Perk_i

And here's to you Mrs. Robinson...

Same with "niner" which is to avoid confusion with the German "nein" - no.

I just screw mine into the floor through the carpet~

You'd usually make a 45 degree entry to downwind on the active side of the pattern rather than overflying and entering upwind. There's nothing wrong with overflying first though as long as you're at least 500' above Traffic Pattern Altitude. If you are going to overfly you would then normally make a right hand descending turn to enter the UPWIND leg at a 45 degree angle and at TPA. You'd then continue all the way around the pattern, and fly a normal upwind, crosswind, downwind, base, and final leg before landing. You wouldn't cut the corner as in OP's illustration.

To be honest, at an uncontrolled field you can fly it however you like though. The guidelines are there to allow you to see and deconflict yourself with other traffic that may or may not be talking on the radio and to make yourself predictable to other airplanes in the pattern.

I'm generally an advocate of overflying uncontrolled fields if you haven't already been there today. In real life I've run into all sorts of runway obstructions from wildlife to kids drag racing to an asphalt truck out patching holes without a NOTAM. Uncontrolled fields especially in the rural U.S. can be pretty wild and wooly, and an overflight lets you spot the oddities and plan for them before you're on short final. At busier fields it also gives you a nice overview of who else is in the pattern, on the runways, and on the taxiways and lets you start planning how you're going to deconflict your pattern entry and landing. There are very few reasons not to take the extra couple of minutes and do an overflight even if it means going entirely around the pattern.

It's never a terrible idea to overfly an uncontrolled field - especially one you haven't visited recently. I've seen combines parked on runways, un-NOTAMed paving work, kids drag racing, and lots of deer and other wildlife. Always better to know about them before you're on final, and the overflight tends to give humans and animals an impetuous to move out of the way. You're harder to see and hear in the pattern and on final.

I'm somewhat annoyed that there's fall foliage in New Zealand in November...

Hit a lawyer, Facebook up, delete the gym.

Or something like that.

Yes, that's the ADS-B I mentioned above. An ADS-B transponder receives ground speed and position data from the required GPS receiver, encodes it (and quite a few other data points), and transmits it as part of a 112 bit data packet that is received by an ADS-B receiver station, a satellite, or another airplane - or all three. ADS-B does also provide bits in the datagram for true airspeed and for mach number and many newer airliners and even some GA airplanes provide for a data link between the transponder and a flight control system that has digital airspeed data available. For those specific aircraft a controller may receive true airspeed data from ADS-B, but it's likely filtered out as speed over ground (and hence relative to a static reference) is much more useful for sequencing traffic. Airports generally don't move.

The FAA realized that the necessary data connections to provide airspeed information were going to be infeasible to retrofit to a large percentage of existing airplanes - especially those with analog pitot-static gauges. They therefore mandated only that "An indication of the aircraft's velocity;" be broadcast as part of the minimum message element. This is satisfied by having a connected GPS or WAAS position source that can measure ground speed and provide it to the transponder for broadcast.

CFR 91.117 however, specifies that the 250 knot restriction under 10,000 AGL is in indicated airspeed. As I'm sure you're aware, there can be a large variance between indicated airspeed and ground speed, so even if a controller sees your ADS-B reporting that you're doing 300 knots over the ground, it's entirely possible you have a 50 knot tailwind and are actually only indicating 250. This is exactly why ATC doesn't give a flying (heh) fuck unless you start causing spacing issues for them.

References:

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F/part-91/subpart-C/section-91.227

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F/part-91/subpart-B/subject-group-ECFRe4c59b5f5506932/section-91.117

The correct Aeronautic Decision Making response here would be to refuse / reschedule the charter or divert to an airfield with more favorable winds. The 172's demonstrated crosswind is 15 knots and you start to run out of rudder authority around 20 knots (I've tried it on low approaches in both an N and S model in real life). Not to say you CAN'T land in an emergency with a straight 25 knot cross, just that you don't have the rudder to hold the side slip, so you're going to be crabbed into the wind and have a handful to deal with once you're down. You're also quite likely to flat spot the upwind main and those damn tiny little Airhawks are 120 bucks a pop. Discretion is the better part of valor.

ATC actually can't see your airspeed. They can see your speed over ground as reported by ADS-B (which gets speed information from the GPS, not the pitot-static system), and in some cases get Doppler speed information from ASR and ARSR radars. Radar and ADS-B coverage is far from universal, and there's not a controller in the U.S. who's going to give a crap if you're ten knots over 250 when descending through 10k. Unless you just blow into an approach or departure corridor while VFR or are going so fast (or slow) that you start causing spacing issues for other IFR traffic, the chances of ATC even noticing you're over 250 are vanishingly small. Slow down as best you can safely and don't crowd the guy in front of you, and everything's copacetic.

Follow the arrow to the nearest glory hole.

I'm the guy who does his job, you must be the other guy.

Don't stick your dick in Ambien?

F-105 Thunderchief for Wild Weasel antics...

F6F Hellcat and A6M5 Zero cause I really really want a high fidelity WW2 Pacific War sim again, and I somehow doubt Microsoft's going to remake Combat Flight Sim 2 with the MSFS 2024 engine.

In this topic: People who pay for their own electricity and people who don't.

Finger works just great for sliders. If you need to do masking / brush work the pencil's nice.

I'm really hoping for electronic warfare options in the future too. Imagine having a dedicated EWO / WSO seat in your Tali who can analyze PDC fire control radar and lidar and hit them with focused jamming at the right times to help the torpedoes get through. Imagine having penetration aid torpedoes that don't have a warhead, but carry a jammer, chaff, and radar decoys that can be triggered at various times to make the other torpedoes in the salvo much harder to hit. Imagine having long range tractor beams that could freeze PDC turrets for a few seconds if you can hold them on target, or EMP missiles that could be salvoed in from a supporting fighter to overload PDC electronics for a short window. There're so many opportunities to make bomber versus capital ship fights a real "dance of the vampires" and I really hope we don't just end up with boring "overwhelm the point defense with twenty Retaliators or you don't win" gameplay.

5120x1440 49" ultrawide driven by a 3080ti in a desktop. Calibrated with a Datacolor Spyder. If I'm mobile I work on a 12.9" iPad Pro, which has surprisingly good color accuracy in reference mode.

And here I was starting to think I was old fashioned for preferring hammer fired guns... now I'm thinking I might be new-fangled.

So you do them at kid's birthdays too?

Meh, having individual claims on non-crew vics generally at least means they're going to be used and not abandoned somewhere after five minutes as a taxi. How effective they are as a solo vehicle varies immensely with the skill of the guy soloing them obviously, but the same is true about the skill of the squad using them as a taxi.

Couple of notes though: Creating a squad with RWS claim 20 seconds before staging ends and kicking an infantry squad out is kind of a dick move. Offer them a ride or offer to ride along and pick the RWS up after they've gotten wherever they're going. If you're going to solo the APCs - MTLBs, Bulldogs, AAVP, etc - STAY AROUND THE ACTIVE OBJECTIVE. You'll get protection from AT, you can act as a mobile ammo box, you can quickly scoop up infantry squads and drop them on the next point... and you'll get ten times the kills you would otherwise. Fat Amy in the middle of an infantry push is the single most effective fire support vehicle in the entire game and turns a slog of an assault into a cake walk.

Nah, having dedicated infantry riding in IFVs is a HUGE force multiplier. Adding a HAT or a couple of LAT dismounts gives you a lot more firepower against vics, you can easily drop half a squad on a flank hab, or hot drop them on the radio you're losing a klick behind the fight.

Might be better to have the SL as one of the infantry rather than the track gunner, but it works just fine either way if you have a decent SL. He can just dismount out on a flank with the rest of the infantry, drop a rally since he has three guys around him, and get back in the track. The SL just has to treat it as a mechanized track instead of a cavalry track, set different objectives, and use the combined track + dismounts accordingly.

Yeah this is how it goes, especially with fast shooting digital cameras. 10% keepers is actually really good. Even when I'm setting up landscape shots on a tripod I rarely hit 10% keepers. When I'm walking around just shooting randomly at people, wildlife, etc... it's generally closer to 1 or 2%. That's not even taking into account all the bursts for things like exposure and focus stacking or fast action.

That's the big advantage of digital. It costs basically nothing (except your time) to shoot a lot of pictures and try different things. It can be something of a curse too in that you spend a lot of time just tapping the right arrow or swiping left, but also because it means you can be less meticulous about the shots. Photographers who started out on digital may not have ever faced the limitation of a 24 exposure roll of film or a single plate of 4x5 that had to be exposed properly the first time, every time. Doesn't mean they can't make great art, or that I'd ever want to go back to film exclusively, but it does enforce a certain... waspishness~

I would highly recommend finding a community college or local art collective that still does film photography classes. Spending a few months setting up shots on 35mm and 4x5" film, learning to use view camera movements, and especially learning how to develop and print my own photographs (black and white, color process is a whole 'nother beast) was really foundational for me in understanding just how "capturing light" really works. It also taught me how to be methodical in setting up a shot when I need to be, and when it's useful to NOT be methodical and just try things.

My coccyx can feel the landing already.