
Crossing the US in an open-air, two-seat aeroplane - smacktoward
http://www.bbc.com/travel/bespoke/story/20150424-a-view-that-puts-window-seats-to-shame/index.html
======
bitL
Awesome! How did he manage to overcome dizzying feelings from cross-winds in
an open-air cockpit? When I fly a sailplane, beside tailspins and free-falls
(controlled of course) it's the crosswinds that can make me feel dizzy,
especially when I approach a runway with an angle over 40 degrees left or
right to the runway direction to compensate for cross-wind. And there is also
the open-air pressure "fun" with quickly changing cockpit winds, especially
over large water bodies and mountains.

~~~
sokoloff
I suspect the queasy feeling you feel on approach is from (intentionally and
necessarily) uncoordinated flight, not from the airflow across the cockpit.

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.

------
masklinn
Here's the airframe:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockwood_Aircam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockwood_Aircam)

Much bigger and more expensive than I expected for an ultralight (450kg empty
and 100k).

~~~
ohazi
It's a twin engine airplane (you need a multi-engine rating on a regular
pilot's license to fly it). Not really an ultralight, despite appearances. The
engines alone are half the cost.

~~~
fche
Heh, in a typical light general aviation twin, the engines alone are >half the
value (replacement cost).

------
jupiter
There's an even more basic and adventurous way of cross country flying, using
only a paraglider and camping gear:
[https://vimeo.com/104930744](https://vimeo.com/104930744)

More info here: [http://sierraparagliding.com/first-complete-crossing-of-
cali...](http://sierraparagliding.com/first-complete-crossing-of-californias-
high-sierra/)

~~~
NDizzle
I have been meaning to get into powered paragliding. It looks like it offers
the same kind of views at a much more leisurely pace.

------
anonu
From the article: Some of the farms boasted a single oil derrick, pumping out
a few barrels a day. “Not enough to live on,” Webster observed, “but a good
extra income.”

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.

~~~
bobowzki
Costs...

~~~
paulmd
Are surprisingly low for a well-engineered setup. You can run many pump jacks
off a single-cylinder engine (a dozen or more in some arrangements). If you
have two jacks that counterbalance each other, your only loss is friction. You
can even run the engine on the natural gas that comes out too (which would
normally just be flared off).

------
_rzzzwilson_
Of course, this sort of thing has been going on for a long time. One of my
favourite authors did this back in '91.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H9eFFz3gZbA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H9eFFz3gZbA)

He wrote a book about it.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Cannibal-Queen-Stephen-
Coonts/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Cannibal-Queen-Stephen-
Coonts/dp/0671038494)

------
asselinpaul
Insanely cool. Would love to do this one day.

How expensive is it to park your airplane for the night?

~~~
jxf
At many regional airports, it's either free for small planes or very cheap.
For example, my airport of Charlottesville, VA charges nothing for planes
under 7,000 lb ("LNDG FEE ONLY FOR ACFT OVER 7000 LBS."):

[http://airnav.com/airport/CHO](http://airnav.com/airport/CHO)

~~~
sokoloff
pkorzeniewski> Why there're so many abbrevations? Is there a technical reason
for it or is it just a convention among pilots?

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...

~~~
athenot
Probably for the same reason Digital Video is filled with acronyms. Medical
notes also have the same pattern.

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. ;)

------
codazoda
There are only 600k private pilots in the US? Dang, that's a small group of
people I'm thinking I should join. Growing up flying with my dad, off-and-on,
I had no idea the numbers were so small.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It's only about 40-60 hours of time + $10K in costs to get your private pilots
license.

~~~
wheaties
Depends where you're learning. I'm looking more at 10-15k for 40-60hrs. Then
again, 172 G1000 planes so...

~~~
toomuchtodo
Newer planes will cost more per hour, but glass is definitely the way to go.
Shop around, each shop is going to offer different pricing based on what their
costs are, and the aircraft time is the most expensive component (followed by
fuel, then instructor time).

Disclaimer: I hold a private ticket, and 10 years later still haven't found
time to get my instrument or multi-engine. Life happens!

------
bane
I recently did a round-the-state Colorado road trip and can highly recommend
it to anybody interested in a huge variety of gobsmacking beautiful scenery.
From ancient cliff-fortress ruins in the SouthWest of the state to Rocky
Mountain National Park in the North.

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.

------
sneak
Wondering if it's his camera or the compression that ruined what must have
been stunning photo opportunities.

That said, this looks like it was incredible fun. I just wish the pictures had
come out.

------
droopybuns
Is there a library for this style of webpage, or is everyone reinventing the
wheel for this stuff? Love the design and feel of reading stories this way.

~~~
jmah
The bottom references it being created using
[http://shorthand.com](http://shorthand.com)

------
tgdn
Amazing

------
Aoyagi
Is it normal nowadays to not make a desktop version of a page/section?

