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Comment by geoffeg | Hacker News Reader

I imagine it's someone that doesn't have the monetary means to rent or buy a plane combined with a bit of mental health issues.

At the uncontrolled community airport I got my PPL at there were a few pilots who were known to have expired medical certificates and long expired flight reviews flying planes that they owned that hadn't had an annual inspection in years. All older guys who had nothing to lose if the FAA found out and grounded them.

I'm not sure why the owner of that aircraft doesn't setup an alert for it's tail number on one of the many aviation tracking sites. Call the airport management, police or local FBO once he sees it on approach to land at some airport.

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> All older guys who had nothing to lose if the FAA found out and grounded them.

If you're someone that has enough land to make a strip and can afford the plane, you'd be amazed at what you can "get away" with out the anyone of authority noticing.

I've been to my friend's friend's bachelor pad, and that guy takes off and lands in his yard, maybe 200 feet long on a decent slope. At least he is an airline pilot and has a license.

OK he's living the life

He’s 75, he may not know those sites are an option.

That said how is the airport not doing something about this? They just keep letting it happen?

Some smaller airports are pretty sleepy. There's no control tower at his home airport (Corona Municipal Airport) and it doesn't look like there's an FBO there. There's probably generally no one at the airport unless someone is there to take their plane up. Even if there is someone there running out to the ramp every time they hear a plane startup would get tedious very quickly.

There are even just 'airfields' here, if that's even the proper name. They're just well maintained grass fields with a place to tie up a plane and refueling.

Maybe that's too far in a rural area for this conversation though.

Why would we need to tie up a plane? Would they fly away otherwise?

Strong gusts can move an unsecured plane, and damage its wings, tail, or propellars. Properly securing the plane prevents it from rocking or tilting in a manner that might do those things.

Yes, they can!

They literally mention FlightAware and him using it in the article.

He knows the website exists, does he know he can put an alert on for his plane?

I'm leaning towards it being some extremely cheeky DCS/flightsim nerd because of the shortness and randomness of the flights.

> I'm leaning towards it being some extremely cheeky DCS/flightsim nerd because of the shortness and randomness of the flights. It screams "do it because I can and report back to the boys" to me.

It's not so easy to land a plane in real life, even if you have a lot of flightsim experience. It is definitely possible and there are people who have done it, but I don't think it's the norm. A lot of flying, especially landing, involves sensory inputs. Additionally, replacing the battery in that Cessna probably requires taking the cowling off. Not properly securing the battery or cowling may result in a bad time if something comes loose. Once again, doable, but you can do as quickly as you can with a car.

> I know literally nothing about flying. How does this work? Wouldn't the air traffic controllers see it on radar and try to radio it then call in the military (I've probably watched too many movies.)? Always blows my mind when I hear this kind of stuff in this day and age.

If you takeoff from an uncontrolled airport and stay clear of controlled and restricted airspace you don't have to say a single thing on any radio and no one will care about you. The controllers would see the blip on their radars but there's no requirements to check in with them (although it's generally a good idea) so they'll mostly keep other aircraft who they are talking to away from you.

Now, if you do fly into controlled airspace near an airport with a tower without talking to anyone, things will change. A slight excursion into the controlled airspace for a short time may go unnoticed, but the more blatant and prolonged the deviation, the larger the response will be. Fly into LAX's airspace and get in the way of their flights and you'll eventually get a visit from some friendly fighter jets. (There are some exceptions. For instance, there's a few narrow corridors through LAX's airspace that don't require talking to ATC. One of those corridors even goes directly over LAX's runways at a few thousand feet.)

> It's not so easy to land a plane in real life, even if you have a lot of flightsim experience.

I dunno where I'd put it on the difficulty scale of things, but with lots of flight sim experience, it seems you're a lot better equipped than others. I've landed a Cessna, and I'm not a pilot, just eager enthusiast with some flight sim experience over many years. The person co-piloting/supervising told me I did great, and that he only allowed me to land the plane because I demonstrated proficiency in the air. I wouldn't say it's "hard", probably I'd have more trouble with finding and replacing the battery than the actual flying part.

I, too, landed whatever tailwheel my grandpa had back when I was eight years old, without even an hour of training. Now, my kids can land my plane too. It helps that I'm on the controls, but they don't seem to notice. I hope my grandpa enjoyed it then as much as I do now.

The suggestion that proficiency "in the air" correlates to ability to land, and the referring to the PIC as "co-piloting" are both pretty good indicators that there's more to the story. Flying is fun, but doing so without training is terribly unforgiving.

> both pretty good indicators that there's more to the story

Happy to share if you have some specific questions rather than insinuations :)

I'm not saying it wasn't reckless, but I also don't think the "It's not so easy to land a plane in real life, even if you have a lot of flightsim experience" part is fully accurate, but that's just anecdotal and based on personal experience.

While we’re trading anecdotes, I’m a CFI and have never encountered or even heard of a student being able to land an airplane decently (which I’m using in a relaxed sense, not strictly checkride-ready) based solely on sim experience.

Maybe your claim is more along lines of landing an airplane is easy in general. I’ve been flying for 10+ years and still have the occasional one that makes me think That landing really sucked. Let’s grant that you started making decent landings on your first flight lesson or two, and if so, you are in a tiny minority. The Gleim private pilot syllabus has first solo at Flight Lesson 11, which will be at 15 flight hours or more into training. Even then, I’m only soloing students on calm days with plenty of ceiling and visibility.

We had a DPE here in north Alabama who liked to talk candidates who were still wearing foggles all the way to the runway on their final landing of the practical test. He probably could have coached a brand new compliant student to a successful landing, but he had 40k+ hours in his logbook and gave more than ten thousand checkride approvals (not just attempts).

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2017/june/14/so...

Consider that you did so with an actual pilot beside you in what I presume were CAVOK conditions.

Plenty of children (once they get big enough to reach the pedals) can take a car for a spin. That doesn't mean that driving safely in all conditions you may find yourself thrown in is easy, even with e.g. lots of racing game experience.

> That doesn't mean that driving safely in all conditions you may find yourself thrown in is easy

Absolutely, I agree. But I also didn't claim I'm now a professional airline pilot able to handle all situations, only that the "It's not so easy to land a plane in real life, even if you have a lot of flightsim experience" part isn't accurate based on my own experience.

> For instance, there's a few narrow corridors through LAX's airspace that don't require talking to ATC. One of those corridors even goes directly over LAX's runways at a few thousand feet.)

Why do these exist?

It’s there as a relief valve. LAX has some of the busiest airspace in the world. ATC grants services to VFR traffic on a workload permitting basis. When ATC is too busy separating IFR traffic, which is their higher priority, it allows pilots an option that confines them to a certain area and altitudes.

For details, take a look at the Los Angeles Special Flight Rules Area[0] on the Los Angeles TAC. It gives a narrow set of exceptions. Note the specific assigned altitudes that depend on direction of travel. Also notice that the other VFR transition routes do require ATC clearance.

[0]: https://skyvector.com/?ll=33.630638921294874,-119.6291085071...

Same reason crosswalks for pedestrians exist on roads.

Because they are safe to use, and there is no real reason for them not to exist.

Fascinating. Are there instruments that show you in realtime 3d airspaces you can enter and not?

Most aircraft have a GPS on the panel that can show you the airspace around you and along your flight path, but it's not a required instrument. It's more of a 2D depiction of the airspaces, but there are three dimensional depictions on them. There's also apps like ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot that you can run on a tablet or phone.

Before those electronic methods became ubiquitous pilots used paper charts and references and used ground references, pilotage and navigation aids to determine their position on that paper map. For instance, here's the complex airspace around the aircraft owner's home airport. https://skyvector.com/?ll=33.897663018511054,-117.6024627647...

It didn’t roll off the factory floor in 1958 with a moving map GPS. A common retrofit is a Garmin 430 that has a 2D bird’s eye view of airspace lateral boundaries. ForeFlight runs on iPhones and iPads; other electronic flight bag software runs on either iOS or Android devices. But you have to know what you’re looking at and what the rules are for different classes of airspace. In Class C or D, you only have to establish two-way contact, but Class B requires explicit clearance.

As a flight instructor, flight sim teaches lots of bad habits that need to be unlearned at the beginning. Over-fixation on instruments is at the top of this list for VFR operations. I am not at all convinced that a person with only sim experience would be able to successfully land a C172.

I wasn't even able to successfully land a 172 after 6 or 8 hours in a 150 and growing up around aviation, including flight sims. Add in the fact that these were night flights (and in SoCal airspace) and I become very skeptical of the flightsim theory. I only wonder what tail number the time builder logged (but if you're going to forge that, or the airports, why do the flight at all?)

How similar would you say it is to simracing? Because simracing prepped me extremely well for the track despite never having driven a car.

I have zero experience with simracing, so I don’t know. I would guess the urgency of other vehicles being around, needing to see the course, and a lack of interesting instruments inside would tend to keep a simracer’s eyes outside and away from the dash.

Flight sim experience causes "over-fixation on instruments"? I'm surprised, I would have expected the opposite.

Yes, VFR pilots need to look outside a huge majority of the time. The rule of thumb is look out the window 90% of the time and peek at your instruments the remaining 10 percent. New primary students and especially simmers have a tendency to stare at the flight instruments, a bad habit that can be tough to break.

For example, ATC might give an altitude restriction for safety: “Cessna 123AB, maintain VFR at or below three thousand for crossing traffic.” Observing this restriction is important, but staring at the altimeter will likely result in the heading wandering all over the place and ironically even a tendency to over-control altitude that may cause wandering up and down. The proper way to execute it is to learn what the level sight picture looks like, put the nose there, trim for straight-and-level flight, and occasionally peek at the altimeter and VSI to confirm that it’s staying there. If the pilot gets distracted, say looking down at an iPad for a bit, look outside first to get back on heading if necessary, check the instruments (“take a picture with your mind”), and make small adjustments to get back to where it should be.

ATC operates on lots of buffers. For a restriction of three thousand, that crossing traffic is likely to be at 4,000 or higher.

Ah that makes quite a lot of sense and I'd definitely find myself with that bad habit if I tried flying. In a sim my purpose is to have fun flying the plane by the seat of my pants but flying in reality would have me anxious to avoid breaking any rules.

No need to anxious. Your CFI is there to keep you safe and prevent anything wildly dangerous while you’re teaching yourself to fly.

Look outside, and learn what correct looks like. References on the ground are already giving you gobs of information. The feel of the yoke and the sounds from the engine are also giving you continuous clues about what the airplane is doing. No sim I’ve seen reproduces all of those additional channels of information.

Where simulators are really helpful is with procedural flying, like practicing instrument approaches. You can’t log your desktop sim for currency, but advanced training devices are good enough in the FAA’s eyes.

> flying in reality would have me anxious to avoid breaking any rules

You’re generally operating well away from a perilous state with ample margins of safety. I find flying incredibly relaxing.

I'd wager it's the ghost of Sky King, may he forever rest in peace.

https://people.howstuffworks.com/richard-russell.htm

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