P-63 Restorations

RedHillWings/P-63 Folks:

Good day!!

Plz ck http://www.RetroMechanix.com for some interesting high resolution pictures of P-39s and related field ops support equipment.

P-63 Restorations

RMAllnut:

Good day!!

(FYI):

Nice P-63 pics!! We used to have 5 P-63Es S.of the border at one time flying with the Honduran AF. (FAH). 3 samples made it back th the USA via Mr. Bob Bean c. 1960s & Mr.Dan Chvatal of Mn, c. 1977.

2 samples still remain near the O’club at FAH Hq. The one included AAF 43-11732, FAH 403 was recently restored by FAH with the help of other volunteers.

One sample still remain in place, it’s buried near one of the baseball/softball fields at the main base. It consist of the main fuselage and one left cabin door nearby. Mr. M. O’leary took some pics of the boneyard and claims to have seen the extra fuselage near a ravine. c. 1983. This is the possible sample of FAH 401 which never flew and was used for spare parts. These E models arrived at Tegucigalpa, Honduras with less that 50 Hrs of flying time.

Plz let me know what details you may find with Mr.O’leary or other P-63 folks while I look at a small b/w of the possible P-63 site pic taken c.1980s. Our sample needs a few instruments and I think it’s time for some archeology work to see exactly what is buried and how we can do some digging in the area. Pictured below is FAH 403 in former scheme c. 1977.

AF 447

NJM:

Good day!

I’d like to invite you to submit your innovating idea to http://www.quirky.com. I’m curious what they make come up after comparing a few notes with you. These folks practically re-invented the Swiss Army knife.

To Illustrate, during the test flights on an aircraft ahead of its time at Edwards AFB, California a North American XB-70 c.1960s… an interesting detail emerged while the crew negociated to bring both main gears down. Only one came down to the extended position. The crew did not have tools in the cockpit or a simple Swiss knife around to open up panels to perform some checkups.

At the end of the day and some 2hrs of flying the multimillion $$$$ aircraft was saved by a “paperclip” that one of the crew members carried in his flight briefcase. That simple device was used to by-pass a CB panel to the troubled landing gear. That simple device saved the day the crew of 2 later noted.

Press on!!

AF 447

AZ:

Good day!!

I’m interested in finding all the deep answers of AF 447 as you are. I hope that you’ll understand this matter it’s going to take some time.

One article of The NY Times of May 2011 commented this: ” Why AF 447 flew into the clouds may help explain …why it never flew out.” via Rudy01.

We know now, that there were a lot of intriguing sequence of actions in that cockpit during the last 4′ 23″ of flight. Perhaps it’s better to wait for a second by second account of cockpit activities/flight control systems from the time the auto-pilot disengaged until AF 447 hit the water for a better picture of events.

Perhaps we may find some answers in the words of an A-320 Instructor pilot to a pilot in training last May 2008 when he said, “The A-320 is easy to fly but difficult to understand.”

AF FLT 447

AF 447 Folks:

Via popularmechanics.com. 27 May 2011

Blame the Pilots of Air France 447? Not So Fast
With today’s data release from the Air France 447 flight data recorders, it’s an easy reflex to point the finger at the pilots for failing to avoid or solve the crisis on board the Airbus 330 that crashed in the Atlantic two years ago. But aviation experts tell PM that people shouldn’t be so quick to assign blame: The increasingly automated nature of modern aircraft may mean that pilots don’t have the information they need to save the plane when flight management systems fail.
BY BARBARA PETERSON

On Friday, French accident investigators released a much-anticipated report on Air France 447—actually a dry recitation of the flight’s final minutes. Many rushed to pin the blame squarely on the pilots. Indeed, as details of the document trickled out in the days after the recorder was pulled up from the depths of the Atlantic, the phrases “human error” and “pilot error” appeared frequently in headlines atop numerous news stories around the world.

It is not hard to see what’s behind the finger pointing. As the released partial transcript makes clear, the chain of events that led to the crash began when the A330’s autopilot and autothrust disengaged more than 3 hours into the flight, and the co-pilots took control. (Investigators already knew about the failure of airspeed indicators that caused this to happen.) “I have the controls” the co-pilot was quoted as saying in the transcript.

What he did after that is at the heart of the controversy over the crew’s role. “The airplane began to roll to the right and the [co-pilot] made a left nose-up input,” the report said. “The stall warning sounded twice in a row.” After the stall warning was triggered again, the report said, the co-pilot continued to try to point the nose up.

The “nose-up input” is contrary to established procedure. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of what every beginning pilot is taught to do. (Pointing the nose down can help pull a plane out of a stall.) Questions about the pilots’ performance were compounded by the news that the captain was not in the cockpit at the time, but was on a rest break instead—a routine occurrence in the cruising phase of a long flight.

Safety experts say that it’s premature and far too simplistic to assume there were no other factors involved. A major airline crash rarely has just one cause. Rather, it’s a chain of multiple failures that have to line up, according to William Voss, chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation.

“We have to be careful we don’t demonize the pilots here because that is not going to help us the next time,” Voss says. There had been much speculation following the crash that the investigation might also implicate the plane’s automated fly-by-wire technology. Other incidents involving faulty speed readings emerged just weeks after the Air France 447 crash. Then, in late June 2009, the National Transportation Safety Board revealed details from two other near-disasters that resembled what happened aboard Air France 447. In one, a TAM Airlines flight from Miami to São Paulo lost basic speed and altitude data from its flight management system, forcing the crew to rely on backup instruments. It took them 5 minutes to reboot the main computer. Around the same time, Northwest Airlines also experienced a similar failure on a flight between Hong Kong and Tokyo. Both flights landed safely and no one was injured.

Voss takes issue with those singling out the Air France pilots for not pulling off a similar feat. “[They] seem to think that if you spend enough time behind the controls, in a situation like this you ought to just know how to point the airplane in the right direction and chill,” he says. “That’s unfair. They were in what must have been a rather noisy and chaotic environment… You’ve got multiple system failures; you’ve lost the air speed [indicators]; you have data computers going offline; there are beeps, bells and buzzers, all happening simultaneously.” On top of that, the plane was flying through a heavy thunderstorm.

The Air France crew was experienced, Voss says. His concern is whether pilots are getting enough training on how to deal with a crisis when automated systems fail. “What may be lacking is the ability to triage a sick aircraft,” he says. “We have to get back to the focus on automation as a tool to manage the aircraft. It should be serving us, not the other way around.”

The NTSB is especially concerned because modern fly-by-wire technology relies on several layers of redundancy to ensure system failure doesn’t happen, but on the rare occasions that it does, the pilots may not be prepared. “When there is a malfunction of these cockpit displays, pilots may be left without the critical information they need to fly the airplane,” John DeLisi, the NTSB’s deputy director of aviation safety, said in an earlier interview with PM.

More details about the last moments of Air France 447—and what the pilots did and why they did it—could come later this summer, when French authorities release more data from the black boxes. Air France, for its part, released a statement Friday commending the pilots for their professionalism and claiming that the report showed they were trying to avoid the worst of the storm by turning the plane slightly—just before the systems failed.