quote:

Originally posted by P-220:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Google RJ Corman Aircraft and Railroad.
He (though he passed a few years back)has some pretty slick looking planes, helicopters, and locomotives. All are red. I read an article awhile back that talked about how much it adds to the operating cost of planes and helicopters for him to have red aircraft.

We used to pass that on the way to Center College, for a November Lacrosse tournament.

I always LOVED driving by and seeing what was in the hanger.

What a business model. Who else does what they do?

He sounded like a good guy, who died way too young.

Here is a pretty good article about him from Fortune magazine.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp...rman/%3Fsource%3Ddam

While others do what they do in regard to railroad derailment clean up none do it with the skill his company does. If there is a train derailment pretty much anywhere in the world you can pretty much bet they have people there.
He owns a few smaller lines here in the area and his bridges are always in top shape and painted bright red with his logo.
His locomaotives are always in beautiful condition as well.

quote:

Originally posted by entropy:

...Also, when you talk to them on the radio, it's "Shi-caa-go Center". Talk like Da Coach.

Slight thread drift: Are all the airlines going away from allowing pax to listen to cockpit comms? I fly (from MLI) mostly on RJs, but the few times I've been on larger planes recently the entertainment channels no longer include ATC.

That is sharp. It would be nice to have a matching car.

Havent seen the live audio in years. The IFE systems installed and expected now by the public makes the old "10 channel audio" a non starter. I was never a huge fan of it. Having someone evesdrop on your job (who more than likely knows nothing of whats involved) combined with the ability of capturing that audio and publishing it on social media....

Years back, American lost a DC-10 at ORD. This was the aircraft that phisically lost an engine on takeoff, rolled on its back, and went down. It was surmised that the live feed from the cockpit (both audio and visual) that was projected onto screens in the cabin aloowed passengers to literally watch themselves perish.

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:
Sorry, comes of posting exhausted. A ground power unit clearly won't cool your bird. It might help you get started early (if it is even needed for that. Is there anything modern that needs external power for the start?) so you can use your own AC, but I can't think of anything else a GPU would do for you. Do FBOs have AC carts, or is cranking up the only way to cool? The only thing that cools my Travel Air (Beech, not one of the the cool ones) is altitude, so I'm not up on the latest in cooling jets.

As you noted, a GPU is used to provide ground power to an aircraft if it's not equipped with it's own power source, i.e., Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) or if the flight crew doesn't want to use fuel to run their own APU. That's it. GPU's don't really even have anything to do with starting an aircraft, at least the one I fly.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most airliners of today are started with bleed air provided by an APU, or if inop or in its absence, by a ground air cart. In our case, we have an Air Turbine Starter (shaft) that's turned by bleed air from our APU. If our APU is inop, then we must have an air start cart in order to turn the shaft to start engine #2, and then we use the cross-bleed air valve from that engine to start engine #1. In either case, the GPU doesn't do anything for the start sequence. All it's doing is providing electrical power to the a/c until either the aircraft's APU generator or engine generators come on line.

In short, if our APU is operable, we don't even need a GPU because we can start the APU solely from our on-board battery source. A GPU is nice to have, because APU's are typically loud on the ramp and it saves fuel to use the GPU. Typically the ramp/gate crew will hook up external air conditioning to cool or heat the plane as necessary while on the ground, if they have one. If it's not available, the APU does an excellent job of cooling/heating the plane, but it costs $$. You know airlines, pinch every penny you can.....

I have a natural aversion to red and black and think that plane is hideous.

But to each his own.

Beautiful paint job. But...

quote:

Originally posted by entropy:
It's really cool until you try to see it on the taxiway at ORD on a rainy night...

That's what all the fancy new LED lights are for! And they flash in some non-sensical sequence that makes it look like a damn disco ball...

Oh, and I agree about the ORD controllers. No bullshit, no slack but you will make it in. Great guys.