Night flying in the mountians in a cessna 150,

("Jose" wrote)
But we write "the Appalachian range", though we write "the Sierra Nevada",
not "the sierra Nevada". "Sierra" is part of the proper noun; it is not a
common noun by itself in this context, the way "range" is above.


i'm waiting for houstondan's response.


montblack

Cockpit Colin wrote:
Tell you an interesting story about professional pilots ...

I was bumming a ride in the jump seat of a Saab 340A - the reason I was
there was because I wasn't prepared to fly a light twin with a single-engine
service ceiling of around 4250 at night over terrain that requires a MSA of
around 8000 feet.

Without any suggestion from me, 2 seperate crews immediately came to the
same conclusion I did - and that is "if you were going to do that flight
then you would want to track around the coast" (ie at sea level).

In my opinion these crews both have a safety oriented attitude - on the
other hand many of the pilots I know would do that flight at night in a
single - their best attempt at "risk management" being "the aeroplane
doesn't know it's night"

If safety was your ultimate goal, you would only fly the airlines and
not fly GA at all, other than bizjets whose record rivals the airlines.
The safest GA aircraft are still much more dangerous than the airlines.

People talk about safety like it is an absolute and it simply isn't. It
depends on the circumstances. The example I use is people who say they
would never take off in 0/0 conditions even though it is legal under
part 91. I wouldn't normally do this either, but if my wife needed
emergency surgery and was fairly certain to die without it, and if my
airplane was the only means to get her to a hospital, then I'd take off
0/0 to make such a flight. In that case, the relatively small risk of
killing us both outweights the very high risk of death without the surgery.

Matt

Cockpit Colin wrote:

Hi fellow wimp


For me, safe flying is all about exercising prudent judgement.
Granted, this can be very subjective although sometimes there are
absolutes. Such as taking off into a cell where 2000fpm downdrafts
have been reported. But, for me, mountain flying is strictly a
daylight activity.


Or perhaps a slightly different slant ...

"In any situation if you can choose to do something 2 ways - one being more
safe - the other being less safe - then why on earth wouldn't you choose the
safer one?

Because the less safe one may be more rewarding. We do lots of
activities that aren't absolutely necessary. Mountain climbing is more
dangerous than many other ways to get to the top of a mountain, but lots
of folks do it.

I like to tour on a motorcycle. It certainly isn't the safest way to
get from point A to point B, but it is very rewarding.


Matt


Matt

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 14:30:18 +1300, "Cockpit Colin"
wrote:

"In any situation if you can choose to do something 2 ways - one being more
safe - the other being less safe - then why on earth wouldn't you choose the
safer one?


My opinion is that one reason is pure ignorance - not knowing or
caring which would be the better choice. Every summer like clockwork,
here in Colorado, there are the usual incidents of pilots splattering
their machinery due to a lack of respect for that *minor* concept of
density altitude. Pilots attempt to take off at 2 pm, when the temp
is 92F and the density altitude is somewhere around 9000' with their
C172 loaded past the weight limit. Jeez, I wonder why they barely
managed to lift off and then slammed into the field at the end of the
runway - if they even managed to reach the end of the runway.

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:33:36 -0500, Matt Whiting
wrote:


I like to tour on a motorcycle. It certainly isn't the safest way to
get from point A to point B, but it is very rewarding.


But, would you make that journey to point B in a pitch black night,
with no headlight or tail light?

I'm not risk averse, I'm stupid averse.

Thomas Borchert wrote:
The odds will
catch up with you eventually.

You say we're ALL going to win the lottery?

Sure, if we play long enough.

Fly long enough, and an engine WILL fail. I've flown about 1900 hours
in powered aircraft, but 800 of those were in twins so I have about
2700 hours of engine time. I've had an engine failure caused by
mechanical problems. Once.

Michael

xyzzy wrote:
Montblack wrote:

("Mike Rapoport" wrote)

Pet peeve...its Sierra not Sierras, the word is already plural.




What's the singular? Siera?

Rocky Mountain
Rocky Mountains
Rockies

?????? Mountain
?????? Mountains
Sierras


Montblack


Sierra is Spanish for "Mountain Range."

The word Sierra is not plural, but it does refer to all the mountains in
the range. You would use Sierras to refer to multiple mountain ranges,
not multiple mountains.

HTH


So is Sierra Mountains also wrong because it would mean mountain range
mountains?

I would go with Sierras because we are not speaking spanish. It is the
name of mountains within a country that speaks primarily English. It
does not mean anything else.

One of my pet peeves is spanish versions of government forms. I thought
part of becoming a U.S. citizen was having a working understanding of
English.

"Michael" wrote in message
oups.com...
Thomas Borchert wrote:
The odds will
catch up with you eventually.

You say we're ALL going to win the lottery?

Sure, if we play long enough.

That's not true. The longer you play, the more opportunities you have to
win. But each time you play, you have the same exact chance to win (all
else being equal, which means ignore the variations in chance due to
different numbers of participants, etc), and there is NO length of time you
can play that will guarantee a win.

Fly long enough, and an engine WILL fail.

Likewise, there is no length of time you can fly that will guarantee an
engine failure. Just as important: it doesn't matter how many hours you
have, the chance of an engine failure is exactly the same (all else being
equal) on each flight. Once you successfully complete a flight without an
engine failure, you can ignore that flight (and every single one prior) for
the purpose of assessing your risk on the next flight.

It seems that some pilots are going around thinking that the longer they
fly, the closer they get to their fated engine failure (or other problem).
That's just not true.

Mechanical problems do happen, and an engine failure can happen as a result.
An engine failure is a very real possibility, but it is also very unlikely.
But then, so is having your wing fall off. Or running into another
airplane, or a bird, or something. There are lots of risks associated with
flying, many of which the pilot has little or no control over. We accept
them because the actual likelihood is low.

IMHO, there is no clear cut "this is just plain too dangerous for anyone to
do", and that includes issues like flying over mountains, at night, IFR, in
a single engine airplane. It's entirely possible to have a flying career
comprising only IFR flights over mountains at night in single-engine
airplanes and still never have to deal with an engine failure, never mind
one over hostile terrain.

Besides, anyone arguing against doing that needs to expand the prohibited
class of aircraft to include any twin engine aircraft with a single-engine
service ceiling lower than the terrain (or MEA/MOCA/MRA) being overflown.

Pete

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Michael" wrote in message
oups.com...

Besides, anyone arguing against doing that needs to expand the prohibited
class of aircraft to include any twin engine aircraft with a single-engine
service ceiling lower than the terrain (or MEA/MOCA/MRA) being overflown.

Pete

Having a single engine service ceiling higher than terrain is not really
that important. The single engine service ceiling is the altitude where the
airplane is still *climbing* 50fpm. The altitude where the airplane is
*descending* 50fpm is much higher. If you were cruising along at the MEA
and lost an engine, and the MEA was 5000' above the single engine service
ceiling, it would take tens or hundreds of miles to lose 2000' of altitude
and impact terrain. Actually you might never impact since the single engine
service ceiling rises as the plane burns off fuel. Barry Scheiff talks
about this topic in one of his books using actual numbers and the bottom
line is that you could lose an engine at the MEA in virtually any twin and
reach an airport, at least in the US.

Mike
MU-2

Mike Rapoport wrote:

If you were cruising along at the MEA
and lost an engine, and the MEA was 5000' above the single engine service
ceiling, it would take tens or hundreds of miles to lose 2000' of altitude
and impact terrain.

*If* there are no downdrafts. Remember, we're talking mountains.

Stefan