All posts by cs

staying the course

opinion

Atlantic Coast has turned the other cheek so to speak and officially rejected the bid from Mesa. Humorous that Atlantic Coast minimizes the offer by calling it: “Mesa’s expression of interest”. The gloves may yet come off as said takeover attempt now becomes hostile. ACA will bash the Mesa (flawed) business plan while dragging Mesa business partners (United and USairways) through the mud by association. Big Guns, Morgan Stanley & Co. acting as financial advisor and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP acting as legal counsel have been hired to watch the ACA flank.

happens every time

social

Watching the History Channel on Battleships and the launching of these new goliaths down the ways. A politician / dignitary is present to do the christening. More accurately, the honors are usually bestowed on the wife. I was struck by something. She swings the champagne bottle across the iron plated bow and — nothing happens! The bottle survives! She stands there in stunned disbelief. The officials gasp. Well, the mighty ship is leaving without waiting and it’s bad luck to fail so the manly man quickly grabs the thing and finishes the job. I can’t imagine anything more awful then having the world witness this spectacular failure not to mention that the cameras have just archived the embarrassment for posterity. Did these women just shrug the whole thing off or were they flaming mad at whomever (set them up) with the invitation to be “honored”. It seems so strange that such engineering expertise goes into the design and construction just to leave the importance of such a grand moment to chance. Perhaps it is okay. A generation ago maybe it was alright to be lady like and not smash the thing to smithereens. No shame at all. What were they thinking?

give me the formulae

computers

I need a crosswind calculator. They are available for the PALM as shareware but not for the PocketPC so I’m going to roll my own. Crosswind component data is usually found in a table or chart in printed format. The first task will be to design the equation. The mechanics of the software application form will follow easily.

CROSSWIND COMPONENT TABLE

WINDSPEED

ANGLE BETWEEN WIND DIRECTION AND RUNWAY HEADING

KNOTS

10ø

20ø

30ø

40ø

50ø

60ø

70ø

80ø

90ø

5

1

2

2

3

4

4

4

5

5

10

2

3

5

6

7

8

9

9

10

15

3

5

7

9

11

13

14

14

15

20

3

7

10

13

15

17

18

19

20

25

4

8

12

16

19

22

23

24

25

30

5

10

15

19

23

26

28

29

30

35

6

12

17

22

26

30

32

34

35

40

7

14

20

25

30

35

37

39

40

I google searched for a formula and found one that would duplicate these values.crosswind component = sin (angle between wind and runway) x wind speed.This, I found wouldn’t work out of the box. The sine function was looking for the angle in radians and not degrees. Go figure. To get radians you multiply the number of degrees by Pi and divide the result by 180. I’ll bet my kids knew this…

Example thus:
Runway Heading = 240 and Wind is 270 @ 20 knots
Theta = abs(270-240) = 30
Theta = (Pi * 30) / 180
X-Wind = 20 Sin(Theta) = 20 * 0.5 = 10 knots

mobility

computers

this posting is from a t-mobile hotspot @ borders books. i am using a pocket pc handheld device and wi-fi card. unfortunately, since i’m w/o a keyboard. typing this msg is rather painfully slow. neat being able to connect from out in the field. not good for the store though — i didn’t buy any books !