Crossing the US in an open-air, two-seat aeroplane
bbc.com
bbc.com
In normal flight, you fly coordinated; the airplane is flying "straight and level" through the airmass; the total force vector on the pilot and the inner ear is straight down the spine and everything feels normal.
To address a crosswind taking you off course, you simply turn ("crab") into the wind, but the airplane stays coordinated and you sum the aircraft airspeed vector with the airmass vector and adjust until your ground track is taking you where you want to go, even though the nose of the airplane isn't pointing straight along the ground track. This still feels "normal" though it can look odd in a strong wind and at low altitude.
In a crosswind landing, you can't allow the nose to be off the ground track[1]. Otherwise, you'll impose a large sideload on the landing gear. So, you transition to uncoordinated (slipping) flight, where you dip a wing into the crosswind to keep the ground track aligned with the desired track. At the same time, you use opposite rudder to align the nose with the ground track (which is aligned with the runway on approach).
In this condition, the force vector on the pilot is not straight down. (The turn coordinator "ball" will be displaced into the crosswind; that ball operates purely on force, so the pilot [and pax] feel the force vector pulling them to one side, but they know they aren't moving with respect to the airplane and this confusion is very disconcerting to some.)
Long way to explain: in a long cross-country flight, the airplane is coordinated for 99.9+% of the flight and so most of the source of "dizziness" from crosswinds is no factor.
[1]-many transport aircraft have gear that is tolerant of crabbed landings. Almost no light aircraft do. There's a limit to how much slip a large engined transport aircraft with underwing engines can tolerate before the engine nacelle will scrape the ground, so designers of those airplanes have had to allow for crabbed touchdowns in strong crosswinds.
Much bigger and more expensive than I expected for an ultralight (450kg empty and 100k).
Explains the pricey two-engine option (when you're flying above the badlands or rainforest you'd like to keep going if an engine gives up), and the completely open cabin and wings sitting well behind both seats were probably an interesting structural challenge. The frame is essentially unique, there's no other in that specialised segment.
More info here: http://sierraparagliding.com/first-complete-crossing-of-cali...
I don't know about you... but I could probably live on a few barrels a day. A barrel is $60 bucks today. Around 5 barrels a day, everyday, is a 100k annual income.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H9eFFz3gZbA
He wrote a book about it.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cannibal-Queen-Stephen-Coonts/dp/0...
How expensive is it to park your airplane for the night?
It's a [frustrating] convention among pilot data services. METARs, TAFs, FDs, etc are all coded. Many of these systems date back 30+ years, when telecom equipment and data transmission was much more limited and expensive.
After a short while, it's relatively transparent to decode the abbreviated weather and other items that we use a lot. And of course, anyone who is remotely fluent in English can decode the minimal abbreviations in the quoted text.
It's also somewhat easier to scan certain reports (TAFs and Winds Aloft forecasts) as the abbreviations tend to keep the data in a visually scannable almost tabular form, so you can easily see when conditions are becoming more/less favorable.
If it were free/cheap to update all the systems that generate and all the systems that process, interpret, archive, and/or retransmit that data, there's no reason to keep the abbreviation culture. It's far from free, so inertia will keep it the way it is for a long time.
PS: I don't know why that comment is dead. It seems a perfectly reasonable question and your account isn't banned...
Basically, specialized fields have their own vocabulary that evolved super fast relative to the evolution of the English language. It would be very cumbersome to use the full terms when trying to communicate.
At any rate, the original hyperlink to the world wide web page for this article has beautiful joint photographic expert group pictures—or perhaps were they portable network graphics, I didn't check the hyperterxt markup language to verify. And the cascading style sheet layout is quite clever to present these pictures. ;)
Disclaimer: I hold a private ticket, and 10 years later still haven't found time to get my instrument or multi-engine. Life happens!
Airplane people are either very helpful or old curmudgeons; but mostly the former. Most are really happy to help someone get started. General aviation can use all the help it can get.
If I recall correctly, the parking area of the airport used to be packed with small single engine planes. Now, it's kinda empty.
Great Sand Dunes National Park (shown here in the pictures) is an absolutely amazing place to go. Totally out of the way, but so worth the drive and the amazing hike across the dunes.
The experience can be a bit magnified if you come from a coastal area, the air on some of the peaks (like Pike's Peak) is so thin that, until you acclimate, walking more than a little bit results in a queer dizzy feeling that makes the whole experience even more fun.
Come prepared though, a pretty large part of the state is so low in population density it's hard to even get mobile phone service. So plan your routes carefully, bring maps and have an independent GPS device that doesn't require data service for route planning.
That said, this looks like it was incredible fun. I just wish the pictures had come out.