GPS and ground speed

Franklin "Franklin wrote:

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:32:52 -0700 (PDT), D Ramapriya wrote:

Since

(a) Ground Speed can be determined by GPS, (b) the relationship
between the aircraft's attitude and the angle of attack should
theoretically be unvarying and (c) the attitude indicator is a
gyroscopic instrument,

is it possible to assume with any correctness that during cruise, an
aircraft can only be at *a* particular ground speed at *a* particular
altitude at *a* particular attitude? If the answer is Yes, is it
possible to develop some formula where the pilot can at least arrive
at a rough airspeed figure using the GPS should his pitot tubes get
blocked or iced for whatever reason? I acknowledge that this will
only be a rough estimate since headwind and tailwind can't be
measured.

I'm thinking about the recent Air France crash and wondering if at
all it could've been prevented using such a calculation to roughly
estimate the actual airspeed instead of having to rely on entirely
inaccurate IAS...

Thanks in advance for your views,

Ramapriya

Obviously you are a troll.


Ramapriya, please excuse my namesake's behavior. Unfortunately he's
chosen to antagonise you in the hope that you retaliate against me.
He's got a long history and lots of names. The sock master spends his
day setting up elaborate trolls with carefully disguised identities.

(1) In alt.comp.freeware he's well-known as "Bear Bottoms", "Ari", David
W" and literally dozens of other names.

(2) In the aviation groups he's known as Maxwell, Payton Byrd and other
names which posters here know better than I do.

(3) He hangs out on music groups such as Beatles, Zeppelin, Doors,
Genesis, and Jethro Tull.

(4) Unsurprisingly a k00k like him also hangs out on the 2600 and
hacking groups.

He has fantasies about being a pilot or special forces operative which
is why you see a lot of him. The only thing he can fly is a toy
aircraft.

He tries to be irritating:

http://groups.google.ru/group/alt.comp.freeware/msg/a46d34973796b1f6
http://groups.google.ru/group/alt.comp.freeware/msg/672961a0af8ac7d6
http://groups.google.ru/group/alt.comp.freeware/msg/5ae56dab596230fa
http://groups.google.ru/group/alt.comp.freeware/msg/fd54722dd2020e57
http://groups.google.ru/group/alt.comp.freeware/msg/e522b0bedbe2bb0a