Posted on 07/15/2008 12:32:22 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
B1-Bob will always be an idiot to me. He treated his house district in Orange County, CA as his personal fiefdom that he never ever had to visit or do anything for.
Then Loretta Sanchez stole it from him by winning the one precinct with an overwhelmingly Mexican majority (Santa Ana) using vote fraud and illegally registered Mexicans.
I believe that was the only precinct that she won.
He deserved it, though. He was an insular, its all about me, sort of representative.
I kind of enjoyed it even though Sanchez is a ... I won’t go there.
What was the cause?? Enemy Fire, Mechanical dificulties, lack of spare parts, or just President Bush’s fault???
UGH!
According to an earlier article, it was moisture in one of the sensors at the rear end of the plane. Atleast that was the *official* explanation.
Dornan was a great public speaker but he did have his downside. He jockeyed for camera position in marching with MLK ...and he was in uniform !! He was always too comfortable in ticking off Birchers and states-righters who should have been safely in his base.
The pilot's rotated too early because indicated V2 was 8kts lower than required. The autopilot sensed a nose down condition based on the same flawed sensor input as the indicated V2 error and induced a pitch up attitude of 30o.
Stall onset was almost certainly immediate. Aircraft typically yaw during takeoff, and the trailing wing tip loses lift first and dips as a result. The pilots ejected the instant the left wing-tip scraped the runway.
THere just was no margin for recovery given the circumstances.
I grew up around Naval aviation and have seen quite a few crash aftermaths. All I can say is that is one TOUGH airframe.
A worthy sacrifice. I gladly pass up mine as well.
I wonder why they were using autopilot on takeoff.
Hydrazine maybe?
Has Obama, Pinky Reid or Madam obnoxious declared the B-2 a failure yet? Better not let them see these pics.
bump for later read
During his presidential run in ‘96 Bob seemed like a cocky guy. Too bad for him he didn’t forgo his joke of a campaign and pay more attention to his own district.
I was informed of this by a retired F-16 pilot who now is an MD-11 driver for FedEx. He said during one of his training session, he was working with the captian, one of the senior FedEx pilots, they spent 45 minutes trying to get the computers programmed correctly for a particular flight. When in exasperation he exclaimed, "Damn it! Why don't we just fire this bird up, and FLY it to where we're going?" The senior PIC just looked at him with absolute incredulity like he had three heads.
The fact of the matter is that except private aircraft, nobody does a whole lot of flying these days (at least not commercially).
The connations of autopilot are incorrect, however, in that more properly it was the flight control computer (FCC) that is part of the flight control system (FCS) that induced the control inputs for 30o pitch up. This is really no different than the G-limit FCS in the -16; regardless of pilot control inputs the FCS will NOT allow given inputs to overstress the airframe. The -16 is inherently unstable and without the FCC continuously monitoring all aspects of the flight aerodynamics, the air craft would be immensely difficult to control; essentially the FCC is doing 95% of the work.
The B-2 is even worse in that regard (much much worse); without a functioning FCC the B-2 is essentially uncontrollable.
I’m glad the crew got out safely.
Heck we could buy 50 of these a year for what we subsidize HIV research for. Still no vaccine.
It was a ‘flight computer’ not an autopilot. Apparently an automatic control system that helps fly the plane.
What a waste to be eating through these aircraft bombing 7 guys and a goat in some valley somewhere.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.