You show some aeronautical maps which are awesome and detailed, as they must be. I was looking at he civil maps available to the general public.
Apparently Bellini is either a franchise or a very popular name for restaurants. They are found in many places, including St Louis. The Mexico City version sounds like the magnificent rotating restaurant that used to operate on top of the Hyatt Hotel by O'Hare International. I don't remember the name of it but it was of gourmet quality and had a panoramic view of the city and surrounding counties. It rotated once every hour but for some reason it stopped and could not be repaired easily. They operated it for a few years after that but it didn't have the same appeal. The hotel and restaurant were the highest allowable structure to be that close to the airport. It could not have been more than 200 feet tall, but the views in my memory are still breathtaking. We were there at sunset and I can see how a video of the approach path that included the tower restaurant would be spectacular. I hope that some day you get to complete your idea, Juan. I'd love to view it on YouTube.
Thanks for blowing up that map for me Yogi. It was a curiosity!
My sister lived about 10 miles from the end of Lambert Field (St. Louis International Airport - STL)
Her biggest complaint was not about the noise, but the amount of kerosene (jet fuel) that landed on their cars and rooftops.
It wasn't enough to hurt the trees or grass, but enough to make dust stick to everything.
Neighbors who lived even closer got it worse than she did. But then there were no houses any closer to the airport in the width of the airport runways for a few miles.
She said it wasn't near as bad in later years as it was their first few years up there, so maybe the planes were not wasting as much fuel as they used to on takeoff. Either that or they used to dump fuel before landing. Who knows?
At my previous location the landing glide path was probably a couple thousand feet high. Also, the planes rarely came directly above my residence, but typically a little bit north; about a quarter or half mile. Thus any fallout didn't affect me. However, my very first house was a little closer into the airport and on the north side of it. That glide path was indeed directly above my residence. One day we were sitting in the back yard with company and the planes were coming in fast and furiously. It was pretty noisy, but us humans have the ability to adapt to such things. To our surprise some weather stripping fell upon us after an unusually low flying plane passed overhead. Apparently when the doors for the landing gear opened some insulation came loose and landed in our yard. I didn't now who to call about it, and it probably would not have mattered anyway. So I kept that weather stripping in the garage until we moved to a new house. LOL
If they do like they did to me, they would say the part that landed in my yard did not come from an airplane.
I don't know what else it would have come from, only an airplane had flown over before it came whistling to the ground, hi hi.
My uncle Bill had a farm not near any glide path for airplanes. Yet the rear cowl of a jet engine was laying in his the field nearest his house. He was an engineer and said it could have easily glided diagonally from the glide path to his farm some 5 miles away.
He called it in, but nobody came out to get it, so he used it in his front yard to set a bird bath dish on top of.
It was there for probably three or four years before some stranger stopped and asked where he got it from.
He said it landed on my farm years ago, and he called, but nobody came to claim it.
The guy inspected it, then left. The very next day, some military trucks pulled up to take a look at it.
They emptied the bird bath and set it off to one side while they looked inside the cowl for something.
One of the officers said, doesn't look like one of ours, and put his birdbath back and refilled it with water.
It was still there when he sold his farm some ten years later.
I've heard a few stories about pieces of airplane landing in heavily populated areas. My only hope is that the ground crews inspect the planes very thoroughly before they are allowed to take off again. Some missing weather stripping probably is not a big deal, but an engine cowl missing is not a good thing.
That first house where I was a beacon for incoming aircraft was located at a distance where they pilot kicks in some reverse thrust on the engines in preparation for touchdown. It was an interesting sound but not all planes did it nor was it at the same spot every time. However, there were days when the flight fuel permeated the air. I didn't notice a film on the house or outdoor furniture as you mentioned above, but there was a distinct aroma. I would guess different companies use different fuels which accounted for not all planes leaving the same vapor. Plus, there was a big to-do about that very thing one year which ended up in planes changing their approach path and flight fuel being modified. Supposedly it's a lot cleaner these days.
There was an accident where a former Interior Secretary died in an airplane crash during the Mateo 5 approach glide. The plane fell at rush hour less than 100 meters from the Petroleos monument in Reforma Avenue, in Chapultepec Woods... I've used that as an argument for the improval of Aviation Security here in the city and in favor of replacing the airport with the one they were building in Texcoco... Just to think that plane or any other could fall at rush hour on any of the most crowded overpasses in the city makes it worth considering changing protocols a minimum.
Chicago has two major commercial airports, O'Hare International and Midway. Midway is smack dab in the middle of the city surrounded by about 4 million people. There is no open land for twenty miles in every direction, and to the east is Lake Michigan. O'Hare is at the northwest corner of the city, but it too has a high density suburban population. Any crash in the populated areas would certainly kill thousands of people.
Just north of O'Hare airport was a Naval Air Station. It wasn't used much but it did have a runway for military aircraft. One day a jet fighter had an emergency. He was running out of fuel and estimated that he could not make it to the Air Base under power. The immediate question was if he should ditch the jet or attempt a one shot pass for the Air Base with no power. A crash would have been in a populate area and if he missed the runway at the Air Base there was no turning back for a second approach. The pilot decided to try for the runway. Fortunately, he was good enough to turn to the correct heading and land just a tiny bit short. He did roll onto the runway after touching down and nobody was hurt. That was truly an amazing incident that all the people talked about for many months. They closed down the Air Station a year or so after that.
This was a lot of years ago, but you know those little towers that keep getting lower and lower with all the lights on them as the commercial planes approach the runway to land.
A freight airliner was on their final approach to the runway, he was already a bit to low to start with, but a cold air pocket or something caused the plane to drop about another 100 feet and his wheels knocked down the last three or four towers, and also popped a couple of his tires. These tires naturally shredded almost instantly when he was on the runway and sparks were flying everywhere.
Over at Spirit Airport, jets were often mistaking the road for a runway until some serious changes were made there.
But the best one of all was a small jet who landed in the parking lot and ran into the chain link fence at the lead end of the runway. I guess the chain link fence was in sections, because it didn't stop the plane, just took out a section of the chain link fence, but did one heck of a lot of damage to the plane.
When my dad was in the Navy, he saw a plane doing cartwheels down the runway, tore off both wings and a good part of the back of the plane too. It didn't blow up as everyone who saw it thought would happen. He didn't see what happened before that caused the crash, but others said it looked like the right wing just folded upward and down it came.
I lived near O'Hare for about fort-five years. There were a few minor incidents on the ground, but I recall only one actual crash of an American Airlines plane. My wife's brother worked as a ramp rat at that time and he was drafted into service by the rescue team. I don't recall a lot of details but I'm thinking the plane had problems landing. There was a lot of flames and very few survivors. I could see the smoke rising into the sky from where I lived at the time. There were a lot of heroes at that incident including my wife's brother. But what he had seen and had to deal with affected him for many years. He was in the navy and saw some action in VIet Nam, but nothing like the plane crash at the airport. Considering how many flights there are at O'Hare under all kinds of weather conditions, it's amazing only one major crash occurred in 45 years. There are tons of businesses and hotels surrounding the airport. Anything outside it's fences would be a disaster of monumental proportions.
I'm actually surprised there are not more serious plane crashes.
When you consider the age of many of the planes, although well maintained, I'm sure many suffer from metal fatigue.
Rivets also vibrate and wear the holes they are in bigger and bigger.
And if you ever saw how banged up the inside of the cargo area is, you would be a nervous Nellie!
Or how some of the plastic components in the passenger areas have aged so they have crack lines in them.
I guess this is why they replace a lot of that plastic with a new interior on a few of them.
To make the plane look a lot newer than it really is, hi hi
I know it is not uncommon for a FedEx pilot to ask the tower if his wheels are down, hi hi.
There is an exhaustive routine set by the FAA for checking out the fly-ability of an aircraft. I don't know how often it must be performed nor do I know how well the examiners do their job. But, as you point out there is a lot of old metal out there still flying the friendly skies. Those old planes also have old computers and old software. You might think that's a bad idea, but it just goes to show the wisdom of not upgrading if there is no critical need to do so. If the old equipment works, why change it? Replacing a 737 would cost around $100 million without any frills added. A 777 will set you back about $350 million. I'm sure that is the main reason all those old airships are still in service.
When I was flying small private aircraft, they had to be overhauled every 100 hours and reinspected by the FAA.
In this case an overhaul does not mean rebuilding an engine every 100 hours, but it has to go through a whole bunch of tests. One of them is the oil is tested for metallic dust which indicates wear. Compression tests, and many other things.
They check the torque on the fan bolts, and the grease from there also for metal dust.
Then of course they go through all the controls, cables, rods, whatever else. All the hinges on flaps, ailerons, rudder, etc.
There really wasn't much difference between a Piper Colt and Piper Tri-Pacer, but there were more things that required inspection on the Tri-Pacer which made it cost more for the overhaul and examination.
Now the old tail-dragger Piper Cub was about the cheapest of all inspections.
Many of the FedEx planes I see here carrying cargo are really old Boeing 727's.
And a few twin engine prop planes too lined up over at the local cargo airport.
I have a hunch the jets that go into Tyson-McGee use the smaller prop planes to get those aluminum containers from there to Island Home airport near us, and probably other small local airports.
After you see a FedEx jet fly over, about 1/2 hour later you will see two or three of the small prop planes head toward the airport and come back less than an hour later. They have a large Quonset type building the plane is towed into, and FedEx trucks line the other dock side of the building. These are not delivery trucks, but ones that just run between Island Home airport and their FexEx terminal a few miles southeast of there.
I had a neighbor in my old location who flew private airplanes. He and a few of his buddies were building one from scratch in his garage. He told me that at certain phases of the build process an FAA examiner had to come out an inspect things so that stage can be certified and they could continue on to the next phase. They spent nearly three years on that project, but not full time. They all had day jobs which allowed them to buy the kit to build the plane. They never finished it while I was there. Thinking of all the tests and inspections that go into a small private plane makes me wonder what they do and what it costs to service a 747, for example. It's no wonder they are always complaining about running out of money.
I don't see a lot of air traffic here in O'Fallon, but up by O'Hare it was common to see the cargo planes mixed in with the commercial passenger flights. There were people who would use binoculars to identify the planes and keep track of them. It was an interesting hobby, I suppose, but there are websites that show flights in progress with the craft's ID on them too. That is an amazing map to see how many planes are in the air at rush hour.
yogi wrote: ↑01 Sep 2021, 17:32
I don't see a lot of air traffic here in O'Fallon, but up by O'Hare it was common to see the cargo planes mixed in with the commercial passenger flights. There were people who would use binoculars to identify the planes and keep track of them. It was an interesting hobby, I suppose, but there are websites that show flights in progress with the craft's ID on them too. That is an amazing map to see how many planes are in the air at rush hour.
Same here, although not as much. seen that, done that, have the T-shirt.
I know of people who are railroad enthusiasts and they spend time spotting engines and gathering information about them. I suppose that could be interesting. My wife's parents were bird watchers. That makes a little more sense to me. LOL
I built a Benson B8M Gyrocopter from a Kit.
Took me about 4 months to get it put together, at a total cost of around 1200 bucks with the McCullach motor.
The only place I could use it was on our farm behind the greenhouses.
Took about 1/3 of the back dirt road to take off, but then I could turn and fly around the property with ease.
I was always leery about going over the greenhouses in case it died on me.
But once I gained experience in using it, I could set it down between the small space between the greenhouse and boiler room to keep it inside there.
After a couple of summers of playing with it, the novelty of it wore off, and one of the company employees offered me a little over 3 grand for it. He flew it around the property about five or ten times to get comfortable with it, then flew it home, a distance of about three or four miles is all. The following summer, he flew it to work about ten times, then bought a motorcycle and sold it to someone else. I think in trade for the motorcycle.
I've come across the term gyrocopter but never saw one. That prompted me to check them out on YouTube. It's a pretty interesting machine that claims to work with a non-powered rotor. The free spinning rotor is what provides the lift. I suppose that works but the video I watched seem to at least prime the rotor before take off so that it was spinning prior to reaching lift speed. I guess that's where the gyroscope action comes into play. In any case, it looks like a fun toy, but you need a lot of space to play in with it.
A friend had bought the non-motorized Benson B8, think he only paid like 300 bucks for it. His dad would pull him behind their dune buggy and once it was up in the air he would then drive around the outer drive of the park by his house. It flew really well being pulled like a kite, so he added a motor to it, but it was not strong enough for him to take off with it, but if he got a tow to get it airborne, then he could unhook the tether and be able to fly around for quite some time.
Mine was the motorized version B8M and had a nice strong motor on it.
My dad worried a lot about the propeller being right behind me, said it could chop off my head hi hi.
I guess that could happen if you crashed, but they were almost impossible to crash to start with.
If the engine died, you would just drop down to the ground like a normal helicopter landing.
In other words a vertical descent. But they could not take off vertically, or hover for that matter, you had to keep moving forward or land.
I think later on they came out with one which could hover, but it took two motors and was harder to fly.
It was fun to build from the kit, and fun to fly around the property with.
But like most other things, the fun eventually wears off, since all I could do was fly around the property on it.
By the way, we also had a go-cart track running all the way around the north crop area. Part of this was the two dirt roads at the north and south ends of the fields, a gravel road on the east, and a dirt path we made with motor scooters on the left.
Most of our family all lived in Des Peres at the time, and we had several go-carts among us.
This was great because we would have races and a few other things we did on that oval around the fields.
Uncle put a stop to it when too many non-relatives joined our escapades, because he was worried about the liability to the company. No biggie, Pioneer Park allowed go carts on the track outside their running paths, but not on the running paths. At least for like three or four years when we all had our go-carts.
We of course graduated to cars, and Lake Hill Speedway, hi hi.
I can understand why a gyrocopter would not be able to hover unless the rotor was powered and able to achieve enough speed to lift the weight of the machine and it's pilot. The only function of the rotor blades is to provide lift. Unlike a helicopter the gyrocopter rotor cannot provide forward motion because the blades remain parallel to the ground, which seems to be the purpose of the gyro's flywheel. I'm guessing that is why soft landings are the norm too. With no forward motion and no tilt of the rotor blades, the only direction it could go is down.
I loved to visit the go-cart tracks when I was a kid. There were a few where I lived and generally they were accompanied by a miniature golf course. Because they were commercial and supervised, driving those go carts was less than exciting. But they were fun nonetheless.
It was actually amazing how slow the little Benson Copters descended when the engine died.
Now if you were really high up, they dropped a bit faster near the end, but not enough to even bounce the rubber wheels.
When my cousin was in town, we went to a go-cart track that is more like the parking garage exits that spiral downhill. Except these were a huge oval spiral.
Just as we got there, it had rained and was still misting a bit, so the guy had closed the track. My cousin convinced him to let us use it anyhow, and promised we would pay for any damage to the carts and waive all liability. He himmed and hawwed around for a little bet, until my cousin showed he was an air-force pilot and told him I was a race car driver.
Now let me tell you, there is nothing slicker than snot as a wooden board race track, hi hi.
And the guy gave us his fastest go-carts on top of it. He really wanted to see us spin-out or crash. I didn't realize it until later, but my cousin gave him a thousand bucks to hold to cover any damage, if any.
I don't think the owner or the folks who worked there ever saw anyone as crazy as we were out there. On or about the sixth or seventh lap, we were running faster than any of their other go-carts could go, and getting our drifts down perfectly so we actually had an honest to goodness high speed race going on, and on those slick boards too.
A lap was really more like 4 laps due to the track being a spiral, and an oval inside of an oval.
Each time we came down near the starting or pit area, we noticed more and more people standing under the awning of the building watching us, some of them cheering us on, including the owner of the place who was holding a green flag.
I don't remember how many laps we actually made, but after about 20 minutes are so he walked out to the staging area with a yellow flag, and then a red flag the next lap around, so we slowed down considerably, and it was starting to rain pretty hard too. When we came around the final time, he was holding up a checkered flag, so we know to stop.
We ended up standing around talking with him and the other employees for another half hour or so.
The owner told us nobody was turning laps as fast as we were on dry boards, much less on wet slimy wood.
He wanted us to come back again said we could draw more crowds to his track. But my cousin said he was visiting and lives in Florida. They owner gave his deposit back and did not charge us for our time on the track either. He said he enjoyed the entertainment. My cousin still gave him a hundred bucks as a tip for letting us race when he shouldn't have.
