was named Yudai (pronounced You-Die, which sounded great to Nob, who always wanted to be a Kamikaze pilot, but he missed out by just 74 years. Nob also wondered why Kamikaze pilots always wore helmets, too - but that's a question for another day). 

Yudai just happened to work for one of the sōgō shōsha - and he was loaded. Nob couldn't believe his luck, the bloke thought the Rising Sun actually shone out of Nob's bum, and he was happy to bestow on Nob, virtually anything Nob requested. Nob went to him one day, after Saiko had been giving him a hard time, and he.....

"Drone Commander", just doesn't have that immediate title appeal.

....he's been known as "The Fixer" for years!" However, less than 5 seconds later, the sound of an approaching Zero made all the heads in the group turn, like rubbernecking car drivers, driving past the scene of a major crash.

At the controls of the recently-reconditioned Zero, was no-one less than Nobishi-san! "You want Moorabin flattened?", he called out to no-one in particular (as if anyone could hear him over the sound of a screaming 14 cylinder, 1,130HP Nakajima Sakae, with a firewalled throttle) - "Well, I can do that for you!! - Easy!!" - and as he peeled off, out of his dive from FL200, the horrified onlookers could only gaze on in terror, as they sighted the ugly rack of Type 98, No. 25 bombs hanging below the Zero. "Gawd!! - He's aiming to hit the town centre!!", yelled out one of the assembled crowd of wallopers, "Get the......

I'm at a loss to understand how the pilots of the Vulcan and the Sunderland got their flight approaches so wrong.

And what was the reasoning behind the massive risk of trying to go as low as possible? - at the expense of destroying a mega-dollar (or mega-£) aircraft, and potentially causing an airshow disaster like the 1952 Farnborough disaster?

I can understand the RNZAF Vampires undertaking a serious level of risk, because they are an acrobatic display team, used to tight formation flying, and disciplined manoeuvering at high speed.

But the Vulcan pilot and the Sunderland pilot were simply guilty of gross negligence or carelessness, whereby "showing off" seemed to take priority over disciplined airmanship.

1. October 2011 - CEO of Qantas grounds the ENTIRE airline for 3 whole days, over "excessive" union demands and disruptive actions, for better pay and employment conditions for Qantas employees.

CEO says this unfortunate decision had no alternative, and "that this (grounding) is the fastest way the airline gets back into the air" (?)

Meantimes, millions of Qantas passengers and passengers on partner airlines (not to mention thousands of airline and airport employees), suffer major disruption to travel plans, suffer personal losses, and develop serious levels of anger towards Qantas management. The grounding is reputed to have cost Qantas itself, in the order of $60 million minimum.

2. October 2019 - Qantas Engineers Union, seriously concerned over the level of cracking in a major structural component of Qantas' 737 NG's, urges that Qantas management ground all uninspected Qantas 737 NG's to ensure maximum Qantas passenger safety.

Qantas management is outraged, claims the Engineers Unions demand is "irresponsible", and says "(the cracking problem) is being dealt with seriously, and in the appropriate way.”

Oh, the massive irony!!

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-01/qantas-says-three-boeing-737-found-with-cracks/11661320?section=business

There may have been substantial improvements in some areas of Govt regulation in recent years - but as a general rule, for every Dept and convoluted system abolished, Federal, State and Local Govt has only produced more regulation, and more public servants, in other "developing" fields, that were gaining Govt attention.

It's like the GST - when it was introduced, it was a "simpler" and "fairer" system, that was going to abolish the thousands of pages of tax laws under the old tax system, and reduce taxes on those who could ill-afford them.

The GST started off with around 2000 pages of GST legislation and definitions - at the last report I heard, the number of pages of GST legislation and definitions had climbed to over 20,000 pages, and was still climbing.

And at the end of the day, the GST is a regressive tax, because it overburdens low-income earners. In addition, the Govt, via the ATO, reaped billions when the GST was introduced, by taxing millions of secondhand items, already in use, that were previously tax-free.

Now the Govt sucks dollars from online overseas purchases on the likes of eBay, on minor purchases as low as a couple of dollars, that were previously tax-free - all because the big retailers whined about an "unlevel playing field". And the small businesses of Australia are unpaid tax collectors under the GST. What a rort.

The fire protection industry has boomed in recent years, aided by more and more Govt legislation and ever-tightening rules. The income for companies assisting businesses to comply with those ever-tighter fire rules and regulations is predicted to double in the 5 yrs between 2015 and 2020.

Safety rules and regulations in virtually every industry, increase in number every year - and it needs increased numbers of public servants to enforce them.

National parks are now a major industry with a plethora of rules and regulations - and where National Parks used to be free to visit, they now nearly all charge substantial fees to go visit them.

Little wonder people keep going "bush" in self-supporting 4WD's and off-road caravans, so they can try to "get away", and lower their daily costs, when indulging in recreation.

I could name many other fields where Govt intrusion, legislation, and tax-collection is increasing, but I'm fearful of readers losing interest, because of the length of my post.

Well, I think Juan Brownes assessment is pretty right. The simple fact remains that Boeing produced an aircraft in the 737 MAX, that essentially became unstable under full throttle conditions - against all basic aircraft design rules.

But Boeing didn't see the 737 MAX for what it was - a basically unstable design - they saw it as a modified design, that only needed some software added to the flight computer, to make it "feel just like any other 737".

Then the problem is that aviation software writers and coders cannot possibly see the whole picture of what they are doing to the aircraft design and operation with their "software upgrade".

Add in management driven by economic decision-making, and a mentality that everything can be fixed with a software upgrade. Not with a basically unstable design, it can't. 

Aircraft like military fighters and bombers might be able to operate with a basically unstable design, all controlled by sensors and computers - but they have ejection seats, for that very same reason.

Maybe the Boeing military software designers got the job of designing the MCAS, and they thought they could make it pretty foolproof.

But they might have forgotten they were working with commercial aircraft design, too - not military aircraft design.

The basic design problems with the 737 MAX need to be addressed - it's not an inherently stable aircraft, as all commercial aircraft need to be.

The bloke in the blog below - a software developer and a pilot - has an interesting take on where Boeing went wrong with the 737 MAX.

He indulges in some laymans over-simplification, but essentially, he pins the problem to one of getting too far away from the KISS system in design.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer

.... show potential clients, how you can be just like the Cappy - feeble and incontinent - and yet still be able to attend Airshows and dances, without a worry in the world about a "little accident", ruining your whole day! You're better than many a travelling salesman, and with your ....

Governments have de-regulated, not regulated.

 

Not in my experience. In every field of endeavour today, there are more rules and regulations, more red tape, and more fearful behaviour of "being held responsible", if anything goes wrong, than there was 50 years ago, when we just "got 'er done", without reference to panels, public consultations, committees, and unnecessarily convoluted and often conflicting regulations. It's a wonder anything gets done at all in todays world.

And of course, the rapid changes in stab trim which led to the uncommanded dives in the two major 737 MAX crashes, was caused by faulty AoA sensors, which faulty input obviously was not properly considered in the programming of the automation of the MCAS system.

Boeing engineers then apparently realised this faulty AoA input possibility, when they brought out the recommendation to disable the MCAS if there was erroneous AoA data.

But they only compounded previous errors by not fully explaining to pilots how the MCAS system actually worked, while they were telling them to disable it under certain conditions.

The whole exercise will go down as an example of how not to design aircraft, by trying to add major modifications to existing designs, without starting afresh with a new type certification.

....for the exit, with Mavis' walker, while Mavis was still scooping up her Depends. A cry of outrage rang out through the dance hall, and......

25mm cracks in major components that are deemed to be a "fail-safe" component, is enough to make anyone worried.

The fact that this is happening only one-third into their projected and calculated lifespan is even more worrying.

To me, it speaks of either unsatisfactory materials treatment, or failure to meet specified materials specifications.

 

Hold on. How does a system that trims the nose down in big increments make the aircraft handle and feel like previous iterations?

The system was supposed to prevent sudden changes in pitch under power, which might surprise pilots and lead to incorrect handling - but in the way the MCAS worked, it was badly designed, because of the major control inputs, instead of minor and steady control inputs. I have not seen written anywhere, how sudden and sharp those sudden pitch-ups were under power, but obviously, they were of great concern to Boeing test pilots.