Eddie the Markey rides again.

I used to live in Ed Markey's district.  He was an amiable idiot, always campaigning for regulation of something.  He started out campaigning for federal regulation of cable TV rates.  That was way back when we still had over the air TV.  Instead of allowing customers who felt they were being overcharged to cancel their cable service, he wanted to slap a rate cap on what was a luxury service. 
   Now that he has become a US senator, thanks to the ever so wise voters of Massachusetts, he wants to set up Federal regulation of amusement park rides.  Ostensibly this is in reaction to the horrible accident at Six Flags over Texas.  We couldn't leave it up to the insurance companies or the states, oh no, we need to create a vast new Federal bureaucracy, well staffed and well paid, with excellent benefits, to do something that other agencies have been doing nicely for many years. 
  Anyhow the Fox TV newsies have been expressing surprise at Markey's call for action.  They should not be surprised, Markey has been doing this kind of stuff for 30 years.  Anybody with experience in Massachusetts knows Markey's style by now.

Grassroots politicking at the Haverill Fair

Haverill puts on an old fashioned fair.  A midway, rides, cotton candy, horse pulls, the works.  We put up a booth for the Grafton Republican Party, and manned it with politicians and party workers.  We had Ray Burton, Jeanne Forrester and  Jim Reubins for pols, and a bunch of party workers.  You get to see real voters, lots of 'em, having a good time. 
   After all the TV whining about obesity, there wasn't much in evidence among fairgoers.  Kids and teenagers were all thin as rails, decently dressed, well behaved, and happy.  Haircuts for boys varied from the 1/2 inch buzz cut to shoulder length.  As people got older, they put on some weight, the 40 year olds were uniformly heavier than the 18 year olds, but that's nature.  I think the TV obesity whiners have over played their hand.  Among the crowd were a lot of couples, of all ages, many holding hands, as they strolled about the exhibits.  Clearly the couples were enjoying each others company as much as the delights of the county fair. 
   We managed to engage the politically active in discussion, but most voters merely gave a friendly nod as they strolled by. 

Wanna bet they were running Windows?

Fox news is bleating about the biggest cyber crime ever.  Couple hundred thousand credit card numbers compromised, couple hundred thousand dollars stolen. Betcha all the victimized companies were running Microsoft Windows. 

Asiana 214 crash. The autothrottle did it

The 777 auto throttle has a lot of modes.  Push buttons on the mode control panel are labeled "Auto Throttle", "Vertical Nav" and "Flight Level Change".  Experts on the 777 are saying that the "Flight Level Change" mode actually pulls the throttles back to flight idle and leaves them there.  And they think the Asiana crew somehow selected Flight Level Change instead of "Auto Throttle".  What the Vertical Nav mode might do is unmentioned.  Apparently Flight Level Change is actually a strange kind of standby, I cannot think why a pilot would use the "Flight Level Change".  The situation is so bad that 777 pilots refer to the problem as the "Flight Level Change trap". 
   Sounds like some human factors work wasn't done right when the 777 was designed.  On the other hand, the plane has been flying for 20 years accident free, so it cannot be all wrong.   Certainly the crew failed to monitor airspeed during the landing.  
 

Nose Gear

   Tricycle landing gear, two mains and a nose gear, came into service in the 1940's.  That's when concrete runways became common.  Grass runways have potholes and soft spots that can catch a nose wheel and snap the nose gear clean off.   Planes designed to land on grass fields had tailwheels. 
   The major attraction of a nose gear is you can use the brakes as hard as you please without standing the aircraft on it's nose.  For pilots who have coped with short runways, wet and slippery runways, obstructions in the runway, and who have landed a bit long, the ability to use the brakes good and hard is compelling. 
  Of course, as happened to Southwest at LaGuardia the other day, the nose gear can fail.  Something like that happened back in the 436 Military Airlift Wing in the late 1960's.  A C-141 jet transport, returning to Dover AFB from a mission reported that the nose gear would not go down.  They had plenty of fuel, and so they circled the field while radioing the tower for advice.  On the ground, the Technical Orders for the C141 were hastily consulted, and there was an emergency procedure to lower the nose gear.  On the C141 the gear was held retracted in the wheel well with a hook.  The crew was directed to go into the main cargo hold, take up some floor panels and gain access to the nose wheel well.  Then with a long pry bar, the hook could be levered back and the gear would go down.  The crew found the pry bar, got into the wheel well, and started fumbling around with the hook.  Unfortunately, in real life things didn't work as neatly as the tech order directions said they would.  The damn hook just would not let go.  After a lot of fumbling in the dark, and a lot of bad language, something went wrong.  The pry bar slipped out of someone's sweaty hands, and fell, fell clean out of the aircraft.  And that was the only pry bar on board. 
   So there was nothing left to do but foam the runway and bring her in.  The pilot used elevator to keep the nose up as long as possible.  The plane slowed to about a jogger's pace before the nose plunked onto the concrete.  We were standing by with jacks, a dolly, and a Coleman tractor and had the plane off the runway in under an hour. 
  Damage was surprisingly light.  Just a scuffed up patch on the bottom of the fuselage, less than two feet across.  The sheet metal shop had it fixed good as new in a couple of days. 

Body and fender work, in fiberglass.

That 787 that caught fire at Heathrow.  The fire started when the emergency locator beacon caught fire.  This gadget transmits distress calls on 121.5, 243, and 406 Mhz in the event of a crash.  It was intended to guide searchers to the crash site, in the rare event that the crash of a big twin aisle jetliner isn't perfectly obvious from the air. Perhaps to guide rescuers to survivors floating around in liferafts after a mid ocean crash.  The ones we had on the C-133 transport would detach from the aircraft and float, so they would not go down with the sinking aircraft.  The C-133 model also had the annoying habit of going off accidentally while parked on the ramp.  When this happened we had a real Chinese fire drill, we had to go out to each and every C-133 to see which one jamming the Guard frequency with beep-beep noises.
  The emergency beacons on the 787 are Honeywell Rescu 406AFN . The cute spelling of the name is a Honeywell marketing idea. The aircraft carries two of them, one above the forward lavatory, and one above the galley.  The one above the galley started the fire. The device was FAA certified  back in 2005 and is in service on a variety of aircraft types.  As might be expected, they are battery powered, and being right up to date, they use lithium batteries.  It was not clear whether a short circuit inside the beacon started the fire or the batteries spontaneously combusted. 
  Which leaves Boeing with a huge burned spot in the carbon fiber fuselage in need of repair.  There was a good deal of discussion in Aviation Week about just how such a repair might be made.  Presumably they lay a big piece of carbon fiber mat over the hole and paint it up with resin.  Like repairing a Corvette's crash damage. 

Fixing Detroit, the NHPR way

NHPR did a long piece on the Detroit bankruptcy Sunday morning.  According to them, the bankruptcy is a blessing in disguise.  It creates vacant lots, in which the Detroit survivors can raise vegetables.  Locally grown food.  They didn't quite have the chutzpah to claim they would be organic.  This was far better use of the land than homes and businesses.  They didn't say how many vegetables you would have to sell to make as much as a welfare check. 
   Then the listed all the veggies you could grow.  Okra, fiddleheads, and collard greens mostly.  And other southern stuff that I have never eaten, and don't ever plan to eat.  Never mentioned green peas or beans, carrots, potatoes, beets, lettuce, tomatoes, or cabbage, you know, real veggies. 
   The authors wanted Detroiters to give up well paid production line work and go back to dirt farming, southern style. They were serious too, not doing an April Fool's day piece.  And April is long time ago. 
   I'm not in favor.