Author Topic: Flight Path And Related Issues  (Read 734847 times)

Offline hom

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #105 on: March 20, 2014, 08:58:28 PM »
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here is an interesting post from Galen on Sluggo's forum several years ago:

"Just remember that Rataczak said he thought the "lights of Portland were coming into view." Rataczak actually told me in one interview that he thought the plane was "west" of I-5. When examining the radar plots of the flight path after the dog-leg around PDX, they "were" west of I-5."

Yes.  Interesting.  Wrong.   The "FBI" flightpath doesn't go definitely west of I-5 until it gets down to about Wilsonville, OR and that only lasted about a minute.  While over Portland, the path is pretty much right over I-5.  A position, btw, that would minimize density of population below the flight.
 

Offline Shutter

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #106 on: March 20, 2014, 09:19:17 PM »
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excellent post as usual. let me ask this. what is more crucial, flying exactly to the flight path, or is the speed, altitude and weather the key factors. what I'm saying is can you be a couple degree's off here and there and still have a good run as long as you have everything else lined up? or is it that crucial to fly the path like a carbon copy?

Depends on what you mean by "to fly the path like a carbon copy."   You definitely should not go directly from one plotted point to the next, to the next, etc.  The flight would not have done that and the plot does not indicate that they did.  Take the plotted points.  Mark a rectangular zone one minute in longitude (.7nm) wide and one minute of latitude (1nm) high centered on each plotted point.  Then fly through the rectangular "hoops" using the largest possible turn radiuses.  This makes it possible to be a few degrees off at places without getting outside the plot limits.  Getting through all the hoops would mean your flightpath would have been plotted as in the "FBI" flightpath plot.  If you can only get close to doing this while matching the reported speeds, altitudes, weights, fuel flow, flap/gear settings, temperatures and wind directions I think it would have to be considered a pretty good validation--especially if we can verify that your model has the right lift/drag/thrust characteristics.  Simple ;)





within the plot limits is what I was getting at.

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« Last Edit: March 21, 2014, 11:16:52 PM by shutter »
 

Robert99

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #107 on: March 20, 2014, 10:35:20 PM »
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Also, a person needs to understand about how positions are plotted on such charts by people who know how to do it.  (Another useful area of knowledge I'll address in a later post if anyone cares.)

Hey, plotting points on charts is not brain surgery.  So please address that topic as you offered to do.  Also, please cite chapter and verse in a navigational publication of some kind.  I have some 30+ books on land, air, and sea navigation and I don't remember any of them even remotely discussing the plotting of points in the detail that you suggest.  But then, maybe I missed the "point" so to speak.

Also, maps and charts are not miniature scaled versions of the topography.  Instead, they are just representations of the topography.  If you remember, there was a discussion a few years ago on the other thread about a feature (a town, if I remember correctly) which was off an  airway on a previous map but on the airway in a current version of the same map.  Farflung solved the problem by showing that the city had been moved more than two nautical miles to the west on the present day charts. That was the largest plotting mistake that I have personally seen on an aeronautical chart in the continental USA.
 

Robert99

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #108 on: March 20, 2014, 10:42:46 PM »
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here is an interesting post from Galen on Sluggo's forum several years ago:

"Just remember that Rataczak said he thought the "lights of Portland were coming into view." Rataczak actually told me in one interview that he thought the plane was "west" of I-5. When examining the radar plots of the flight path after the dog-leg around PDX, they "were" west of I-5."

Yes.  Interesting.  Wrong.   The "FBI" flightpath doesn't go definitely west of I-5 until it gets down to about Wilsonville, OR and that only lasted about a minute.  While over Portland, the path is pretty much right over I-5.  A position, btw, that would minimize density of population below the flight.

The flight path you show on your chart for the Portland area is directly over the Portland high population density area and west of I-5 as they existed in 1971.  The flight path shown really doesn't make any sense in the first place.  Even if you favor the Ariel route, then just continuing straight south would have the airliner easily passing in the low density area west of Portland and well positioned to rejoin V-23 just past Portland.
 

Offline hom

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #109 on: March 21, 2014, 01:13:21 AM »
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Hey, plotting points on charts is not brain surgery.  So please address that topic as you offered to do.  Also, please cite chapter and verse in a navigational publication of some kind.  I have some 30+ books on land, air, and sea navigation and I don't remember any of them even remotely discussing the plotting of points in the detail that you suggest.  But then, maybe I missed the "point" so to speak.

Also, maps and charts are not miniature scaled versions of the topography.  Instead, they are just representations of the topography.  If you remember, there was a discussion a few years ago on the other thread about a feature (a town, if I remember correctly) which was off an  airway on a previous map but on the airway in a current version of the same map.  Farflung solved the problem by showing that the city had been moved more than two nautical miles to the west on the present day charts. That was the largest plotting mistake that I have personally seen on an aeronautical chart in the continental USA.

The post was not for an expert such as you.  The hope was just that someone who hasn't done any hand plotting or been instructed on it could get an idea how it's done by people who know how and by people who may not know so well.  Something to enable someone to understand rather than something to accept because some "expert" or publication says so.  Nothing is complicated for someone who knows all about it.  Please cite the authorative navigational publication that says plotting points on charts is not brain surgery.  What is your authorative source for the statements that "maps and charts are not miniature scaled versions .....of the topography"?  Those are sure gems of expert knowledge.

Yeah.  I remember the "discussion."  It took Farf and I both beating you for several posts before we could finally get it into your head.  And there was no mistake on the old and new charts.  The old chart showed the village location based on the location of its railroad station.  When the settlement grew and got a city hall, the new chart showed the location based on the city hall.  Apparently you never did really get it.

It'll take me a bit of time to address the other topic, especially if I have to spend time with posts such as this.
 

Offline hom

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #110 on: March 21, 2014, 01:57:12 AM »
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The flight path you show on your chart for the Portland area is directly over the Portland high population density area and west of I-5 as they existed in 1971.  The flight path shown really doesn't make any sense in the first place.  Even if you favor the Ariel route, then just continuing straight south would have the airliner easily passing in the low density area west of Portland and well positioned to rejoin V-23 just past Portland.

The "FBI" flightpath was on charts of about '71 vintage.  The attached should help you understand.

Maybe the crew didn't have a lot of time to consult with you about which way they should go.  Maybe they were just trying to get back on V23.  And that area straight south passes east of Portland, not west.  On charts and maps, when you're reading it right-side-up, the stuff to your right is east and the stuff to your left is west.   Source:  Me.
 

Robert99

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #111 on: March 22, 2014, 01:13:32 AM »
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Hey, plotting points on charts is not brain surgery.  So please address that topic as you offered to do.  Also, please cite chapter and verse in a navigational publication of some kind.  I have some 30+ books on land, air, and sea navigation and I don't remember any of them even remotely discussing the plotting of points in the detail that you suggest.  But then, maybe I missed the "point" so to speak.

Also, maps and charts are not miniature scaled versions of the topography.  Instead, they are just representations of the topography.  If you remember, there was a discussion a few years ago on the other thread about a feature (a town, if I remember correctly) which was off an  airway on a previous map but on the airway in a current version of the same map.  Farflung solved the problem by showing that the city had been moved more than two nautical miles to the west on the present day charts. That was the largest plotting mistake that I have personally seen on an aeronautical chart in the continental USA.

The post was not for an expert such as you.  The hope was just that someone who hasn't done any hand plotting or been instructed on it could get an idea how it's done by people who know how and by people who may not know so well.  Something to enable someone to understand rather than something to accept because some "expert" or publication says so.  Nothing is complicated for someone who knows all about it.  Please cite the authorative navigational publication that says plotting points on charts is not brain surgery.  What is your authorative source for the statements that "maps and charts are not miniature scaled versions .....of the topography"?  Those are sure gems of expert knowledge.

Yeah.  I remember the "discussion."  It took Farf and I both beating you for several posts before we could finally get it into your head.  And there was no mistake on the old and new charts.  The old chart showed the village location based on the location of its railroad station.  When the settlement grew and got a city hall, the new chart showed the location based on the city hall.  Apparently you never did really get it.

It'll take me a bit of time to address the other topic, especially if I have to spend time with posts such as this.

I trust that the following will help to refresh your memory.  The discussion of "Strange Maps & Wandering VORTACs" was started by me with post #32349 on February 25, 2012.  There were a number of posts on the subject and Farflung basically solved the "problem" in posts #32349 and #32350.  Farflung included a comparison of two maps in post #32349 that perfectly illustrated what I was talking about and I told him the same thing in post #32363.

A number of other posts were made on the subject including your own post #32375 to me which I copy completely below:

"You're right.  I'm looking at an '08 sectional from Sluggo's (which is slightly tilted) and I'm looking at the original flight path plot from the FBI.  Maybe your '09 sectional doesn't show rivers and highways?  I've reproduced bits of the two charts below.  In each, the little circle represents Toutle location."

You attached two small bits of maps with the above post.  However, to get a better idea of what actually changed in the mapping, you need a larger map of the area.  Something including everything within about 10 or 15 miles of Toutle would clearly illustrate that, as I suggested in one post, the whole area seems to have been "expanded".  Perhaps you could see this better on topographical charts.

On another subject, I thought all the "experts" worked on the Cooper case in 1971 and 1972.  And here we are 42 years later.  At this point, maybe only people who actually know what they are doing should be permitted to work on this matter.

« Last Edit: March 22, 2014, 01:16:16 AM by Robert99 »
 

Offline hom

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #112 on: March 22, 2014, 03:54:37 AM »
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I trust that the following will help to refresh your memory.  The discussion of "Strange Maps & Wandering VORTACs" was started by me with post #32349 on February 25, 2012.  There were a number of posts on the subject and Farflung basically solved the "problem" in posts #32349 and #32350.  Farflung included a comparison of two maps in post #32349 that perfectly illustrated what I was talking about and I told him the same thing in post #32363.

A number of other posts were made on the subject including your own post #32375 to me which I copy completely below:

"You're right.  I'm looking at an '08 sectional from Sluggo's (which is slightly tilted) and I'm looking at the original flight path plot from the FBI.  Maybe your '09 sectional doesn't show rivers and highways?  I've reproduced bits of the two charts below.  In each, the little circle represents Toutle location."

You attached two small bits of maps with the above post.  However, to get a better idea of what actually changed in the mapping, you need a larger map of the area.  Something including everything within about 10 or 15 miles of Toutle would clearly illustrate that, as I suggested in one post, the whole area seems to have been "expanded".  Perhaps you could see this better on topographical charts.

On another subject, I thought all the "experts" worked on the Cooper case in 1971 and 1972.  And here we are 42 years later.  At this point, maybe only people who actually know what they are doing should be permitted to work on this matter.

Here's some more refresher:

The point of Farf's post 32349 was that the Toutle location was moved from point "d" which was the railroad station to point "c" which is the current location.  He immediately added post 32350, the attachment of which made the same point.  Nothing about map expansion in his post OR in the maps in his attachment.  Unfortunately, he was not big on just getting to the point.
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The last of your rambling, long post 32363:
"So it looks like the symbol for Toutle was wandering around between the two charts and not the PDX VORTAC.

Apparently as the charts were updated for the WGS84 coordinate system, the area around Toutle was changed (expanded?) more than other areas on the FBI map and that gave the visual impression, when considering nearby landmarks, that things hadn't changed at all. But the longitude and latitude changes seems to be the source of the discrepancy."

From this it was obvious that you still didn't get it.  So Farf tried yet again.  The attachment to his whimsical post was:
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Toutle moved.  The maps in the figure showed no "expanded."

To this his last post on the topic you replied "Huh?" maybe because you didn't look at the illustration he attached to his post.  You didn't even understand whose lack of reading comprehension he was referring to.  He was good with those insults people didn't see.  Farf posted no further on the topic, no doubt in realization that it was hopeless to try to explain it to you.

My post 32375 that you copied over was in response to your condescending post 32371.
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I attached only two small bits of maps because those were the only areas of anything changed having to do with Toutle.  The point was to try to show YOU that "Toutle" had moved.  The parts of maps that Farf and I posted had no indication of magically, mysteriously "expanded."

Georger and I each made another post and agreed on the idea that the solution was simply that the "Toutle" marker (circle) was moved because Toutle had grown and acquired a center of government.  By this time you were hoping the topic would just go away.

I won't bother searching for your "expanded" because it's irrelevant.

No.  If you have some thought to do what you might consider "work" on the matter, there's no reason you shouldn't go ahead and pursue it.  Try to keep busy.  Go searching for redacts.

You're on my ignore list.  You have nothing worthwhile to say and I have better things to do.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2014, 04:30:49 AM by hom »
 

Coopsnoop

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #113 on: March 22, 2014, 04:22:10 AM »
That earlier post on Sluggo's site stands corrected.  Hom is right, the flight path does not cross west of I-5, even after the dogleg north of PDX.  Rather, it stays pretty much over I-5 after the dogleg and crosses almost directly over the I-5 bridge.  However, that route was not chosen by the pilots because of population density below.  And that comes straight from the mouth of the pilots themselves.
 

Offline hom

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #114 on: March 22, 2014, 01:13:12 PM »
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That earlier post on Sluggo's site stands corrected.  Hom is right, the flight path does not cross west of I-5, even after the dogleg north of PDX.  Rather, it stays pretty much over I-5 after the dogleg and crosses almost directly over the I-5 bridge.  However, that route was not chosen by the pilots because of population density below.  And that comes straight from the mouth of the pilots themselves.

Thanks.  From my perspective, it's you saying Scott and Rataczak both said something like whatever "that" is.  In the absense of any documentation, the claim could be a bit more credible if you would explain what the circumstances were when they made the statements.  What did they say about why the route was chosen?  Was it them what chose the route?  Were these statements to the FBI?
 

Offline smokin99

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #115 on: March 22, 2014, 02:34:59 PM »
Re Toutle,
I don't know the precise locations, and I'm not where I can look it up, but Mt St Helen's eruption caused a lot of topographical and property damage to that area including changing the flow of the Toutle River - maybe that's when the town proper moved. 
 

georger

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #116 on: March 22, 2014, 02:47:42 PM »
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Re Toutle,
I don't know the precise locations, and I'm not where I can look it up, but Mt St Helen's eruption caused a lot of topographical and property damage to that area including changing the flow of the Toutle River - maybe that's when the town proper moved.

Well here it is as best I know - I dont think R99 will mind my posting this:

Quote R99:

Here again are the coordinates:

46.243157 degrees North Latitude

122.683612 degrees West Longitude

Also, Tom sent me an e-mail several years ago which presumably included a picture of the placard find location.  However, Tom's enclosure had a ".kmz" suffix which my computer could not open.

PS... I think this agree with Sluggo's coords.

 
 

Offline smokin99

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #117 on: March 22, 2014, 05:43:06 PM »
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That earlier post on Sluggo's site stands corrected.  Hom is right, the flight path does not cross west of I-5, even after the dogleg north of PDX.  Rather, it stays pretty much over I-5 after the dogleg and crosses almost directly over the I-5 bridge.  However, that route was not chosen by the pilots because of population density below.  And that comes straight from the mouth of the pilots themselves.

Why do you suppose they made the "dogleg" in the first place? It doesn't appear that the elevation or other flights were an issue so why not just stay on a straight path?
 

Coopsnoop

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #118 on: March 22, 2014, 09:17:01 PM »
Wish I had all the answers, but I really don't.  Rataczak wanted to "dump the pirate" out in the Pacific.  Maybe Rat was steering and then Scott re-took control.  Clouds were broken over Van/Port, and Rat saw the lights below from the starboard side.  Anderson was on the interphone with the pirate.  Lot's of scenarios here.  Even Tosaw stated that Rat told him he was going to head straight out over the Pacific.  Somewhere below them, RH onboard the Oregon NG Huey was trying to mount a chase.  And to their west, out over Suavie Island, Bohan was making a final approach into PDX on 100.   Lots going on.
 

Offline Shutter

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Re: Flight Path And Related Issues
« Reply #119 on: March 22, 2014, 09:21:36 PM »
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Wish I had all the answers, but I really don't.  Rataczak wanted to "dump the pirate" out in the Pacific.  Maybe Rat was steering and then Scott re-took control.  Clouds were broken over Van/Port, and Rat saw the lights below from the starboard side.  Anderson was on the interphone with the pirate.  Lot's of scenarios here.  Even Tosaw stated that Rat told him he was going to head straight out over the Pacific.  Somewhere below them, RH onboard the Oregon NG Huey was trying to mount a chase.  And to their west, out over Suavie Island, Bohan was making a final approach into PDX on 100.   Lots going on.


seems to me that we need to get one last interview with these guys before it's to late. really get into the path with Rat.