Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 3/10/25 1:26 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2025-03-10, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
 

On Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:18:26 -0400, c186282 wrote:
>

    Once landed a Cessna when a huge headwind gust came up when I was
    just four or five feet above the runway.
    QUICKLY 'flew' it down because in a few secs the headwind would stop
    and I've had had zero airspeed. Instead, landed at zero GROUND speed.
    Freaky. In distant retrospect I was the only kid they'd rent a plane
    on gusty days - had a knack for it.

 Makes my heart speed up just thinking about it.  If I find myself in
such a position I get the power on _fast_.

   Wouldn't have been TIME. The little Cessna planes did
   not have afterburners.
   ONLY fix, almost reflexive, was to 'fly' the headwind
   and put the thing on the runway QUICK.
   The huge headwind literally lasted just five or six
   SECONDS - enough to drag back the plane to what WOULD
   have been zero airspeed.
   Wonder if an 'AI' could have figured it ?

My favourite wind gust story was when I was landing a Cessna 170
(tail-dragger) on a 12-foot-wide paved strip.  I was doing a wheel
landing and was happily rolling along on the mains with the tail
still in the air when a side gust blew me right off the strip and
onto the grass alongside.  There followed a lot of quick delicate
up-elevator to stop the increased drag of the grass from tipping me
up on my nose.

   Tail-draggers have their negatives !!!
   Digging the prop into the runway is a biggie.

Better than the birds. For whatever reason the stretch of road south of
Carson City NV can be pretty windy. I watched a bird land who, I don't
think you could call it negative ground speed, was rather surprised when
he was going backwards at touchdown. Not very graceful.
>
I also watched a raven playing in the wind breaking over a ridge line. He
had zero ground speed and was happily gliding about six feet off the
ground. He would slowly lose altitude and give a couple of flaps to get
back up.

 Pelicans, as ungainly as they look on land, are amazing flyers.
They'll skim the surface of the water, then calmly rise a couple
of feet to get over a swell and come back down on the other side.
 

No wonder humans spend centuries asking "Why can't we do that?"

 I get the same feeling when scuba diving among rockfish (Sebastes spp.).
They have buoyancy control to die for.

   Oh, fish are GOOD ... evolved for the environment.
   Humans, despite tech, can only roughly emulate.
   Coolest dive I ever did - a 300+ foot deep sinkhole.
   Twin 100cf steelies plus an emergency tank - the full
   redundant cave rig. Like dropping into infinite space.
   Hmmmmmm ... I tend to think I've led a very boring life,
   but, in retrospect, I've done some VERY weird, edge,
   stuff without having any of that double-alpha personality.
   Amazing I survived. Circling sharks in bloody water,
   I'll tell you how to best a huge bear with naught but
   a Colt 45 sometime. 220 knots at 2 feet altitude,
   jumping sand piles over an unfinished interstate
   section ......... you could get away with a lot more
   in the 60s/70s before omnipresent surveillance .....