IBob

The sad fact is that whistleblowers......in all walks of life.....generally do not fare well after the event.

So much hangs on this...for some very powerful organisations. One only hopes that we get an honest result.

I'm not, Brendan. I originally posted the above as a response to a post on the Air India thread...realising that, I then deleted it and reposted here. That's all.......

Moved this from the Air Indian crash thread because: There used to be a system for trains to pick mail up on the fly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catcher_pouch Which led to the joke about the guy in A & E: 'What happened to you, mate?' 'Well, I was just peeing out the window, and next I knew there was a mailbag on it................('

I bought an auto one (not Thermostasis), have seen them on Rotaxes, but decided not to instal it as they can fail closed: that is fail in the radiator bypass position. If installing one I would want to check the fail position.

I seem to recall they used to haul cattle around in old cargo Connies in S America..............

Here is how it went for our group of about 20 in the chamber: At 18,000' we all took our masks off and it was like being at a party where everyone has had a few beers (or something) and are thoroughly enjoying themselves. We were asked a few questions about the lecture we had had beforehand, nobody could much remember the details of that, but this was generally hilarious. Masks on and we went to 25'000, masks then off in pairs while everyone else watched. We had scratch pads and were to subtract 7 from 301, 7 from the result and so on. After about a minute you can't do it...but that's fine, you're happy to keep trying. Every minute or so the instructor holds a finger up in front of you, and you are to repeatedly to touch his finger, then your nose. After about a minute this becomes very difficult: you can touch his finger with a lot of weaving around, but you can't seem to accurately touch your nose, the best you can do is somewhere on your face. You are required to hold your arms out straight in front of you, and you can't maintain that: they go out, but then fall down and you repeatedly jerk them back up, they fall again: hypoxic flaps. It's all fine, but after about 2 mins (or hypoxic flaps, if sooner) you are told to put your mask back on. Whereupon your colour vision comes back, though you'd not noticed you had lost it. We had folk wouldn't put their masks back on, so far as they were concerned they were doing just fine despite being unable to do any of that above. And we had one outstanding example of target fixation: with the nose touching exercise, one of the group wouldn't let the instructor put his hand back down. Each time he tried to, she grabbed it and put it back up in front of her so she could continue trying to do it. Got very indignant about it too. Recovery is usually surprisingly rapid too once you get the mask back on. Though apparently some continue into hypoxia, and we had one of those needed extra oxygen for a bit. And we had one who apparently functioned fine at 25,000ft, and a smoker at that.

Insidious is exactly the right word. I attended one such course and what surprised me was there are no warning bells: nothing at all, in fact quite the opposite, it is euphoric and everything is just cruisy. That is in complete contrast to just about any other physical danger we may face and where we invariably experience a reflexive physical and/or mental alarm. And it explains, for instance, why a hypoxic diver (same problem) may happily just swim on down...

Okay, so it looks as though the recorder itself would function through a power outage, provided the cutover is seamless ( I would be surprised if it is not). I wonder what powers this lot. I guess my thought is that, while the FDR may continue to operate, in the event of a power loss there may be no data arriving for it to record.

Question: do the flight recorders have their own emergency power? And how much can they 'see' to record if other systems have lost power?? Yep, two questions again.........

Air India will get a pounding: an article I cannot now find explained how India's aviation authority is chronically undermanned with a very large proportion of positions (40%...50%???) unfilled.

Also on the Bing, you may want to check the idle throttle stop and idle jet settings. These are very simple static settings, just so many turns of a screw in each case. One of mine was out on a new Rotax, I think one idle jet, but I'm not now sure.

Hi Lyle, if the Bing is the same as on the Rotax, the 'choke' does nothing unless the throttle is fully closed. The reason is that it's not really a choke in the conventional sense, but a separate fuel circuit that delivers through a port only when the butterfly is closed. I had thought this would be common knowledge for Rotax owners, but you can still fish up 'how to start a Rotax' stuff on Youtube, from supposedly knowledgeable operators, where they crack the throttle open then pull on the choke...

If something went wrong with the aircraft..........let us hope not, but if.........whoever has those recordings is sitting on dynamite............(