Cessna 188 Pacific Rescue
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
A story for your kids when they think they'll never have to understand this math stuff, since computers do it for them.
Especially if they're doing a cross-Pacific ferry flight.
The kids would be riveted! I know I was.
You fly straight and note when the other plane comes into radio range (i1), and when it goes out of radio range again (o1).
Now you turn 90 degrees left and note when it goes into range (i2) and out of range again (o2).
Now you connect i1 and o1 with a segment S1, and draw a perpendicular to it, P1, through its midpoint (the "Line segment bisector"). Similar, with 1 replaced by 2.
The intersection of P1 and P2 is where the target is.
This works because the edge of the radio range is (basically) a circle that you're intersecting with your segments, and the perpendicular bisectors go through the centre of the circle.
Cool technique. It doesn't even depend on your turn being exactly 90 degrees. It does depend on the pilot on the other radio jabbering on non-stop, and you knowing where you are - without GPS etc.
Frankly, the navigators of early last century, before GPS and inertial navigation system - respect. They knew how to reckon. (Here, the guys in the jet had INS, apparently, but still, hats off!)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Elder Lauren Elder survives 1976 plane crash
- https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17476615 Juliane Koepcke: How I survived a plane crash
- http://clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html The Crash of United Flight 232 by Capt. Al Haynes
And people shunned her!
Because she looked a bit disheveled.
> People saw her disheveled appearance and were afraid; Charles Manson had recently been put on trial in the town, and his female followers spent a lot of time hanging around it.
The full context makes people's reactions to her much more acceptable and understandable.
I was looking at it from her point of view: she barely survived a plane crash where the other two people died, almost lost her life again on the way down the mountain, and then when she thought she'd reached "safety"...
Just an awful experience for everyone involved.
I'm fascinated by the great skill demonstrated by pilots handling crippled aircraft.
And then Wikipedia leads me to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_New_Zealand_Flight_901
What a series of unfortunate events.
How is that possible? The Cessna 188 has a cruise speed around 110 mph (at 75% power) and a range of 370 miles. That implies a bit over 3 hours of time aloft. Stall speed is 60 mph. I'm not understanding how you get to 23 hours of flight time.
Perhaps the plane was equipped with long-range fuel tanks? I agree that it sounds like a very long time for this kind of plane.
That's also why he was on his own - his oppo crashed on takeoff due to the massive fuel load.
It looks like the full movie with the explanation is on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4_f3T8AzJo.
(Update: after reading the Wikipedia article I see that it probably refers to "his colleague", but I wasn’t familiar with the use of "oppo" here.)
I see that this is a British English word, so it brings to mind the old saying: "Two peoples divided by a common language."
Was pretty common to hear amongst the wartime generation, but has declined pretty rapidly since the 80s. Never once heard it used for "sweetheart" as Webster's seems to think.
https://www.hmsrichmond.org/dict_o.htm https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Australian_English_m...
> OPPO > Naval slang - short for opposite number - for the person doing the same job as one's self in another watch or ship. In the former case, since you relieved each other (in the old two-watch days), it behoved you to become friends; thus the word Oppo came to mean Chum. On a two-watch watchbill, the name of a man's 'opposite number' in the other watch was shewn against his own name in the opposite column.
There’s another optimum at the reciprocal, Vg * 1.316, that gets you maximum speed per unit of fuel burned.
> Leon meanwhile was too busy making final preparations to show concern. An extra "L"-shaped 66-gallon fuel tank had been made. It took up most of the baggage and right hand passenger area. The airplane was then flown to Moncton, Canada for transatlantic clearance.
Tangentially related is the "how do you get a Boeing 717 (range 2,060 nautical miles) to Hawaii (SFO to Hawaii is 2084 nautical miles)?" - https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/8scjkk/ever_wonde...
You can go Senegal to Recife, Brazil, if you prefer warmer water, but the hops are larger, and there's basically only one island in the middle with a military airport that you can't land on except in an emergency.
The Pacific, in contrast, is this vast ocean (as it were) of water - it's insane. Google Earth shows this beautifully. There's the very northern route via Alaska and Siberia - but while you are over land there, there are virtually no airfields.
Alternatively, you can hop via Hawaii, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, CMNI, Guam, Philippines/Japan, but still, the distances are enormous. And then the South Pacific - look at it in Google Earth. It's just water. Probably better off taking a boat there than a plane :-)
"that breather line needs to be supported"
"no it doesn't"
"you can't just have fuel hoses where people can walk and trip on the"
"yes we can"
Then they all pretend like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread while the FAA guy looks it over.
Edit: there is also another website specifically related to solo flights around the world completed before the advent of GPS: http://www.soloflights.org/index.html
Can't imagine this happening in this century, given 9/11. Mind you, regardless of airplane security being more or less secure nowadays, and regardless of the chance of such a near accident/rescue happening plus the chance of having a terrorist on-board; rather because of the strict rules and the fear associated post 9/11.
Aside from the clear compassion and helpfulness, I wonder how much of it was thanks to careful training versus a creative use of the available tools?
1. Tried this incredibly cunning and creative trick... 2. It didn't work. 3. Try another incredibly cunning and creative trick... 4. goto 2.
And then just before the end, Get Very Very Lucky with something that had nothing to do with cunning or creativity.
They used Magnetic Heading difference, with the difference between the setting sun angle, to determine general direction of the Cessna from the DC-10.
Then they used VHF boxing to pinpoint the Cessna. AT this point he was told to Fly NW. This direction alone would probably have saved him.
However Navigation at dark over the ocean is an iffy thing so always work it till you get home. So that is what they did. Since the Cessna could not see the fuel trail made by the DC-10 since it was higher up and the pilot could not see through his canopy, they used sunset settings times to further locate the Cessna.
Now with this additional directional confirmation Vette could have told the pilot a more exact heading and then, the oil rig location confirmed it.
If not for the initial course correction to fly NW the Cessna would have never seen the oil rig and would be somewhere in the ocean today.
The two kind of go hand in hand, though. First, because coming up with well-reasoned, highly-technical, creative uses for the available tools is a lot easier for well-trained people with a very thorough understanding of how the tools work. Second, because being able to stay calm and collected enough in an emergency to actually put those ideas into practice is itself the result of training and experience.
I highly recommend the audio of the classic reading by Alan Maitland of CBC's "As It Happens", available on their website. They rebroadcast it every December.
> The incident was dramatised in the American 1993 made-for-TV movie Mercy Mission - the Rescue of Flight 771. It starred Scott Bakula as Jay Prochnow and Robert Loggia as Gordon Vette.