Posts

Lightning

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  How Lightning is Formed Lightning is formed in the atmosphere when warm air and cold air meet to create thunderstorm clouds, the water droplets that are contained in the warm clouds and the small ice crystals which are contained in the cold clouds then begin to rub together forming static through friction (NASA). Similar to a battery, the clouds form into positives and negatives, with negatives at the bottom of the cloud and positive at the top, when enough of this energy from molecules rubbing gets stored in the negative side of the cloud it leaks out forming lightning (NASA). Lightning is not forced to move from the cloud to the ground all of the time and jump either from the cloud to the ground or to a nearer lower energy point in another cloud, assuming that the path of resistance is low enough to take in reaching the other cloud or conductive item that is nearby (NASA). Lightning can Strike Airplanes Since lightning is formed high up in the sky where airplanes often fly, it goes

Terminal Radar Control (TRACON) and Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC)

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  TRACON and ARTCC TRACON and ARTCC are two different entities that assist aircraft as they journey through different parts of airspace. They work in tandem with each other, but both of them have different jurisdictions or parts of the airspace that they control, when pieced together these different parts make up the whole of the journey that an aircraft undergoes (How Air Traffic Control Works, 2021). What Terminal Radar Control Is Terminal Radar Control or TRACON for short is controlled by the local airport and is part of the system in place to guide ascending and descending aircraft safely, they are responsible for the aircraft when it enters their airspace which is 50 miles, and upon departure they will give the pilot the; heading, speed, and rate of ascent so that the pilot can safely navigate through the regular corridors of ascent (How Air Traffic Control Works, 2021). It tracks an aircraft that enters its airspace by way of a transponder which is activated by the pilot of an ai

Airports and the value of your home.

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  How can an airport lower the value of your home? While it might seem like an odd question, living near a major or even a minor airport can actually lower the value of your home. The main way that it does this is via noise pollution that comes from the aircraft's engines and operation as it enters and exits the airport. A community study around which focused on noise pollution being a major annoyance was carried out in twenty sites around the Gimpo and Gimhae international airports, the study was carried out using B&K type 3597 noise measurement equipment and surveys were carried out within 100 meters of the measurement sites (Effect of background noise levels on community annoyance from aircraft noise). The findings of this study were that background noise was one of the important factors for community annoyance (Effect of background noise levels on community annoyance from aircraft noise). The major take away of this study is that due to the annoyance of noise from the airpo

How mail forged an industry.

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  Before the mail came. Before the mail service took interest in the aviation industry it was mostly a military technology. By the year 1918 aircraft were mostly used for the war effort during the first World War, a stage which it dubiously entered onto to begin with. The Germans had been using Zeplins as bombers and modified aerial platforms to rain attacks down upon its enemies in the trenches and some cities before the advent of the more streamlined airplanes of the time. But these were all essentially large balloons with carriages attached to them similar to a hot air balloon but with rudimentary rudders for steering and rough ballast devices to allow it to raise into the air or descend, these Zeplins were filled with Helium instead of hot air. But they weren't true airplanes, those didn't come in until later in the war. Once they did enter though, countries scrambled to make as many of these planes and advance them as much as possible. However, in 1918 the war ended and al

The Right Person for the Right Job

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The Right Person for the Right Job  An old saying my grandfather used to have was, that you didn't use a hammer to put in a screw. The meaning behind this was that you used the right tool for the right job, while people are not tools this still holds true. The right person should be used for the right job, the purpose of this will be that you will instill in the worker and those around them a confidence of the job being done, and the maximum efficiency for the job being done. Confidence in the task at hand. When a person who is either used to a task or has been previously relegated to the task on a consistent basis you begin to build confidence for the individual doing the task. These individuals become experts in their field and are able to perform the maintenance task with confidence knowing that they did the job to the best of their ability, they also become better at trouble shooting anything that goes awry in either that section of the aircraft or if it has to do with that tas

Security in Aviation

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  Insider threats in Aviation!      The biggest threat to aviation does not always come from an outside occurrence such as FOD getting into an engine or the system failure on an aircraft. The biggest threat in aviation comes from insider terrorist attacks in the form of sabotage, espionage, and hijacking. It takes very few resources to be able to completely disable and kill any who would be riding on an aircraft while destroying that same aircraft in the process by using one of the above techniques.     Sabotage is an act or process tending to hamper or hurt and is deliberate subversion (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2022). Sabotage can take place in many ways, whether it's deliberately using improper maintenance practices to cause destruction to an aircraft which could cause catastrophic system failure and death, or it can be on the manufacturer's end by making subpar components that either will not work or have a built-in weakness or fault that will cause injury upon assembly o

The Weeping Wing

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The Weeping Wing!! What it is.         The least common method of de-icing a wing is the weeping wing method, in this method an antifreeze solution is released in addition to de-icing holes through the leading edge of the wing and spreads across the airfoil chemically breaking the bond between the ice and the airframe that has accumulated ice (PHAK Chapter 7). The ice is then sloughed off during aerodynamic flight using the force friction of the moving air. How it works and how it can break. The antifreeze solution being leaked out through the wing is due to small holes that are along the leading edge of the wing, though the initial design of the holes is to block ice formation along the edge to begin with by making the ice essentially bridge the gap across the whole and stops the ice from creating a full unified front on the leading edge (PHAK Chapter 7). Which brings us to the main fault in this design, which is the clogging of the holes along the leading edge of the wing that allows