...

...



Glenn

Dear Glenn,

Hold on, I have to go back to my Thesaurus to find some words I haven't used yet!

Glenn Watson wrote:


Same with these - Anything with an M14 is okay in my book!




Glenn

Awesome pic! Hoping to do some air to air with the Pitts soon. The owner seemed exited.
I LOVE Russian radials...one wing or two attached is OK. I fly RC and have a Pitts Python (white with red stripes) and a YAK 54. Come to think of it...I've had nothing but YAKs, Sukhoi's and Pitts for about 10 years! ha ha!

Here's a couple more...

Dear Jay,

What you said only makes sense. I know absolutely nothing about the game, except for the best light to shoot it in. Normally I'm just concentrating on Hunter, and don't really care what anyone else is doing. I did get a boatload of great images yesterday though, luck is a wonderful thing.

Weston came with me because Chandler was at a Tech BBall game in Lubbock and Hunter was on a church retreat. We enjoyed the day together and I got him autographs out the wazoo. We were right in the action from about 10:30 in the morning until we bolted for cheeseburgers after the game. He couldn't figure out why so many people commented on his camera/lens rig during the day. Don't want him to get the big head, so I didn't tell him he was lugging 11 grand around all day. He was better equipped than the most of the still pros on the sidelines.

Just hopped out of the Cub and shot this Airbus 380 going over HQ at 340, headed to IAH from Frankfurt. The sky is a gift from the Creator today, well, everyday.

Hey guys, can someone explain that Great Circle Route thing to me. I looked at the course for the A380 and it sure seems like it would be shorter to head straight across. I'm sure I'm missing something, what's the deal?

It's the difference between drawing a straight line on a map verses actually flying over a globe. The great circle route is the shortest distance between 2 points on the surface of the sphere.

Erich

JWilsonphoto wrote:
Hey guys, can someone explain that Great Circle Route thing to me. I looked at the course for the A380 and it sure seems like it would be shorter to head straight across. I'm sure I'm missing something, what's the deal?
Was going to say maybe something to do with earths movements as the orbit of a spacecraft is a ton of S turns on a map

Got one of the Seals / Catfish / Piaggio planes today at GTU.

Amazin' photos just poppin' off the screen .. Congrats to everybody !!

Pretty lousy weather this weekend, but we had a Challanger and a Global Express come in to Easton last night .. I didn't get to see the Global as they put it in the MD Air hangar .. maybel I'll get lucky to shoot it tomorrow if it leaves around noon with this Novato, Ca unit

Challanger

Re Great Circle routes,
This site will show you great circle routes between points.
http://gc.kls2.com/

Actually flying an exact great circle route is not always the norm due to winds, airway structures, eg North Atlantic, North Pacific tracks, variable overflight costs and so on.
What you really want is Minimum Time Track, (MTT) for cost purposes but even that is not always possible. It usually boils down to cost.

JWilsonphoto wrote:
Hey guys, can someone explain that Great Circle Route thing to me. I looked at the course for the A380 and it sure seems like it would be shorter to head straight across. I'm sure I'm missing something, what's the deal?


If you drew a straight line on a flat chart or map, took the course ateach place where they crossed a line of longitude, you would come up with a series of constantly changing headings. That is what the flight aware "course" or route of flight reflects. Take the place where the aircraft crosses each 10 degrees of longitude on a flat chart, plot those points on a globe and you will see that it is actually a straight line. This aircraft shows a course initially headed north and eventually finishes south but in truth IS flying a straight line between the 2 points due to the curvature of the earth...or Great Circle. If you took that flat chart and drew a straight line and placed the points on a globe, the route would actually have a south to north track and also be longer in distance.

Mike

Busy today. Petit Le Mans is up.

I hate even hearing the name of that event.

dtw757 wrote:
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Hey guys, can someone explain that Great Circle Route thing to me. I looked at the course for the A380 and it sure seems like it would be shorter to head straight across. I'm sure I'm missing something, what's the deal?


If you drew a straight line on a flat chart or map, took the course ateach place where they crossed a line of longitude, you would come up with a series of constantly changing headings. That is what the flight aware "course" or route of flight reflects. Take the place where the aircraft crosses each 10 degrees of longitude on a flat chart, plot those points on a globe and you will see that it is actually a straight line. This aircraft shows a course initially headed north and eventually finishes south but in truth IS flying a straight line between the 2 points due to the curvature of the earth...or Great Circle. If you took that flat chart and drew a straight line and placed the points on a globe, the route would actually have a south to north track and also be longer in distance.

Mike

Aviation sectional charts employ a Lambert Conformal Conical Projection. According to the Wikipedia article, "Pilots favor these charts because a straight line drawn on a Lambert conformal conic projection approximates a great-circle route between endpoints as long as distances are not great." Which is what Mike is getting at, I'm guessing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_conformal_conic_projection

But over shorter distances, a great circle route is negligibly shorter than a route flown at a constant heading. Over longer distances and especially for roughly east-west routes between points at at higher latitudes, I don't know of any flat map projection that allows you to draw a straight line to plot a great circle, at least not in the general case.

As for that plot of the ground track of an orbiting satellite: that's a whole 'nother discussion having to do with the fact that the Earth rotates underneath an object in orbit. If the satellite is placed into an orbit inclined w/r/t to the Equator, the ground track depicted on a Mercator projection looks like a sine wave.

narasimhalu wrote:
AH-64 Apache - Houston Air Show

You understand correctly Steve re Lambert Conformal, key words "as long as the distances are not great".....when I'm plotting our route from SEA to Narita, (long routes) the "course" on the chart goes north up to the Pacific "tracks and follow the Aleutians , down the Kamchatka Peninsula and into Japanese airspace. Same principal going East to Europe. There isn't an aviation chart that we use that will show it as a straight line. We used to put ones up for the passengers in the old days before those moving map displays everyone has at their seat.

Mike

astrobrian wrote:
Got one of the Seals / Catfish / Piaggio planes today at GTU.


Did you see Robert and his Mustang Buzzin Cussin today? He was headed to the airport to fly...

Jetman,Yves Rossy, ex Swiss Airforce, ex Swiss Air 747 Captain, designer & test pilot of the 2.4m 26Kg carbon fibre wing, also carries 22litres of jet fuel, recently at North Shore Aero Club, flew the first day solo 2nd day in formation with 2 club plans & on the 3rd day in formation with 5 club planes. He lets go the Helio at 4,000 ft glides then fires the jets pulsing them at about every 200m cruising at 200kph. and has so much control just by twisting his body lightly to the left to go left and right to go right arches his back to gain elevation & bending his back to turn down. He has a break chute to scrub speed & then the main chute to control his landing. The pictures tell the story. He is 53 years young !!

Went