h a l f b a k e r yNo servicable parts inside.
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By putting scales on airplane seats, and a computer program to calculate the center of mass, the luggage loader on the airplane can figure out much easier how to distribute the luggage much easier before takeoff. Some other uses might include assigned seating arangements too, whereby the airplane automatically
calculates the weight distribution and then tells the passenger to trade places with another passenger on the airplane if it suits the flight dynamics better. After all, it's better than flying an unbalanced load with more heavy people on one side than the other side, or in the front than in the back of the plane.
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You have missed the obvious opening here: weight-based surcharges, to pay for the scales and a little extra profit. |
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You have missed the obvious opening here: bumper-car seats which the on-board weight-balancing computer move around until it finds the optimum balance then magnetically fixes them to the floor. |
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Uh... this is what a loadmaster and plumb bob are for. And
they're a lot cheaper, and probably more reliable, than installing
and maintaining this system. I'd really rather not put the safety
of all those passengers in the hands of a computer. Those things
have been notoriously unreliable, and have caused a lot of
crashes. |
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@[21 Quest] - Nobody can deny, but you're a little bit old fashioned with your methods. How exactly does one go about balancing an airplane on a the head of a single loadmaster though? Shouldn't the airplane be balanced on 2 loadmasters for the plumbob experiment instead, one at the nose and one at the tail of the plane, and maybe a couple safety loadmasters at each of the wingtips? |
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@[FlyingToaster] - Pure genius. You are a true pioneer, my friend, in the art of automated robotic bumper seats that magnetically attach to/detach from the floor and locamote on aluminum tank treads to solve real world weight distribution problems :) |
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@[vinceX3] - You must be a conservative economist. That's good, the world could use many more of those, hone that skill buddy, excellent ;) |
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You only need one loadmaster. Dangle the plumb bob over the
measuring plaque on the floor of the plane at where the center
of gravity should be. Adjust until the plumb bob is right over the
correct spot. It takes some skill, sure, but I've done it. Used to be
one of my jobs as crew chief. Actually, my plane had several
measuring spots that I had to check in order. Old fashioned,
sure, but why fix
what's not broken? Is there some flaw with using a plumb bob
that your system is supposed to address in a more reliable and/
or cost-effective manner? Sorry, but I think not. |
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It's possible to eliminate structural stresses or to optimize the rotational mass-inertia in the plane by my method. |
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As opposed to existing methods? |
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@[21_Quest]: The procedure you describe i do not understand the workings of. - I considered a plane, sitting on a plain, perfectly distributed weight inside. now someone dangles a plumb bob (pb) from a marked spot, and marks the spot it points at (And does this for several points, to have some redundancy). Ever after, people hang their pb from those marked spots, and look for divergence of this optimum. If the plane is loaded tail-heavy, the tail-wheels sag a little in their suspension, and the whole tail probably bows down a bit, so the whole plane will have a little tilt, and the tail will have the most tilt. Now what i do not understand is this: The whole procedure is totally dependend on the suspension system working as it did on the day of first marking, the plane bending like it did then, and the ground being perfectly flat. -> That sounds error prone. |
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//I'd really rather not put the safety of all those passengers in the hands of a computer// - most of the current jet fighters are only airborne by the grace of a computer, and near-all civilian transport is flown by computers for most of the way. |
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Aside: I love the part Amish/part cyber warrior habit of the armed forces... best epitomized in the worse-than-bad movie 'Stealth': Says a fighter pilot (regarding the moral superiority of human-in-plane over computer-in-plane): "...the action should never be divorced from the consequences." - I never laughed so hard while feeling so sickened. |
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Several of those fancy fly-by-wire, computer-controlled planes
have also crashed this year. I can think of at least 2 specific
incidents, the one with Air France off the coast of Brazil, and the
one in the Indian Ocean. See, your scales would have to be
calibrated just right for them to work accurately, and would also
have to electronically compensate for any slope. Keeping all
those scales calibrated with people of such widely varying weight
sitting on them day after day for hours on end, shifting around
and fidgeting in their seats, would be an absolute nightmare. You
question
the accuracy of the plumb bob method, yet the planes I worked
on have been flying since 1963 without incident. The way the
measuring plate is laid out, any slope is easily detected with the
plumb bob, which is why it is used. It's gravity and a pendulum
at work. A known force affecting a known weight attached to a
straight line. You don't get much more accurate than that. If the
slope is greater than
guidelines allow, the struts are checked and serviced or replaced
as necessary. These are planes that only crashed when the crews
ignored their perfectly functional instruments, or got shot down. |
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//only crashed when the crews ignored their perfectly functional instruments// |
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ie Didn't trust their computers, then? |
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I'd have money on there being a much higher percentage of aircrashes of 'planes where all of the calculations and flying are done by humans, than there are of those where it's computerised. |
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Surely this doesn't matter much on large commercial aircraft. The CG loading area must be huge. |
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{For small craft (2-10ish seats) we'd weight the passengers (or ask them for their weight) before boarding and seat them accordingly (or move luggage around)} |
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On small 'planes they ask passengers to move to different seats, to trim the aircraft. It's disquieting, having to think of yourself as movable ballast. |
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@[21_Quest] - What happens if the front landing gear shocks are shorter and stiffer than the rear landing gear shocks, perhaps for the purpose of increasing pressure drag upon landing? Or perhaps the pilot likes to take off with the rear landing gear partially raised....Then the plumbob method has a mechanical bias introduced, right? |
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@[Phoenix] - Everything matters if you happen to be a perfectionist. |
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@[UnaBubba] - (1) There certainly are more visual flight rated pilots that get into crashes than there are instrument rated pilots crashing. (2) It may be disquieting for passengers to think of themselves as moveable ballast, however, wouldn't that make the world a more humble and better place if they did? |
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// the planes I worked on have been flying since 1963 // |
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Someone should let them know it's okay to come down now. |
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