Absolute lowest altitude you can fly (legally)

Depends on the area. Most areas no, but if the radar facility was
nearby, yes
Mxsmanic wrote:
Duncan writes:

- did you see your instructor switch the transponder to standby?

Would he still be in radar contact below 100 feet AGL?

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Wolfgang Schwanke writes:

He said feet. Meters are not used in European aviation any more, except
in former Soviet Union countries and partially in gliders.

I suspect the French are still using metres for something. They
always have to do something different (not necessarily better).

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Jose writes:

That meters aren't used any more is a surprise to
me - the world is regressing.

Aviation is one of many examples of domains that are sufficiently
insulated from the world at large that they can easily use their own
units of measure without causing too much problem. Add that to the
enormous potential cost and risk of changing measurement units
worldwide, and it's easy to see why feet and knots have been retained.

Feet and knots are largely dimensionless in aviation. You don't
really have to know how long a foot is, or how fast a knot is. You
just have to plug the numbers in correctly when flying.

There is one universal domain in which old units are retained: time.
Since all present time is linked to all past time, it rapidly proved
impractical to decimalize time, and so the world still works with
hours, minutes, and seconds.

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the swimming pool from cheech and chong's "nice dreams"?


Jose wrote:
How in the world were you able to get 10' above the trees and still remain
5' or less above the ground?

Actually there's a spot in Calfornia where the trees are grown ten or
twenty feet underground, so it's not so farfetched as it sounds.

Of course, that spot would have to be in California!

Jose
--
He who laughs, lasts.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Neil Gould" wrote in news:astnh.28843$hI.14462
@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net:

Recently, Michael Rhodes posted:

Some regulars prefer tighter control than others. And the disagreement
itself becomes a distraction. There are always distractions, but
what's going on now is ridiculous.

Not to worry, this, too, will pass.

Only when folks stop responding to the troll, which isn't soon enough.

Allen

Actually there's a spot in Calfornia where the trees are grown ten or
twenty feet underground, so it's not so farfetched as it sounds
the swimming pool from cheech and chong's "nice dreams"?

The place is called the Forestiere Underground Gardens and it's in Fresno.

http://www.forestiere-historicalcenter.com/

It's a flying destination the next time I'm in the area and it's open.

Jose
--
He who laughs, lasts.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Mxsmanic wrote:
Feet and knots are largely dimensionless in aviation. You don't
really have to know how long a foot is, or how fast a knot is. You
just have to plug the numbers in correctly when flying.

Knots are not dimensionless in aviation. A knot is one nautical
mile per hour, and that nautical mile is the distance corresponding to
one minute of latitude at the equator. Anyone using lat/long and some
spherical trig (like the old guys who crossed oceans used sextants to
determine their position) will make use of these things. The lazy ones
among us (or like me, the ones really poor at math) will use GPS, which
does the same thing.


Dan

Michael Rhodes wrote:
Is there a particular reason why r.a.s and r.a.p are not moderated?

Yes. It's so people (like you) can post off-topic rants (like this
one) about people they don't like rather than discussing aviation
topics.

I suggest you read the charter for r.a.s and r.a.p. You might discover
some interesting things. In brief, you would discover that the posts
by Mxsmanic are generally within the scope of the charter (certainly
all the ones I have seen from him starting new threads have been) and
that most of the responses are not.

Moderation exists not to protect groups from occasional individual
trolls but to keep them from being overwhelmed by volume from spammers
(many of the sex groups have had to do this) and flamers (many of the
groups discussing politically charged issues like abortion and firearms
have had to do this). The closest thing we ever really had to a troll
like that was Skylune, and he was one man. Not worth stifling the
discussion for one man.

Mxsmanic is not a troll. He asks relevant questions. When he gets an
answer that doesn't make sense to him (more often than not because it
is, at least in my opinion as a pilot/instuctor/mechanic/aircraft
owner, not a very correct or clear answer) he argues with it. When
people are abusive to him, he is abusive in return - but giving just a
little less than he gets. I've seen him post stuff that was out of
scope for the charter, but only in reply to posts that were
signifciantly more out of scope.

Moderation would not stop his threads. It would make them more
readable - by stopping most of the comments that are nasty rather than
responsive. It's almost enough to make me think this is a good idea.

Michael

"Michael" wrote in
oups.com:

Mxsmanic is not a troll.

ONLY IN YOUR OPINION WHICH IS CLEARLY THE MINORITY.

Allen

On Tue, 2 Jan 2007 09:52:24 -0800, Mark Hansen wrote
(in article ):

On 01/02/07 09:46, Robert M. Gary wrote:
Mxsmanic wrote:
What regulations determine the absolute lowest altitude you can fly
above the ground in the U.S.? I understand that the area just above
the ground is usually Class G outside airports, and it only goes up to
700 or 1200 feet most of the time ... which implies that you can
actually fly at 500 feet AGL if you want. But is there some other
regulation that prohibits aircraft from flying this low, in general or
in certain conditions/areas?

There was a video of a Yak that was making sparks on the runway. I
would say that's just about as low as you can go.


Well, I guess you can go lower if you don't mind making your own hole ;-\




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