Being a pilot is still considered to usually be in the top five most dangerous things you can do.
There’s a reason for the checklists. Like many aviation rules, they came from someone bending metal or getting killed.
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
212 points (96.5% liked)
NonCredibleDefense
4017 readers
633 users here now
Rules:
- Posts must abide by lemmy.world terms and conditions
- No spam or soliciting for money.
- No racism or other bigotry allowed.
- Obviously nothing illegal.
If you see these please report them.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Reload the weaponry? Yes sir, if you'll hand me the pistol, I will personally put 6 new cartridges in!
It took some searching, but I found the masterpiece I was looking for.
Dude's having a blast
"And tell Gandalf 'fuck you too!' "
Glorious, thank you. Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyoink.
the pistol
Utter tangent:
Has anyone ever made a PC that ... has to be pull started like an older ICE lawn mower?
EDIT: I've jerry rigged together spare PC parts into a make shift media center pc... that used the box my roomate's Xbox 360 came in as a 'case'... you had to actually jump the right two pins on the mobo to start it, rofl.
...we used a paper clip that had a bit of colored rubber or epoxy coating of some kind, wire stripper stripped that off of the last inch or so.
But a lawnmower start pc ... that would be even funnier.
It's not pull start but it is gas powered.
... Wow.
So many problems with that design, but it does work.
Amazing, thank you for that link.
You could just make or buy the pull mechanism and hook it up to a speaker.
I imagine having an internal combustion engine that close to computer components would make for a very short lived computer.
I mean... yes, lol.
It wouldn't be the entire engine, just the starter.
But even that would probably not be a good idea.
I just figure someone must have made some kind of custom build that outwardly resembles a pull start, just as a novelty thing, but in actuality just... sends the power on signal to ... whatever that particular pin board on the mobo is called.
It wouldn't be hard to take a motor or something, hook a string to it, and then use the electricity it outputs to activate the power button. It's more effort than I'd put into something that's actively inconvenient, but you could make it if you want probably.
Less useful things have been designed:
lol
Major Bill March, a historian with the Royal Canadian Air Force, is quoted as saying of the early pilots “they used to call themselves the 20-Minute Club because the life expectancy of a new pilot in combat in 1916-17 was 20 minutes.”
I understand that in the early part of the war pilots were being sent into combat with less than 9 hours flying time – basically, they knew how to take-off. But of course, we all know that there is a lot more to it than that, being able to land is probably optimistic, but useful if the need presented itself.
Early airplanes were a hell of a thing, too.
A lot of airplanes in WWI were powered by rotary engines. No, not wankel engines, reciprocating rotary engines. The crankshaft holds still and the entire engine spins with the propeller. Something something you don't need a flywheel because engine is flywheel.
These engines were lubricated with castor oil. It spewed everywhere including into the pilot's face. Most of them had a chronic case of the squirts for that reason.
These engines didn't have a throttle as such; the fuel had to get in via the crankshaft, after all. You'd reduce power by canceling ignition to some of the cylinders via a "blip switch."
Having that much spinning mass in the nose did some unintuitive shit to the airplane's handling. To this day we teach pilots about gyroscopic precession because even a modern propeller will do it somewhat: when you tilt the propeller disc, the propeller exerts a force 90 degrees around the disc. With a prop that turns clockwise when seen from the cockpit, pitching down will cause the propeller to exert a left yawing force. This killed a lot of early pilots on the runway; they'd lift the tail during takeoff and suddenly veer to the side because of the almighty gyroscope in the nose.
Oh, and for the British at least, they invented the concept of firing machine guns through the prop disc before they invented the interrupter gear, so they'd shoot their own propellers off.
Woof!
Educate yourself. Go back to the source Rowan stole from...
Slave trader, rapist, turncoat, scoundrel, bully, cad, thief, coward, and winner of the VC. General Sir Harry Padget Flashman, damn your eyes!
That's grim, hadn't heard that before. I guess that the aces were the ones good at learning quickly and improvising.
I'm not an expert, but I can see the military minds of the time thinking that training people would be a waste of time because flying was so deadly. In their minds it would be like training people to swim across the Atlantic from New York to London; it was a matter of luck, not training.
imho
They use to call me the 2-Minute Club back in college.
You still pretending that you went to school?
[jk]
Had a buddy walk out during a community college placement test because it was getting too hard. I tried telling him the point of a placement test is to have hard questions but it never clicked.
I think we've all met that guy at least once.
The hand cranking lad was before the time they started engines with shotgun shells.
Oh no, down the rabbit hole I go.
See the original, not the terrible remake. I was reminded because of starting an engine with a gun.
WWI Pilot: Alright fellas, just grab me my parachute and I'll be off.
Ground Crew:
Some ancient dude (falling from a cliff): me go brrrrr!