{"id":7620,"date":"2011-09-21T16:57:33","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T23:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=7620"},"modified":"2011-09-22T08:47:01","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T15:47:01","slug":"town-without-pity-and-airplanes-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=7620","title":{"rendered":"Town Without Pity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hat tip to Nancy Nall<\/a> for pointing me toward this New York Times article<\/a> about small town gossip run rampant on an internet forum.\u00a0 People in Mountain Grove, Missouri used to swap gossip face to face at Dee’s Place, but these days they have ” … shifted from sharing the latest news and rumors over eggs and coffee to the Mountain Grove Forum<\/a> on a social media Web site called Topix, where they write and read startlingly negative posts, all cloaked in anonymity, about one another.”<\/p>\n

This sort of thing has been going on since the dawn of the internet, hasn’t it?\u00a0 Stories about trolls turning happy online communities into smouldering hellscapes are apocryphal … and many of them are true.<\/p>\n

The reporter for the NYT speculates that online anonymity is behind much of the venom, and that tallies with my experience.\u00a0 When people complain about the “real names only” policies on Facebook and Google+<\/a>, I always wonder what their real motivation is … do they want to play troll and wreck Facebook and Google+ too?<\/p>\n

How nasty has the gossip in Mountain Grove MO been?\u00a0 A recent day’s entries included, according to the NYT reporter, ” … unsubstantiated posts that identified by name an employee at a dentist\u2019s office as a home wrecker with herpes, accused a gas station attendant of being a drug dealer, and said a 13-year-old girl was ‘preggo by her mommy\u2019s man.’ Many allegations were followed with promises of retribution to whoever started the post.”<\/p>\n

A cook at Dee’s Place describes what is happening to him and his wife:<\/p>\n

His wife, Jennifer, had been the target in a post titled \u201cfreak,\u201d he said, which described the mother of two as, among other things, \u201ca methed-out, doped-out whore with AIDS.\u201d Not a word was true, Mr. and Ms. James said, but the consequences were real enough.<\/p>\n

Friends and relatives stopped speaking to them. Trips to the grocery store brought a crushing barrage of knowing glances. She wept constantly and even considered suicide. Now, the couple has resolved to move.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never come back to this town again,\u201d Ms. James said in an interview at the diner. \u201cI just want to get the hell away from here.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow.\u00a0 When Honda introduced the GL1800 Goldwing in 2001 I bought one and joined an online GL1800 riders forum.\u00a0 I love my Wing (I’m still riding it, 10 years on), and no one I know who has one feels any differently.\u00a0 But the online forum was awash in horror stories about mechanical failures, overheating engines, dangerous tires and suspension components, and frames that were prone to catastrophically snap in half.\u00a0 Many prospective buyers, dropping by the forum on their way to the dealer, changed their minds and bought other brands instead.<\/p>\n

After the dust settled it turned out it was four or five assholes causing all the commotion.\u00a0 Who knows what their problem was?\u00a0 They eventually went away, but not before nearly destroying the forum with fights and recriminations.\u00a0 As I recall, they hid behind screen names and logged on through proxy servers so that they could not be identified or traced.\u00a0 Anonymity, just as in Mountain Grove MO.<\/p>\n

Ah well, on to other things.<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

When I speculated on what might have happened<\/a> at the Reno Air Races last week, an alert reader left a comment<\/a> that answered one or two questions while at the same time raising additional ones.<\/p>\n

In a photograph of the accident plane, some smoke is visible.\u00a0 I wondered about that, but my reader said it’s just steam and is normal.\u00a0 To save weight and allow for additional streamlining, owners strip the radiators from unlimited class Mustangs, replacing them with total-loss systems that boil off coolant during short-duration races.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the same photo (above), it’s clear that a tab is missing from the left horizontal tail.\u00a0 I thought it was a trim tab<\/a>, but my reader said it’s a servo tab<\/a>.\u00a0 Other online sources<\/a> claim the Mustang didn’t have servo tabs.\u00a0 Whatever it was, though, servo tab or trim tab, another unlimited class Mustang lost the same tab during a 1998 race<\/a>. \u00a0 That failure, which also occurred in level flight at about 450 knots, resulted in a sudden uncommanded 10G pullup, blacking out the pilot.\u00a0 Fortunately the pullup was straight and the pilot came to at 9,000 feet, still climbing.\u00a0 He was able to recover and land safely.\u00a0 Here’s a photo of that Mustang, showing the missing tab:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So apparently loss of the servo or trim tab at speed can result in a 10G pullup.\u00a0 Anyone who’s flown knows that the faster you go in level flight, the more the nose wants to rise and the more forward (down) trim you need to apply to the controls.\u00a0 If the trim tab suddenly ripped off, you’d get a lot of aft stick pressure all at once and the nose would suddenly rise.\u00a0 But a 10G pullup with no warning?\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 Those are some severe stick forces … and a lot of Gs (keep in mind that a 200-pound pilot will weigh 2,000 pounds at 10 times the force of gravity)!<\/p>\n

Which brings me to this photo, and one of the other things I’m wondering about, that eerily empty canopy:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

With the small cockpit and extra-small racing canopy, the pilot’s head should be visible if he’s sitting in any sort of normal position … and there is only one position to sit in, and that is the normal one.\u00a0 If his straps are tight … we’re talking not only a lap belt but shoulder straps and even crotch straps to keep his butt from sliding forward on the seat pan … he’ll still be sitting upright after a 10G pull.\u00a0 Even if he blacked out from the sudden pull and his head slumped forward, if he were still sitting upright his head should still be visible in the canopy.<\/p>\n

But if his straps were loose and he submarined during that sudden 10G pull, with his hips and legs sliding forward and the rest of his upper body sliding down … well, that might explain why he’s not visible in the canopy in that split second before impact.<\/p>\n

Again, I’m not saying I know what happened … everything I say here is amateur speculation, albeit speculation based on personal experience flying fast movers.\u00a0 The NTSB will figure out what happened, and they’ll tell us in time.<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

The Friday crash in Reno was one of two that weekend.\u00a0 On Saturday, the pilot of a T-28 crashed during an air show at Martinsburg, West Virginia<\/a>.\u00a0 They didn’t release his name at first, but word flew around the F-15 community that he was one of us, a fellow Eagle Driver.\u00a0 It turns out he and I flew for the same squadron, though at different times.<\/p>\n

This morning someone posted his obituary on the squadron email list.\u00a0 Not to make light of his death in any way, I want to quote the first line:<\/p>\n

\n

John (Jack) W. Mangan III, 54, of Cornelius NC, died suddenly on Saturday, September 17, 2011 in Martinsburg, WV.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Fighter pilots: masters of understatement.\u00a0 I raise my glass to you, Flash, and to all my fallen comrades.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hat tip to Nancy Nall for pointing me toward this New York Times article about small town gossip run rampant on an internet forum.\u00a0 People in Mountain Grove, Missouri used to swap gossip face to face at Dee’s Place, but these days they have ” … shifted from sharing the latest news and rumors over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,3,14,2,6],"tags":[276,277,275,274],"class_list":["post-7620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-current-events","category-flying","category-military","category-personal","category-a-series-of-tubes","tag-air-show-crashes","tag-fighter-pilots","tag-mountain-grove-mo","tag-topix"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7620"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7651,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7620\/revisions\/7651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}