Title text:
Carefully maneuvering the balloon down a mineshaft in an effort to break the OTHER altitude record
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3161/
Title text:
Carefully maneuvering the balloon down a mineshaft in an effort to break the OTHER altitude record
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3161/
Putting my flight instructor hat on here, this is mostly correct.
“Indicated airspeed” (IAS) is what number your aircraft’s airspeed indicator is pointing to. As Rivalarrival described, the airspeed indicator is a barometric instrument that compares ram air pressure with static pressure to measure the dynamic pressure, which is a function of airspeed. Indicated airspeed is an indication of how the airplane will “feel,” how much force will act upon the aircraft in maneuvers, which is why force limit speeds such as maximum flap and landing gear extended speeds, stall speeds, max normal operating speed and never exceed speed are marked on the airspeed indicator.
“Calibrated airspeed” (CAS) is indicated airspeed corrected for instrument error. The airspeed indicator and the plumbing it is hooked to aren’t perfect, so they’ll be off by a few knots especially near the lower edge of its range. You find a chart in the POH that says “IAS 45, 50, 55, 60 etc” on one line and “CAS 43, 49, 54, 60 etc” on another. Pilots use this for, if we’re being honest with ourselves, nothing.
“True airspeed” (TAS) is indicated airspeed corrected for air density. The airspeed indicator is flawed in concept: It’s a pressure gauge calibrated in units of speed. To actually determine the relative velocity of the aircraft through the air, we have to do a bit of math comparing the outside air temperature with our pressure altitude, this will give us our density altitude. You then do a bit more math to correct calibrated airspeed for density altitude and get true airspeed. E6B flight computers have little windows for this.
Here is my old cardboard E6B from when I was a student. I’ve set an air temperature of -40C over 30,000 feet in the right-hand window, the center window is showing…pretty much exactly 30k feet of density altitude, and we can read true airspeed over calibrated airspeed on the A and B scales. So for 100 knots, we can look at the 10 on the B scale, and read about 164, maybe 165 knots on the A scale. At 30,000 feet and +50C, which literally never happens, your density altitude is ~38,000 feet and 100 KCAS will get you 194 KTAS. Not quite 400 😜
“Ground speed” is true airspeed corrected for wind. To calculate your ground speed, you need your true airspeed as we just calculated, and winds aloft forecasts from one of the government agencies the Republicans are desperate to destroy, and then we do some trigonometry. You can whip out your Ti-83 Plus Silver Edition from high school and SohCahToa this bitch, or you can flip the E6B over to find a handy dandy vector plotter, which does ground speed and wind correction angle calculations by accurately drawing and measuring the triangle. My high school physics teacher called using this thing “cheating,” I call it “a required aeronautical skill.”
That was very interesting! Thank you for taking the time to write this up
Fun fact: In several episodes of the original Star Trek series, Spock can be seen holding and using an E6B flight computer, which is a slide rule invented for the US Navy in World War 2.
This is why I’m a balloon pilot and not a fixed wing pilot. 30,000 is 12,001ft higher than I’ll ever see, and 30kias will probably collapse my envelope and splatter me in a corn field. 😵💫
Can confirm: the accuracy of forecasts in general (and vertical wind profile data in particular) plummeted for this year’s flying season. The GOP is needlessly endangering aviation safety on multiple fronts.
30 knots indicated would take a plane out of the sky too, that’s well below most airplane’s stall speeds. We can probably fix that before doing the Monsanto Slam though.