Eideard

After every flight, United Parcel Service pilots fill out a form, called a ‘gripe sheet,’ which tells mechanics about problems they experienced with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight.

Never let it be said that the UPS ground crews lack a sense of humor. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by UPS pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers…
*
P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
*
P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.
*
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
*
P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That’s what friction locks are for. (my personal favorite)
*
P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you’re right.
*
P:Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
*
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
*
P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from the midget.

Can’t wait to pass this one along. I am the only member of my New Mexico extended family [including my wife] who’s never piloted an aircraft. I get to hear everyone’s war stories. They’ll love this.

A partial list btw. Click over to here for the complete list.

Thanks to adollyciousirony

Click on photo to enlarge

Employees work on an A350 Airbus plane at the company’s facility near Saint-Nazaire, western France. The company is to hire 4,000 staff in 2012, about half of them in France.

The growth at Airbus is matched pretty much one-for-one at Boeing. As the global economy shuffles forward from the joys brought to us by an unregulated Wall Street, an underfunded SEC, a total disregard for oversight, honesty and integrity for a decade or more – some aspects continue to grow slowly and steadily – especially in capital goods.

In spite of 19th Century ideologues who prefer to return us to Bush-league standards.

Ministry of Defence (MoD) scientists have refused to analyse radioactive contamination from Dalgety Bay in Fife because of the risk it could give them cancer…

The MoD has been resisting demands to pay for a clean-up of the pollution from old military planes for the last 20 years. It has persistently played down the possible health effects for members of the public…

Yesterday, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) found another 33 particles of radioactive pollution on the foreshore at Dalgety Bay, a few metres from a public footpath. One of them was small enough to be swallowed by a child, and was sufficiently radioactive to be a “cause for concern”, according to Sepa.

Last weekend, SEPA dug up a lump of radioactive metal near the footpath that was 10 times more radioactive that anything found before, and a serious hazard. As a result, a section of the foreshore has been cordoned off by Fife Council, and warning signs erected.

Since September, SEPA has found and removed more than 100 radioactive particles from near the footpath and from around the slipway of a popular local yachting club. That brings the total number found on the foreshore since 1990 to more than 1800.

Dalgety Bay was the site of the old Donibristle military airfield, where a large number of aircraft were dismantled after the end of the second world war. The dials in the planes were painted with luminous, radioactive radium so they could be read at night. The dials were incinerated and the resulting clinker dumped as landfill to help reclaim part of the headland on the bay. Radioactive contamination in the area was discovered by accident in 1990…

The MoD’s fear of working with the contamination has been uncovered by the minutes of a meeting in Edinburgh of the Dalgety Bay Risk Assessment Group in March 2009…

“It was unbelievable,” said Paul Dale yesterday. “They were saying that it would be hazardous for scientists, but not for children on the beach…”

The MoD’s refusal to monitor the pollution meant that SEPA had to conduct its own surveys, resulting in the recent finds. Sepa’s scientists will return to the foreshore today, and later this week, to check for more contamination.

Almost 20 years after discovery of radioactive contamination at the beach, the Ministry of Defense is still trying to stonewall responsibility, public concerns and avoid spending a penny on legitimate concerns for public safety.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. After all, I live downhill from the National Laboratories at Los Alamos. This is standard behavior from the designers and manufacturers of death and destruction.

 
Thanks, Ursarodina

We had a post about the economics and politics of the Paris Show a little earlier, today. Here’s a peek at the tech.

Found in Colorado

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is missing key information on who owns one-third of the 357,000 private and commercial aircraft in the US, a gap the agency says could be exploited by terrorists and drug traffickers.

The records are in such disarray that the FAA says it is worried that criminals could buy planes without the government’s knowledge, or use the registration numbers of other aircraft to evade new computer systems designed to track suspicious flights.

Next year the FAA will begin canceling the registration certificates of all 357,000 aircraft and require owners to register anew, the Associated Press news agency cited them as saying on Friday.

About 119,000 of the aircraft on the US registry have “questionable registration” because of missing forms, invalid addresses, unreported sales or other paperwork problems, according to the FAA.

In many cases, the FAA cannot say who owns a plane or even whether it is still flying or is no longer functional…

The amount of missing or invalid paperwork has been building for decades, the FAA says. Up to now, owners had to register their planes only once, at the time of purchase.

The FAA sent out notices every three years asking owners to update their contact information if needed, but there was no punishment for not doing so.

RTFA. It’s worth a chuckle over a truly incompetent bureaucracy.

It doesn’t require a great deal of smarts to be a criminal, anyway. But, it surely aids the heavy hitters when the context of day-by-day operations of a federal regulatory agency are about as thorough as Mexican border controls.

The one and only production plane that has been flown

The MRA4 planes, only one of which has ever left the ground, will be stripped of their equipment and abandoned following Coalition defence cuts.

The decision led to the Nimrods being branded “the world’s most expensive pile of scrap metal“. Hundreds of jobs could also be lost, according to BAE Systems, which built the Nimrods.

The Strategic Defence and Security Review in October terminated the £3.6 billion order for new Nimrod MRA4 maritime patrol aircraft.

Other aircraft retired in the defence review – including Harrier jump jets – could be sold intact to foreign countries to recoup some money. But the MoD has decided that simply scrapping the new Nimrods is the “most cost effective option”…

BAE confirmed that its staff at Woodford have begun removing electronics and other systems from the Nimrods as a preparation for the MoD’s final disposal of the empty airframes.

Angus Robertson, Scottish MP for the district, said: “The scrapping of the Nimrod fleet is total folly and a record breaking waste of taxpayer money. Not only are billions of pounds being wasted but there is now a massive military capability gap. These capable aircraft could and should be in service not being cut up for scrap.”

Sounds like the coalition governing the UK is already adept at coming up with new and innovative ways to waste taxpayer’s contributions. Truly, they set new standards for beancounter incompetence.

Given their commitment to reducing the number of working class educated, perhaps they might now settle on a few brand-new, never-utilized school buildings – and knock them down!

The UK-built Zephyr unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has confirmed its place in aviation history as the first “eternal plane”.

The solar-powered craft completed two weeks of non-stop flight above a US Army range in Arizona before being commanded to make a landing.

The Qinetiq company which developed Zephyr said the UAV had nothing to prove by staying in the air any longer.

It had already smashed all endurance records for an unpiloted vehicle before it touched down at 1504 BST (0704 local) on Friday…

Zephyr took off from the Yuma Proving Ground at 1440 BST (0640 local time) on Friday, 9 July.

After only 31 hours in the air, it had bettered the official world record for a long-duration flight by a drone; but then it kept on going, unencumbered by the need to take on the liquid fuel that sustains traditional aircraft.

Clear skies at 60,000ft delivered copious amounts of sunshine to its amorphous silicon solar arrays, charging its lithium-sulphur batteries and keeping its two propellers turning.

At night, Zephyr lost some altitude but the energy stored in the batteries was more than sufficient to maintain the plane in the air.

Zephyr is set to be credited with a new world endurance record (336 hours, 24 minutes) for an unmanned, un-refuelled aircraft – provided a representative of the world air sports federation, who was present at Yuma, is satisfied its rules have been followed properly.

One more step in a lot of right directions.

The Ministry of Defence has unveiled its prototype unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV)…

Defence Minister Gerald Howarth said it was a “truly trailblazing project” and featured “the best of our nation’s advanced design and technology”. The aircraft is due to begin flight trials early next year.

Named after the Celtic god of thunder, Taranis is the first step in the development of unmanned strike aircraft, capable of penetrating enemy territory. Unmanned aircraft carrying weapons are already used in service, such as the MQ-1 Predator which carries Hellfire missiles, although these are only suitable for use where the airspace is under allied control.

“This is the next generation of combat aircraft and flight trials will begin next year,” Sqn Ldr Bruno Wood told BBC News. “It’s a technology demonstrator that could be used as a testbed which may form further potential solutions to the RAF,” he added.

The issue of “writing the pilot” out of the aircraft equation has long been a controversial topic, more so since the first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) went into active service…

Peter Felstead, editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, told BBC News that the development of UAVs paralleled the development of the first manned aircraft during World War I.

“First they were used for reconnaissance, then they were armed for bombing and ground attack missions and they eventually became air-to-air combat craft,” he said.

“This is the first step for the UK. This isn’t an aircraft that will go into service, it’s a tech demo, but it will prove technologies, demonstrate capabilities and inform the direction we [the UK] are going in.”

They might have called it the Terminator, eh? We know how they turned out.

Wonder what DARPA is doing down this alley?

Russian design from the 1930′s

Guillemots and gannets do it. Cormorants and kingfishers do it. Even the tiny insect-eating dipper does it. And if a plan by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) succeeds, a remarkable airplane may one day do it too: plunge beneath the waves to stalk its prey, before re-emerging to fly home.

The DARPA plan…calls for a stealthy aircraft that can fly low over the sea until it nears its target, which could be an enemy ship, or a coastal site such as a port. It will then alight on the water and transform itself into a submarine that will cruise under water to within striking distance, all without alerting defences…

The challenges are huge, not least because planes and submarines are normally poles apart. Aircraft must be as light as possible to minimise the engine power they need to get airborne. Submarines are heavyweights with massive hulls strong enough to resist crushing forces from the surrounding water. Aircraft use lift from their wings to stay aloft, while submarines operate like underwater balloons, adjusting their buoyancy to sink or rise. So how can engineers balance the conflicting demands? Could a craft be designed to dive into the sea like a gannet? And how will it be propelled – is a jet engine the best solution, both above and below the waves?

According to Norman Polmar, former adviser on naval strategy and technology to the US government, the starting point must be to find a way to make an aircraft that can sink in water. “Submarines cannot fly,” he says, “but seaplanes can submerge…”

“What the Americans want sounds incredibly ambitious,” says UK Royal Navy commander Jonty Powis, head of NATO’s submarine rescue service. “If they achieve half of what they want from this machine they will be doing well.” Others are more optimistic, especially in the light of advances in engineering and materials science since the last attempt – notably in lightweight carbon fibre composites and energy-dense batteries.

RTFA. Learn how much time, effort and money can be spent on designing something useful in 1945 – at the latest.

Tough enough trying to move bodies like the Pentagon to modern Fourth Generation warfare. Giving them sandbox time to play with more archaic concepts only encouraging looking backwards at useless tactics.