Author: Thorsten Renk

Altiports

If you are up for some challenging approaches and tricky landings while you like to enjoy spectacular scenery, here is a good suggestion for a destination – try visiting the French altiports.

Altiports are small airfields for small aircraft and helicopters located high up in the mountains, often serving a ski resort. The runway is usually short and quite steeply sloped (in the case of Courchevel, the slope is a solid 18.5%), and all landings are done uphill with no go-around procedure. Since the alitports are by no means in the mountain summit region, the approaches …
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Ocean Debris

On March 12, 2012 suspected Japanese tsunami debris was discovered washed up on the beaches of Long Beach, CA.  On March 11 a deserted fishing vessel was spotted off the coast of British Columbia; by March 24 it had drifted within 120 miles of the coastline.  For many years NOAA.gov has been monitoring an every growing area in the North Pacific dubbed the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” that appears to be collecting and concentrating all manner of plastic debris from all over the world.  Whether you are a dedicated environmentalist, or a person that leans more towards managing …
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Part I: Convective clouds

Author: Thorsten Renk

The screenshots shown in the following use shaders, textures and scenery which are for various reasons (incompatible license, too recent development,…) not part of the official Flightgear 2.6 release. However, these are available for download and every feature works with Flightgear 2.6. The following packages need to be installed in addition to get to see the same: lightfield shader package v1.1, Juneau custom scenery, and textures from regional textures v0.1.

An integrated weather system

Without a doubt, clouds, haze and fog are the most easily noticed features of weather in …
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The Challenge

As a skydiver adds more gear such as front packs and items strapped to legs or arms, the jumper’s basic stability in free-fall is reduced.  It becomes easier to tumble out of control and there is less margin for error.  Similarly, the aerodynamic wake of the jumper may interfere with pilot chute opening (known as “hesitation”). Investigating different gear configurations generally involves vertical wind tunnel testing, or actual tests with jumpers. To avoid some of the cost, and mitigating safety concerns, a tool to computationally analyze these jumpers and their gear is highly desired. Creare, Inc., an R+D …
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Do you want to earn your astronaut’s wings?

Author: Thorsten Renk

Real spaceships aren’t actually piloted into orbit. The risk that a human being, strapped to his acceleration seat and under a crushing acceleration of 4 g for a prolonged period of time is unable to fly with the precision required to reach orbit is far too great, and real spacecraft reach orbit on autopilot.

But what would it be like? Welcome to a scenario in which a Russian Vostok spacecraft has been acquired by the USA and fitted for a manually flown mission.

This is the launch vehicle assembled …
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Soaring in Innsbruck

Author: Thorsten Renk

Innsbruck, 6 am on a warm summer morning just after sunrise. The first members of the aeroclub vacationing with their gliders get out of the tents and observe the weather. There is thin Cirrus coverage overhead, and the first weak Cumulus clouds are forming already. Winds are a steady 10 degrees from East – it looks like a promising day for soaring. I get the ASK-13 out and ready.

(In reality, we would not have the plane out like this in the morning – it’s dangerous to let light planes with excessively long wings …
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A trip to Tenzing-Hillary Airport

Author: Thorsten Renk

One of the most dangerous airports in the world, Tenzing-Hilary Airport, also known as Lukla airport, hugs a small plateau in the Himalayan foothills. It is the gateway for trekkers into the Sagarmatha national park and climbers trying to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. The runway has a length of 460 m and a 12 degree slope – it needs aircraft with STOL (short takeoff and landing) capacities to operate from it. Usually DHC-6 Twin Otter or Dornier Do 228 aircraft, weather permitting, connect Kathmandu and Lukla. Today we will make …
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Mach 3.2 at 85.000 ft – the SR-71 in Flightgear

Author: Thorsten Renk

Pre-flight

A flight in the SR-71, or the ‘Habu’ as the crews call it, starts long before you enter the cockpit. With the aircraft making Mach 3, you can’t simply fly where you like or take a wrong turn. The Blackbird goes half a mile in the time it takes you to say ‘Oops’, it can be 20 miles in enemy territory by the time it takes you to check a map, and the turn radius is more than hundred miles. This means that basically anything you …
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Carrier Operations in Flightgear

Author: Thorsten Renk

Pre-flight preparation

The flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson, 8:30 am Pacific Daylight Time, off the US west coast: an F-14b is made ready for a flight. The weather is rough, 16 kt of winds coming from the open ocean, with gusts reaching up to 20 kt and changing directions. The Vinson has just crossed a patch of rain, but the clouds seem to be breaking up.

While the ground crew takes care of the plane, the pilot and the RIO go through mission briefing. Our flight this morning will be an …
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