Cost of eclipse in lost solar power generation

And that multiplied by several million viewers, a considerable amount.

I have been to the 1999 eclipse in France. We went with 4 people in a Cessna and watched it on a small airfield. (grass strip only, tens of small planes landed on that day :-) Unfortunately, thin cloud cover as well...

Reply to
Rob
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The odds of two aircraft colliding are actually quite small. It is not like cars on a freeway which is nearly a 1D-space. Planes fly in a 3D-space.

The reason that there are "so many" near-collisions is that near-collisions are so broadly defined. In your car, you would not call it a near-collision when another car got into the space you require to safely stop the vehicle. Although that could be considered the definition when considering liability laws.

When you defined them e.g. as the distance where two small private plane would actually affect eachother, the number would be completely different.

Reply to
Rob

It's a bit sad that in the modern litigious culture you cannot give people correct advice without some busy body calling you irresponsible. It is perfectly safe to look at the sun during totality with unfiltered optical aids - you just need to have a countdown alarm set as you don't want to be caught out looking at the photosphere right at the end.

Prominences are pot luck although modern cheap narrowband H-a filters make it possible to see them at any time the corona is something else entirely. It looks primeval with a black disk and big white glow around it. The gradient making the central black look blacker than black. I wonder if that is where Tolkien got his idea for the eye of Sauron?

Did you get to see it? Your other post implies you were clouded out.

I saw the 1999 eclipse. I knew as a child that it would be the first total one in my lifetime visible from the UK. It never even occurred to me that I would actually observe it from NE France chasing a narrow gap in the cloud I spotted on Meteosat. I was living in Belgium at the time.

My friends in England were all clouded out which was bad luck in August. BBC had to use footage from a telescope in a Hercules aircraft.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

I think you are right.

Your screen capture shows everyone flying every which way. Do you have one that shows the direction during totality?

Reply to
Steve Wilson

I drove from Panama City Florida to make the viewing in White House Tennessee. Scoped it out as an easy off, easy on exit with a Walmart just off the exit. Also several restaurants within walking distance. We arrived two hours early to find the Walmart parking lot full of motor homes and tents with lots of telescopes setup. I drove towards the rear of the store and there it was, one rather large parallel parking spot. I was a bit confused why it was open, but I took it. We walked to a Mexican restaurant and had a good meal. All the staff looked to be Mexican and none had any eclipse glasses. One guy kept trying to look, he didn't find it easy! I had picked up two extra pair of eclipse glasses so I gave them to the one of the staff, so they kept trading the glasses back and forth. After lunch we went back to the car, put a blanket up over the windshield, opened the sunroof, and adjusted our seats. We just happened to pick a local radio station that was playing eclipse music, anything to do with the sun or moon. We got out of the car shortly before totality, the temperature dropped, and at totality the crowd came to life with a loud owww! Just as totality started the radio station played Dark side of the moon, by Pink Floyd. It was all very cool to watch, I think we had over two minutes of totality. I could see Mars and some pink areas in three spots around the halo. We didn't watch long after totality, I had an easy exit from the Walmart parking lot, within 2 minutes I was on the highway again headed North to visit family in Michigan. The highway was running fine until, each exit had traffic entering so it wasn't long and it was very slow. I'm traveling with my 25 year old daughter, so she has an app going, and says you need to get off the highway up here and take the back roads it will be much faster. Then after 15 or 20 miles, she said, OK this will be getting slower, so you need to get back on the highway. After that we had about 10 minutes of slow traffic and we were clear of the jam up. We arrived in Michigan to my sisters house late Monday night. She's been without hot water for (to long) so Tuesday I replaced her water heater. But that is another story! Mikek

Reply to
amdx

Totality was at 10:17 AM PDST. The image above was from 10:22 AM. I have another image from 10:01 AM which shows a rather different picture. I would post it now, but it seems there's a problem at my ISP this morning. For now, I'll temporarily post it here and move it later:

Instead of a random blob of airplanes centered over central Oregon, there's a random north-south line of airplanes that I believe corresponds to the eastern edge of the coastal cloud line. My guess(tm) is the aviation weather report showed the area to have the best local visibility and everyone is flying in that direction.

I can't tell from the display if the pilot was recording ADS-B traffic for the event. Some do that, so I may be able to post some applicable ADS-B data excerpts. Also, I believe that he was also recording the air to air channel (122.750MHz), which I believe considerable navigation safety traffic and verbal position reports. I'll get what I can, but my source wants anonymity, which might make disclosure difficult.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Minimum vertical separation is 500ft (150m). Minimum horizontal separation varies by location but is usually about 5 nautical miles (9km). Obviously, these minimums could not be observed during the eclipse, which is why I posted the ADS-B plot. I'm not sure exactly what defines a near-miss.

"The FAA's statistics reveal that 82 percent of mid-airs result from one aircraft overtaking the other; 27 percent occur in cruise flight. The same statistics tell us most mid-airs occur within five miles of airports".

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

It is a near-miss when two aircraft get within those required separation. That is why I compared it to calling a near-collision in your car when another car enters the zone in which you cannot safely stop. Technically it is a near-miss, but in practice we call it a near-miss when we actually can just stop in time without hitting eachother, not when we drive within the minimal distance required to stop but the other other car car is not braking.

Reply to
Rob

Fascinating. Thanks. As a pilot, I'm always interested in anything that can improve safety. I always thought the traffic congestion in LA was pretty bad, but it is difficult to compare the scale on the screen captures with LA. Although it does seem that ADS-B may have been helping to avoid collisions around totality.

Another concern is the transition from day VFR to night VFR and back. A lot of pilots with no training get disoriented at night and spin or crash. Apparently there were no crashes reported, so that tells a lot about the proficiency of the pilots.

Still, with that number of planes involved, I would personally not fly there. Especially when everyone is trying to land afterwards. I would prefer to sit on the tarmac and watch it from the ground. Chicken - yes. That's what flying for 60 years does to you.

Reply to
Steve Wilson

There are old pilots, and bold pilots, but there are no old and bold pilots.

(And then there's Chuck Yeager, but one could make an exception for him. :) )

Tim

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Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
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Reply to
Tim Williams

Yep. Good old West Virginia country boy! Met him and Congressman Ken Hechler ("Bridge at Remagen" author) at a Huntington, WV, Chamber of Commerce luncheon where I was honored as HEHS Valedictorian ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

There was some talk about "The Right Stuff", but a lot of it is pure luck. Aviation is often pure routine that can turn into terror in an instant.

An example, I was at 25,000 feet over the Sierra mountains trying to debug a position error problem with the onboard Loran. The engine suddenly quit.

My copilot said, "What did you do?"

I replied, "Nothing. It's your plane. You fly it."

I had just turned over PIC (Pilot In Command) to my copilot, and retrieved the Pilot's manual. The problem with flying over the mountains after dark is there is no place to land. You will end up as a flaming ball of twisted aluminum.

The manual said to turn on the fuel boost pumps. I did so. Then I read further. It said, "If above 18,000 feet, turn them on Low." I had pushed High, and promptly flooded the engine. Now we were in deep trouble. There was no way to recover the engine.

I went back to the Loran and pushed the emergency button. This showed all airports within 50 mile radius. It turned out that Reno was directly below us, and all we had to do was to kill altitude quickly so we wouldn't pass out for lack of oxygen. My copilot notified the tower we were coming down.

As my copilot circled, I dropped the landing gear to increase drag, and turned on every light in the airplane. Landing lights, cabin lights, everything I could think of.

As we descended throught the clouds, the tower said, "60V, we have you in sight. You are cleared to land, runway of your choice."

The tower had just given us the entire airport, and kicked off all the airlines to holding patterns away from the airport. This pissed them off no end.

My copilot made a beautiful 3-point landing, and we stopped in the middle of the runway. I tried starting the engine again - no luck. We got out of the plane, and found our knees were so wobbly we cound barely stand. Before, we were too busy to notice, but then it hit us.

That's what flying does to you. The engine failure was due to a nitride- hardened engine shaft that started to flake off and seized in the narrow clearance. The bang was caused by a narrow section on the shaft so it would break instead of damaging the engine.

The reason we survived was a set of unusual circumstances. Being in the right place at the right time, enough altitude so we could glide down through the clouds, Loran to find our position, and the Reno airport just at the right place.

Looking back, the original mistake was flyig over the Sierras at night.

The result appeared in an instant, with no warning.

The same kind of things happen in ordinary life, but usually much slower. It may take years to discover you have made a mistake, but the results can be the same.

So good luck, and I hope you have the Right Stuff.

Reply to
Steve Wilson

In 1970, we spent a weekend on a 1500mi trip to see the eclipse in NC. No clouds. ;-)

Reply to
krw

Yep. No one wants to get sued and they would.

The one cloud in that part of the sky (the normal Summer afternoon clouds were forming to the East) moved right over the sun about 30 seconds before totality. We did get to see about 15 seconds of the end through a think spot in the cloud. My wife got to see the prominence and the corona anyway. She was a happy camper, anyway. Traffic was a nightmare, though.

Reply to
krw

Just for clarification, our plane was N460V.

As a callsign, we were Six Zero Victor. Brevity is important in aviation due to the closure speeds.

Reply to
Steve Wilson

Oops, typo. My plane was N4360V. This is a Big difference. It told me that I would always return home no matter what happens. It was right. Good plane.

Believe it or not, I could touch the side of the fuselage, and the plane would tell me it wanted to fly. You could feel it. You don't get the same thing from a car.

Buy a plane. Learn how to fly. Live life as you never have before.

Reply to
Steve Wilson

Fun story, but I never liked those dangerous powered fans; being behind them is as boring as driving a car - until something goes wrong ;)

I preferred flying where it is legitimate to say "I hope you have some /good/ surprises up there".

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Life is full of potential lethal events we encounter every day. An approaching car in the other lane moves by us at high speed only a few feet away from possible impact. Someone texting while driving. Every where you turn death waits ;-)

Reply to
gray_wolf

"Was"? Did you sell it?

I get similar messages from electronics and mechanical devices. I can usually tell if a repair job is going to be a nightmare, or if the device is going to fix itself. Quite often, I "sense" what's wrong, with amazing accuracy. The only requirements are that I need to know how it works and have had some previous experience with it. I have no idea how this works.

I tried that and failed. I took lessons when I was about 19 years old. I had to drop out before getting a license mostly due to the expense. I never went back and it's one of the things I regret not doing. So, I did the next best thing and got involved with a friends avionics shop in the LA area. One of the "benefits" of learning to fly in LA was that I assumed that such crowded conditions were normal. Too late to try again today as I would probably not pass the physical.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Yes. Here is is landing

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It's magic. From the next spiritual plane. Everyone has the capability, but they don't know how to recognize it or use it. Learn how. It is very important.

I flew my Malibu out of SJC. Not quite as crowded as LA, and a bit more disciplined due to the narrow coastline through Hayward. That didn't stop me from a near midair with a biplane that was towing gliders over the Altamont Pass. He could'nt see me because of his wings, and in these situations you have only split seconds to respond. A mistake is fatal.

Around the same time, I bought a little Cessna 152 with a Senesech prop for any of my employees who wanted to learn how to fly. Ome day my CAD manager came back from lunch. She was drenched in sweat.

I said, "You soloed, didn't you.

She said, "Yes"

I said, "Better than sex, isn't it."

She said, "YES"

As far as passing the physical, you may be surprised at how easy it is. There are many pilots over 80 who fly without problems. You can probably find a doctor who is favorable to pilots who will give you a clearance.

I am coming on 76, in reasonably good health, and I'm thinking of buying a little Cessna 152 for local flights.

I really miss flying.

Reply to
Steve Wilson

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