I'm hesitant to comment because while I'm an aviation fan I really know very little. I subscribe to VAS Aviation and Blancolirio where a lot of these incidents are reported and analyzed and one thing that continually strikes me is that the architecture of airport runways seems like an incredible arsenal of footguns.
The way the runways intersect each other and parallel each other creating the need for complex and sometimes dangerous intersections seems like such an unfortunate and possibly unsolvable problem. Airports are forced by economic and logistical necessity into spaces that are really too small to solve these issues with better layout and that means the solutions "have" to be found in process or technology.
I've encountered constraints like this so often in software but mercifully I've never worked on anything with life or death consequences.
Cheap imitation building blocks are stunningly high quality nowadays and many companies offer extremely interesting sets at a fraction of the cost of real LEGO blocks.
I used to be very pleased with the Polish "Cobi" range. They make a lot of military models, which were great for my dad, who has mobility issues that made traditional model-building difficult.
But then we bought one of their biggest sets-- a Maus tank-- and he complained it was missing parts and unmanageable. I suspect thousands of gray-on-gray parts might have exceeded some unknown challenge threshold.
We are very casual birders but on our daily walk yesterday we watched a pileated woodpecker eat insects from a log for 5 minutes from about 25 feet away and it was wonderful :)
The size of Pileated makes it so special to see! We're fortunate to see one a few times a year - my wife saw one this week but I didn't make it upstairs in time to get a glimpse.
Botched go around killed many pilots. May be trimmed too much up for landing with flaps and didn’t push nose down hard enough. In general, touch and goes in a high performance planes is not a good idea (no time for checklists, runway length, and actually wrong muscle memory for real takeoffs / landings). RIP.
There’s a balance of risks in T&G vs full-stop taxi-backs. On the day of the individual flight, taxi backs are surely safer. But if they let you get in less than half of the circuits (as would be common at busy GA airports) or if they cause your proficiency training to become twice as expensive, the overall system safety difference isn’t clear.
I come down on the side of being willing to do touch and goes in any aircraft (and have shared circuits with heavy jets doing touch and goes, so it’s done at all levels).
From the video, this does look like a botched climb from either an intended T&G or bounced landing after a series of T&Gs, so I’ve got to agree with your point about the “that day” safety here.
I kinda wish computer systems were more involved in planes.
Computer systems have controlled the movement of elevators for 50+ years. They stop the elevator moving when the door isn't shut very effectively. They have certainly saved more lives compared to even a well trained elevator operator.
With today's tech, it would be possible to make a computer that prevents stall of any aerofoil. Anytime an aerofoil is nearing stall conditions, do whatever is necessary to prevent it stalling by actuating control sticks in the direction to prevent the stall.
Self-driving cars can't even manage 2 degrees of freedom with billions of driver-miles of data. What do you think can be done in 3d space, with more instruments and many orders of magnitude of less data?
> With today's tech, it would be possible to make a computer that prevents stall of any aerofoil. Anytime an aerofoil is nearing stall conditions, do whatever is necessary to prevent it stalling by actuating control sticks in the direction to prevent the stall.
What a brilliant idea! It certainly could never directly lead to the deaths of 346 people in two separate plane crashes or anything.
On a slightly less snarky note, what do you imagine an autopilot is?
> I kinda wish computer systems were more involved in planes.
> Computer systems have controlled the movement of elevators for 50+ years. They stop the elevator moving when the door isn't shut very effectively. They have certainly saved more lives compared to even a well trained elevator operator.
I thought you were talking about the elevators on a plane and was trying to figure out why whether a plane door was closed mattered for controlling the elevators.
As the old quotation goes, Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous, But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.
Even if the accident pilot had intended a stop-and-go and assuming reports of a bounce are accurate, it was too late. Trying to force a landing risks porpoising. Going around after a bad bounce is the safer choice — but a high workload event: full power, first notch of flaps, nose forward, and the all-important right rudder.
Are pilots four point strapped? The video looks like a heavy impact with a whip effect from the wing hitting the ground, but the forces involved look generally in the class of automobile impact. Is GA lax on restraints?
Are there "airbags" in GA, or accidental deployment too high a failure risk?
> but the forces involved look generally in the class of automobile impact.
I don't think that's something you can eyeball?
For one thing, planes infamously don't appear to be moving super fast even when moving at speeds that would raise eyebrows in a car. On normal final approach a Cirrus SR22 has an airspeed of around 80 knots (92 mph, 148 kph) and that looks like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/XZcW11zgWQE - the accident plane almost certainly had a higher velocity when it hit the ground
And for another, impact with the ground especially in a dive is very different from impact with another vehicle as is typical for road accidents. Instant deceleration is a whole other beast. Imagine driving straight into a thick concrete wall at over 90mph - there's nothing that seatbelts and airbags are going to do to save you from fatal injury (an example of such a test crash: https://www.carscoops.com/2022/11/what-happens-when-you-cras...)
When my daughter was a teenager she dropped her phone in the toilet and fished it out and put it in rice to dry.
We didn’t see any rice in the trash, and so we continued to question her and it turned out she had simply returned the rice to the cabinet afterwards. :P
We threw out the entire bag, of course.
I’ve been seeing a lot of lost pet posters lately. One of the things that has struck me is that they seem pretty ineffective. Most of them have really small writing and when you’re driving past them in the suburbs all you really see is that there is some lost dog or cat and you probably pass the sign too quickly to get much information or write down the phone number. I was pretty sure that there had to be at least 10 different websites trying to help solve this problem and a quick web search confirmed my suspicion. I have a feeling the websites aren’t much help. The only thing that seems like it probably works is the chip database, but I’d be interested to see if anybody has done research on the most effective ways to find and reunite lost pets.
Chips are good when someone finds your pet (and takes it somewhere with a chip reader). But many lost pets are scared and skittish and won’t come anywhere close enough to strangers to be caught.
The main purpose of posters is to make people aware.
E.g., a lost dog will usually find an area they feel safe and start hanging around. People near there will see it, and if they know a dog is lost may call it in (getting the number from the poster or social media). Once people looking for the dog know where it is hanging out, they can trap it (maybe first using a drone to narrow down where the dog is).
you say things that are imagined, but in the affirmative. pretty sure I've never seen or heard of drones tracking down dogs although it is a great idea.
I am bothered each and every time I see a lost pet poster that does not include either the date when the pet went missing or when the poster was put up. My internal voice shouts "Help us to help YOU!"
My assumption is there’s a kid involved, and the parents know it’s unlikely to be found, but putting in an effort to find it by putting up posters helps to not feel as guilty about losing it.
what difference does the date make? you are seeing a picture of the dog who was last seen/lived in that neighborhood, have you seen it? if you care to, bear it in mind over the next hours while you are in that neighborhood. I don't think a lost pet poster is supposed to accomplish more than that, you don't need to draw a circle on a map based on how many days it's been
Common courtesy would have one remove the posters once either the animal is recovered or hope is abandoned. That's a pain in the ass though and you likely won't remember everywhere you posted bills while distraught.
The next best thing is putting a timestamp or expiration date on it so you don't waste the time of the samaritans willing to dragnet for you.
I do get where you're coming from though. Dates don't really matter to me since I habitually check corners and undercarriages at night looking for lost anything (I know where all the rabbit warrens are and have found two dogs, many cats and an unconscious human), but if I know there's a current/recent APB, I'll focus my attention while I'm out and about.
I'm not following your argument in the least. My point is about time management. I am a habitual dog walker/hiker and need to know whether I can offer a quick search as close as possible to the time the pet went missing, or whether I should carry on as usual knowing that my dogs seem to notice all living and recently demised earthbound things in our travels. If a tropical bird has been lost, the minutes and hours are critical, while the days and weeks missing are just plain sad.
EDIT: I also live in a wintery climate, so yes, posting the date gone missing is critical information.
I think it's a safe assumption that by the time someone got around to putting up a sign, you're at least hours if not days after the fact. The "everybody go out and search" stage happens well before the "I guess we should put up posters" stage. If you're seeing a poster and not a search party, it's been at least a day.
The post you're replying to covered it. They're meant to ask you you to keep your eyes open in the area, not stop and search. They're not asking you to interrupt what you're doing, just pay a little extra attention while you're doing it.
> by the time someone got around to putting up a sign, you're at least hours if not days after the fact
Not a safe assumption at all, and your term ''got around to'' seems to imply that those who have lost a pet might be lackadaisical i.e. I finally 'got around to' taking out the garbage.
Everyone needs to put the date-gone-missing on their missing pet posters.
"Got around to" means "did alllllll the other things they thought might find a pet more quickly." There's nothing lackadaisical about it. It's just well down the list of things you try immediately after a pet is lost.
I have never seen a date on such a poster and it would never have occurred to me to expect one or put one if I lost my own pet. You seem to be the outlier with this expectation.
Lost pet signs don't need to be terribly legible for passing cars. If you found a lost pet, then you would walk around with the pet to see if it will lead you home (dogs often will), and check signs while you're walking.
If that doesn't turn up anything, then you take the animal to a vet to check for a chip and figure out what to do after that.
Are there no pedestrians in suburbs? The likelihood that someone who walks a neighborhood would be able to help with a missing pet seems a lot higher than the likelihood that some random driver from probably miles away could. But maybe for the latter case online platforms work for some people... if they weren't so fractioned. A couple of years ago I'd have suggested facebook groups, today, not sure.
It's not like anyone can put up huge billboards on the streets so that car drivers were able to recognize a pet photo...
The reason none of these measures are very effective has little to do with the method.
Most of the time if a pet goes missing, it's dead by the time such measures are taken or very soon after.
Taking measures to avoid the disappearance in the first place can be more effective.
If you have a cat that goes outside, making sure it's neutered massively decreases the areas they cover and risk of run-ins with other cats or predators. Having a cat flap is a huge help because the cat won't get stuck outside and go looking for shelter. Avoid collars because they get stuck on branches(even the ones that are designed to come undone easily can)
And for fuck sake, the number of people who don't realise their short haired cats can't handle winter conditions... I see a lot of missing notices for shorthairs in the winter. Often with days or even weeks since they disappeared. All dead, almost guaranteed. And this goes for longhairs too, if less so.
I have a Norwegian forest cat, who is better suited for cold weather even than most longhairs, and he barely goes outside at temps below -10C, and only very briefly. Longhairs still easily get frostbite on their ears, nose, and paws at those temps. If you're letting your cat outside at all in these conditions, you better have a flap or otherwise let them in immediately when they ask for it. Yes, even when you just let them out 5 minutes ago.
"Safety" collars still get stuck. Sometimes the mechanism can get wet and freeze stuck.
And I call bullshit on your 75% number for cats. That has to include false alarms where cats are just out for a really long time which is rare, but it happens. In those cases, the cat will just show up at some point completely unharmed all on its own. Usually it's owners freaking out because it hasn't happened before. Another common thing is some asshole in the neighbourhood takes it upon themselves to feed your cat, and it starts hanging out there for days at a time.
Does that make my advice wrong? Lots of people do. I could talk all day about summer conditions too, if you want me to. But I guess winter is on mind right now.
Fair enough, I should have been clearer about that and specified that water only freezes in cold temperatures, lest someone misunderstood that subtle point.
>Avoid collars because they get stuck on branches(even the ones that are designed to come undone easily can)
That doesn't mention the problem of freezing. Again, I'm just pointing out that your personal experience might not be a solid basis to provide advice to pet owners all over the world, and in fact, could be detrimental.
What if a pet owner lives in a place where a wet collar won't freeze because they don't get "real" winters. What if a collar would help return a lost pet to its family?
Your experience is not universal and people are just pointing that out to you.
Fine. Still, it's an extremely minor nitpick, and that's what annoys me about it. With all of my tips combined, + living in a location well suited for cats(real nature like a forest nearby, low speed limit, picking a cat built for the local environment), your free-roaming cat simply won't get lost without something so bad happening to it it's very likely dead. Or it left for greener pastures because you treated it like shit.
Some people don't understand how loyal cats can be, and how well they navigate and map out their environment(did you know cats have a detailed 3D mental map of their surroundings at all times? It's all in the hearing). That's how you get a lot of false alarms where normal cat behaviour is misconstrued as a disappearance.
Other people think their cats are invincible and will do cruel things like forcing them to stay outside all night with no way to get inside. And yeah, if you do that, your cat will go hide in a garage and end up stuck there. But that's the owner's fault and they could have easily avoided it.
So yeah, maybe a collar helped you find your cat. But the only reason it got lost is likely because you fucked up somehow. And you may have been lucky the collar didn't kill your cat.
Having a cat is easy and a joy if you just know the first thing about what the fuck you're doing. And the extent to which people don't pisses me off so much I can sometimes go off the rails about it. Sorry about that.
Not always a fan of tech solutions for every problem, but I don't see why there isn't more widespread adoption of an implanted GPS tracking chips, and maybe coupled with them and app that lets you know if your pet has gone outside of a certain area. This could solve a vast majority of missing pet cases for those who use such a solution.
you are speaking out of your behind, about cats and wintery conditions which is a minority. dogs regularly are found, captured and returned at very high rates through these techniques
Yes, I'm talking about cats. Because that's what I know about. I never claimed to be talking about dogs, did I? And I'm not talking out of my ass, but a wealth of experience owning cats, studying their behaviour and learning about their biology.
The fact that some people don't get real winters doesn't invalidate my advice. Nor does it invalidate the fact that I see basic knowledge like this absent from cat owners on a regular basis.
Yeah, unless there's a bounty most people on lost pet sites are only there because they too have lost one. It's more like a memorial page in practice.
Nextdoor works better for this since people go there for other reasons.
Pet posters aren't as useful as they should be. If you find an animal, call the Humane Society and let them handle custody. Owners checking in with local shelters is step 1 in every "I lost my pet" procedure.
I think it depends on where you live. I live in Bend, Oregon, and lost pets are regularly found via Reddit posts. But this is a super-outdoorsy and dog friendly community, so people are outside a lot and like looking out for our furry friends.
It depends on your neighborhood. There are a ton of walkers in mine so I expect the signs are more effective. That being said there are also near wolf-sized coyotes I also see on the sidewalks on these morning walks…
I don't feel like they need to be effective. Lots of pedestrian pet lovers will stop to check out poster on their own volition, especially people from the neighbourhood. They have internal interest to look for random pets, and being walking speed, have much better chance and probably already acquainted neighboorhood regulars vs strange outdoor pets.
Now what does actually seem ineffective is color posters with different shot of same animal, and their fur looks different colour in every shot, because that's how fur behaves, but to human mind it's a bunch of different cats.
What seems supremely ineffective are lost bird posters.
I've seen the same lost cuckadoo posters in different neighbour hoods in my city... over multiple years. SOmeone was very attached.
Commercial pilots are actually paid incredibly well. The reason for the shortage seems complex and has to do at least partly with regulations passed that mandate 1500 hours of flight time before one can even apply for a job at an airline.
And also that militaries are training far fewer pilots with the advent/expectation of future wars being primary fought with drones and missiles rather than fighters.
Average entry level pay for pilots in the US is $50K. That’s not only not incredibly well, it’s at best median for most jobs that require formal training and certification.
ngl pilots are going to be automated soon for commercial people/cargo for domestic origin/destination. Unlike a truck that has to drive on roads, planes have a large room to make errors. In the future there won't be any pilots or even flight attendants and there would be a designated person on there to land the plane if needed at a much lower salary.
The way the runways intersect each other and parallel each other creating the need for complex and sometimes dangerous intersections seems like such an unfortunate and possibly unsolvable problem. Airports are forced by economic and logistical necessity into spaces that are really too small to solve these issues with better layout and that means the solutions "have" to be found in process or technology.
I've encountered constraints like this so often in software but mercifully I've never worked on anything with life or death consequences.