Aviation

It's May 26, it's my birthday and as a birthday is a special day nothing can go wrong. Well ... nope not really ... but at first i want to thank you all for your kind greetings and congratulations.

Nope .... at first i was in Cologne today, giving a tutorial about creating a fileserver with OpenSolaris. But that was by choice. I like to fly as you know . After being grounded for months due to no opportunity to fly this was really welcome. As i wrote before ... if i get a job some day in the future flying around and doing presentations i would be a luck man.

The day started with a nice "<insert a lot of suppressed curses>" in the aircraft as a was able to spill a cup of airline tea into my lap. Thank god it wasn't my tea at home so it was hot but not hot enough for really significant burnings.

Such a day starting that way can't get a positive ending and it didn't got one. I don't know what happened to my demo installation but stuff i did a day before without problems threw interesting error messages, nothing went the way i want it and and the end i couldn't even remember how to diskpart iscsi devices on windows ... damned ... i will create a written tutorial to give the attendees the information planed for this part.

I hope my Deduplication talk on Friday will be much better ...

However i'm sitting in the Frequent Traveller Lounge now, waiting for my aircraft and i hope there will be no delays ... i wouldn't wonder about that ...

The Flightblogger reports about a problem in the 787 programme:

Shear ties, which affix the fuselage frames to the skin of the aircraft, now require replacement or rework, after the initial design failed to take into account thermal fatigue loading of the parts.
[...]
The problem, which was discovered in December, found that repeated cooling and warming of the unpressurized Section 48 and 48 Aft, the shear ties, those of which are made of aluminum, can pull away from the skin of the fuselage, potentially compromising the structural integrity of the aircraft.

This video shows the resurgence of commercial aviation when the airspace was freed again after the the volcanic ash close-down.



There seems to be no data for France, as the complete country stays black in the video.

Michiel points in a comment to interesting photos of an jet engine that ingested volcanic ash : "PICTURES: Finnish F-18 engine check reveals effects of volcanic dust". Perhaps the airline managers should keep this in mind when they are upset about the closed airports.

The location is normaly directly below a frequently used aviation route. By the way: What a great weather!

I'm so used to see at least a few condensation trails in the sky, that it grabs my attention when there isn't a single one in the sky due to to close-down of almost all airports in germany due to the volcanic ash cloud.

This is the Departure Table of the Airport in Hamburg. Due to the volcanic ash cloud over Europe the airport in hamburg was totally closed down. I think it's safe to assume, that using a plane is a bad idea today.

I think most of us travelled in a Boeing 737 at least once. So you have an impression about the size of that bird. Well, when you look at this photo of a 737 in front of an A380, you might get an impression how large the Airbus A380 really is.

My condolences goes to the people of Poland for their loss. However, when various reports are correct, the cause for this crash deserves a collective *facepalm*: Thick fog (500m visibility), airport closed, two other airports suggest as alternates, no instrument landing system, already three go-arounds, the fourth attempt to land did lead to the crash. I thought, someone would be more cautious with so many passengers counting to the polish elite. That's outright horrible.

The german IT news portal Heise linked to an interesting paper: "Anonymous Bluetooth Probes for Measuring Airport Security Screening Passage Time: The Indianapolis Pilot Deployment".

An interesting concept: Anybody who just start the Bluetooth scan on her/his notebook knows that there are several mobile phones on almost any given location with a large audience propagating a unique id to the world by their MAC address. Using this information to derive some useful facts from it (for example: Duration of the average TSA massage) looks like as one of the more worthy targets for tradeoffs on privacy vs. useful services in favor to the second one. Especially as it's really easy to evade from this data collection: Just switch off the bluetooth function of your mobile.

PS: I would like a bluetooth scanner in the aircraft itself ... it's really interesting how many mobile phones are running inflight. Such a scanner could send a vcard containing "Just switch off your fscking mobile phone". Did that once a few minutes before takeoff ... that was very effective

No ... i'm not talking about a new, more effective CPU hog. I'm talking about the so called "ultimate wing load test". This is an important test in the development of an aircraft. A wing will be bend with a load of 150% of the maximum expected load in operational service. The structure has to hold it this load at least 4 seconds. It's an important milestone for a new aircraft. The 787 wing has to go through this on March 28th as some well-informed websites report. Will be an important moment for the program, especially as the fuselage at the centerbox... well side-of-body ... made some problems in the last test.

You can get almost everything on airline bonus miles. But Finnair definitely takes this to a new level: For 3.180.000 points you get a Rintojen suurennus (or on swedish: bröstförstorning).

Bruce Schneier wrote a really thoughtful article for CNN.com about security in aviation: "Is aviation security mostly for show?". A must read!

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders.

Airbus sold the first A380 in the horror configuration: Air Austral, a carrier from La Réunion firmly ordered two A380 in an economy-only configuration according to this Airbus press release. 840 seats in a single aircraft ... i assume even sardines would ask for a little bit more room They want to use it on their high-density route from La Réunion to Paris.

To you remember this experiment in school? You use a steel ball and at room temperature you can put it through a hole with a slightly larger diameter. Now use a Bunsen burner, put heat to the steel ball for a moment and now try the same again: The ball doesn't fit anymore.

A similar trick is used in building airplanes. To ensure that the bolts tightly fit in their holes, you freeze so they get a little bit smaller. They easily fit in their holes. When they get to room temperature, they expand and you have a tight fit between the bold and the both plates you want to connect.

Well, so far so good. It looks like, they had an interesting problem in the 787 program as reported by Wall Street Journal. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes:

They found that metal bolts, called freeze plugs, inside the wings of one of the six test airplanes had slightly damaged the surrounding material, causing delamination, or cracking, the Journal said, citing "internal company documents and a person familiar with the matter."

Hmm ... reading about all this problems ... i'm sure i'm waiting a few years before i will put a feet in a 787. I thought, Boeing has already used composites parts in other aircrafts ... thought they wouldn't have such basic problems in the 787.