PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Why use only pitot-static system for altimeter/airspeed
Old 8th Feb 2014, 21:01
  #65 (permalink)  
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: florida
Age: 81
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Besides the taped over ports on one plane, then the "mud daubers" plugging up the pitot tube on another, the incident that gets the most attention is AF447. See the thousands of posts on that elsewhere.

I only had one air data freeze in 20 years, and was the static ports. Speed went crazy, but altitude on the steam gauge was stuck. BFD. Power, pitch and and so forth. 'course, I was cheating, as I had an inertial flight path marker and knew by heart the power and descent angle for the let down. Inertial groundspeed was a good crosscheck, even though it did not compensate for actual airspeed. But I also had a valid AoA indication if I got slow. Gotta use all the tools you have, ya think?

Good heaters on the probes/ports are essential. But seems we have had very few losses of the probes due to the heaters and then losses of the plane folowing losses of the probes.

The axiom to hold dear is: "Don't do something, just sit there". The AF447 accident is worth hours and hours of training lectures, and we'll never know what was going through the pilots' minds.
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