A Flight Sim Enthusiast's Notebook
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Thoughts on the Illegal Opening of the Emergency Exit on Flight MU2036
Yesterday morning, I saw various messages about MU2036 on WeChat and Weibo. This morning, I saw updated news reports, such as the official report on the authoritative China News Service website — Passengers who illegally opened emergency doors at Kunming Airport detained for 15 days.
Here is a summary of the incident:
Flight MU2036 departed from Dhaka with a stopover in Kunming to reach Beijing. The flight landed at Kunming Changshui International Airport at 21:20 on January 9. Due to snow and rain at the airport, boarding did not begin until 0:00 on January 10. After the boarding of 153 passengers was completed in the early morning of January 10, the aircraft queued waiting for deicing.
At 3:45 AM, MU2036 began fuselage deicing work. Due to deicing requirements, the air conditioning inside the aircraft was turned off for about 30 minutes. Due to poor air circulation inside the cabin, an elderly female passenger felt unwell. At this point, most passengers on board were concerned about her condition and demanded the captain come out to explain. The co-pilot of MU2036 came out to explain, but his response did not satisfy the passengers, causing their emotions to run high and leading to a dispute with the crew.
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X-Plane 10.32r1 Release and News on 10.35 & 10.40
The latest version 10.32r1 of X-Plane 20 was released yesterday. I haven’t had the time to install and test it yet, but looking at the official release notes, the content of this version is just a long list of bug fixes, so I don’t expect any major issues.
More importantly, in the developer blog, we get some information about future plans. For example, X-Plane 10.35 is expected to be released in one or two weeks. Its biggest highlight will be the many new airport sceneries introduced from the X-Plane Airport Gateway. Additionally, for Mac users, some bugs on Yosemite will also be fixed. Regarding X-Plane 10.40, the performance improvements for the DSF (Distribution Scenery Format) that everyone has been eagerly awaiting, as well as DSF visual range improvements in the distance, are likely to be introduced in this version.
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Mr. Ozawa's Travel Flight Log
The word “Sensei” in Japanese means “teacher” or “doctor.” For instance, Lu Xun wrote the famous essay “Mr. Fujino,” reminiscing about Mr. Fujino, who taught him in Sendai.
The Mr. Ozawa introduced here is my wife’s university professor. He is 80 years old this year, but he is in excellent health. He plays tennis four times a week and looks to be only about 60 or 70. Mr. Ozawa is a senior aviation enthusiast. Recently, I saw his collection of flight logs and felt it was necessary to record them.
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MLIT ATS Committee Website
The Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) ATS Committee, also known as the Air Traffic Services Committee, recently released some materials online. For instance, the 36th Analysis Seminar regarding runway incursion prevention, features 1 hour and 20 minutes of content available for free on YouTube. Case studies are accompanied by specialized animations, and the detailed incident analysis makes the content extremely impressive.
Take the example of Kansai Airport, where Hawaiian Airlines Flight HAL 450 experienced a runway incursion, causing an All Nippon Airways flight on final approach to execute a go-around. The commentary is provided by two retired senior pilots and a controller. They delve into the deep psychology of both the controllers and the pilots, and analyze exactly how misunderstandings regarding “hold position” and “position and hold” arose between ATC and the flight crew. The expert analysis is profound and highly persuasive.
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Winter Snow Scenery Addon XFlyer's Winter Package 1.1
This is also an amazing Plugin/Addon that can transform the Scenery into winter mode, featuring landscapes covered in heavy snow, Winter_Package 1.1.
The download address is available here.
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Recent Reading Notes: A Few Books by Hiroshi Sugi
The Captain’s Confession
The author of this book, Hiroshi Sugie, is a senior captain at Japan Airlines (JAL) and has long been involved in promoting flight safety within the company.
Based on his own flight experience, Captain Sugie classifies aviation accidents. He not only analyzes the causes of accidents from a pilot’s perspective but also proposes solutions to avoid various types of accidents. The content is extremely detailed.
The author seems to be a celebrity; I have occasionally seen him explaining aviation accidents on TV news programs. He has over 20,000 hours of flight experience in the Boeing 747 and is known as the pilot with the most flight hours on the 747 in the world.
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HD Mesh Scenery V3
I have previously highly recommended the high-definition HD Mesh Scenery V2 addon. Recently, I discovered that a V3 version has been released. Compared to V2, this version includes numerous improvements, and the download size has been reduced by nearly half. Therefore, I am recommending it once again.
Currently, V3 provides Scenery for the following regions: Europe, including the Canary Islands North America, including the United States, Canada, and Alaska Japan Hawaii Australia
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Highly Recommended X-Camera Plugin for View Settings
The name of the X-Camera Plugin makes it look like a screenshot tool, but it isn’t. It is simply a camera view Plugin for X-Plane that allows you to define your own favorite views for use in 3D mode. I tried it once and loved it immediately.
The installation method is very simple. Just click the green “Download X-Camera” button on the official website download page, then extract the files and copy them to X-Plane 9\Resources\plugins.
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Investigation Report on JAL 777 Tail Strike
On March 31, 2012, a JAL Boeing 777-200ER (registration JA701J) experienced a tail strike at Haneda Airport RWY34L while performing a Go Around after landing. On the 18th of this month, Japan’s Transport Safety Commission released the <a href=http://jtsb.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/aircraft/detail.php?id=2039>Investigation Report, and after reading it, I found it to be quite valuable.
The sequence of the accident was as follows: The Pilot Flying (PF) was the 29-year-old First Officer, and the 42-year-old Captain was the Pilot Monitoring (PM). Upon landing, the aircraft was slightly tilted to the right; the right main landing gear touched down first, followed by the left main landing gear, with the shock absorbers reaching maximum compression. The Captain felt the aircraft bounce and decided to go around (though it did not actually bounce), issuing the “go around” command three times in succession. At this point, the First Officer had already deployed the thrust reversers, and the spoilers had automatically deployed; however, the Captain was focused on external observations and did not notice this. The First Officer intended to advance the thrust levers to TOGA, but because the reversers were in the interlock state (interlock condition), the thrust could not be changed. The Captain noticed the First Officer was not executing the go around correctly and initiated a takeover, stating “I have control,” and pushed to TOGA, but similarly, it was ineffective due to the interlock. The Captain looked at the thrust levers, noticed the interlock, stowed the reversers, and continued the go around. During the above stages, the Captain pulled back on the yoke to raise the nose, but due to the state of the reversers and spoilers, the aircraft’s Attitude reached 10.2 degrees, resulting in a tail strike. Subsequently, the aircraft was flown by the Captain during the go around and landed normally. According to the post-landing inspection, there was an 11-meter long, 40-centimeter wide scratch on the lower rear exterior of the fuselage, along with cracks, holes, and deformation.
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Awesome Weather Site: windyty.com
Typhoon! A typhoon is coming! Which website is good for checking typhoon dynamics and typhoon tracks?
windyty.com weather site uses a Google Maps-style UI to display current global wind direction and speed, temperature, pressure, cloud layers, and humidity information, as well as weather forecasts for the week ahead. This website’s UI is truly excellent; just click on the map to bring up a display box and get meteorological information for that location.
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X-Plane 10 Mobile Flight Simulator Released
X-Plane 10 is finally available on iOS! You can download it from the App Store via the link here.
I will post a few screenshots here and write a simple tutorial. I will provide a detailed introduction later when I have time.
This is the aircraft selection screen.
As we know, besides this free Cessna 172, you can now purchase and use the following aircraft, ranging from $2 to $5:
• F-22 Raptor
• Airbus A320 airliner
• A-10 Thunderbolt II (“Warthog”)
• F-4 Phantom II
• Beechcraft Baron B58
• Beechcraft King Air C90B
• Piper PA-18 Super Cub
• Piaggio P.180 Avanti
• Sikorsky S76 helicopter -
Revisiting Airport Weather Information in Adverse Conditions (Continued)
Following the previous post, I checked the weather at several airports again this morning. Although the pressure wasn’t as low as I had imagined, it was still windy and snowy, so let’s record it.
First, I have to mention the news about an American Airlines flight AA280 (from South Korea to Dallas, USA) encountering Turbulence over Japan last night and having to Divert to Narita in the middle of the night. Apparently, over a dozen passengers and crew were injured.
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Revisiting Airport Weather Information in Severe Weather
Here is the weather map for tomorrow morning (December 17) at 9:00 AM.
You can see that the low-pressure system near Hokkaido has reached 952 hPa; that is equivalent to a super-sized typhoon.
This low-pressure system and cold air aloft will bring stormy weather, high waves, and heavy snow. The airport weather for tomorrow is a major concern. I just saw a report from ANA (All Nippon Airways): due to snow at Sapporo New Chitose Airport, low visibility at Fukushima Airport, and strong winds at Nagoya Chubu Centrair Airport, some flights have already been affected today. So, I checked the METARs and TAFs for a few major airports to record the data, as these conditions are quite rare.
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Carenado's 2014 Christmas 50% Off Sale
At this time of year, Carenado always holds a half-price sale, and this year is no exception.
Currently, most products have released HD versions, offering great value for money. Go grab them now.
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Recent Reading Notes 201412
Here is a record of the 4 books I finished reading recently, all purchased from the used bookstore Bookoff.
Concorde Project (Concorde: The Inside Story)
This book covers the development history of the supersonic passenger jet Concorde. Published in 2001, it is the Japanese edition of “Concorde: The Inside Story”. The author, Brian Trubshaw, was the Chief Test Pilot for British Aerospace’s Concorde.
Brian participated in the Concorde project from the design phase. The book starts with design concepts and details the joint development by the UK and France, through to airworthiness certification, flight testing, and commercial operation phases. Additionally, the book provides many photographs and design diagrams. As expected from an insider, this first-hand material is very precious! Here are a few details that left a deep impression.
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ANA FLY! Panda Livery 767 Approaching Retirement
ANA’s famous panda-themed jet, JA606A, will enter its major maintenance phase—which happens once every eight years—starting next week on December 9. Afterwards, it will be repainted back into the standard livery, so if you have the chance to see it in the next couple of days, be sure to take a photo for the memories!
ANAのFLY！パンダジェット（JA606A）が12月9日で運航終了。約8年毎に行われる重整備の塗装更新によるもので、今後はANAの通常塗装へ。 pic.twitter.com/IbOb5nlNN5
— 月刊エアライン編集部 (@ikarosairline) December 5, 2014I found two shots I took myself on Flickr to share with everyone.
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starflyer's A320 also obtains RNP AR authorization
Star Flyer recently announced that their 7 A320s have obtained RNP AR qualification. The aircraft registration numbers are JA07MC, JA08MC, JA09MC, JA20MC, JA21MC, JA22MC, and JA23MC. This marks the first time an A320 operated by a Japanese airline has obtained this qualification. RNP AP operations began yesterday.
According to the published materials, the diagram below shows the current ILS approach at Kitakyushu Airport:
And after using RNP AR:
The flight distance is reduced by 27 nautical miles (50 kilometers), flight time is shortened by 7 to 8 minutes, and 130 kilograms of fuel can be saved.
Additionally, since the curved route is over the sea, compared to the ILS flying over land above, there is no noise impact on the ground. It truly achieves multiple results at once. -
Relationship between X-Plane 10 Desktop and Mobile Versions
A post titled “Sibling Rivalry” by Ben was published on the official X-Plane developer blog. The article explains the relationship between the X-Plane 10 desktop and mobile versions. The summary of the content is as follows:
Without the revenue from the X-Plane 9 mobile version, Laminar Research could not have initiated the development of the X-Plane 10 desktop version. In the past, due to limited resources, Laminar Research only had the capacity to develop one product at a time. Now, with more developers finally hired, work can proceed simultaneously on both the X-Plane 10 desktop and mobile versions, representing the “two fronts” approach. Advanced and powerful mobile devices have also made code sharing between the two products possible, such as in terms of OpenGL, and there is no longer a significant gap in software performance. Additionally, the Android version of X-Plane 10 Mobile is currently under development.
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This Month's Airline Magazine
The content in Airline magazine is excellent, featuring professional aviation knowledge, popular science, and industry news. The high print quality gives it significant collectible value. I took a look at the issue released today, and the cover features the A350, which has been a hot topic recently:
Comparing it with the photo I took below, it looks like the photo above was taken at the <a href=“yinlei.org/x-plane10/en/2014/11/a350-xwb.html” target="_self" title=““Rain Man” meets the A350 XWB for the first time”>same location. However, I had terrible luck and ran into rainy weather—a regret for eternity.
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METAR Aviation Routine Weather Report during Volcanic Eruption VA
In the METAR, under the OBSCURATION section for flight visibility, there is a definition for volcanic ash, “VA Volcanic Ash” Currently, Mount Aso in Kumamoto, Japan has erupted, and domestic flights across Japan have been grounded.
500RT: [Eruption of Mt. Aso] Volcanic smoke up to 1000 meters above ground; Kumamoto - The Meteorological Agency calls for attention to damage to crops caused by volcanic ash. pic.twitter.com/P6zour8zJ0 https://t.co/441WP8yufq
— 前田洋輔 (@yokohama_77) November 26, 2014As you can see, it is indeed marked.
Since this is quite rare, I’m making a note of it.