Hurricane Rita: a photo journal
i am going to post as much as possible over the next few days until i loose 1. power or 2. internet connection. the following photos were taken this morning just before 8 a.m. i do have to ferry several planes to mexia texas (near waco) and plan on taking pictures of the fleeing traffic. we'll see what happens.
the first two: 1. looking NNE from my driveway 2. East and 3. SSE
Stand in the middle of your home, take a picture. Turn, take a picture. Repeat until you've done a full circle, then repeat for each room in the entire house. Burn them to a CD and take them with you.
I know you're 50 miles inland, but this is a very impressive storm.
done. i am, however, flying back from mexia today. as the track is going, i'm now on the west side of the storm which is better.
another thing that sucks at present is EVERYONE is using their cell phones and it's phucking up the system. you can make land line calls but the cell phone? you might get through about every 10th or so attempt.
i am going to post as much as possible over the next few days until i loose 1. power or 2. internet connection. the following photos were taken this morning just before 8 a.m. i do have to ferry several planes to mexia texas (near waco) and plan on taking pictures of the fleeing traffic. we'll see what happens.
This link may make interesting companion piece - updates every 30 mins if you remember to refresh
Thanks for link, Cyc. Never found it before.
k, it was an interesting day. i requested to be picked up at a local airport to my house so i wouldn't have to worry about traffic. heh. i didn't realize it would be AIR traffic! the sugarland airport, a muni, was the bussiest i've ever seen it. small terminal and people were over flowing to the front porch as well as the back. following are a couple of pics from the air of the main ramp and the next is a bunch of planes waiting for an "intersection departure". there were at least 10 others waiting at the threshold.
the next are various circuits out of the city via hwy 90A, hwy 59S, hwy 59N as well as a few others:
on the way home we were talking about the door coming open and how it affects the airplane. not 5 minutes later the phucker blew! and a shot of downtown just for kicks....oh, yeah, when the door gave way, we were north of houston enroute to DWH or David Wayne Hooks airport. we thought we'd fixed the problem but on take off from there, right before rotation the door blew again. abort take off. *think* we fixed the door again. nope. right after rotation BAM! we are committed to take off so we do. then after we assess the situation, we continue the flight back to la porte airport with the door open. in a single engine it's really no big deal but in a twin you have to hang onto it and keep it as shut as possible. safe? yes and no. if you know what your doing and don't turn a non-emergency into an emergency, you'll be ok.
you guys remember the phuck up two weeks ago where the dumb ass ran out of fuel? got the pics today:
more: pretty benign for flipping a plane.....
then i think i mentioned somewhere here that our aerostar is no more. it was worse than i thought and definitely pilot error. homeboy stalled the airplane on take off, belly-landed and about 3 minutes after they egressed the phucker blew up!! no fucking shit people! it was right out of the movies! everyone escapes and BOOM! too bad the local news paper in Mexia (pronounced meh-hay-uh) don't put their shit online because they had a pic before the explosion, one during and one after on their front page. *un-fucking-believable*
almost 1:00 and no rain but gusts to 30ish mph.....
I take it you are staying, good luck.
yep and thx. it's been down graded to a cat 3 w/125 mph winds. i'll be lucky if i see 90 mph here....we'll see in a few hours though...
Galveston
asos (automated surface observation)
I doubt you're going to get much of anything if she hits so far Northeast of you. Just sit back, relax, have a couple drinks, and make sure you're prepared for the power to go out.
thx griff,
kit - i am, i just got back from the liquor store, NBN and i, we're stocked!
The weather channel showed a shot from a subscription website that shows a graphic of all air traffic. The traffic over Texas was nuts...mostly private with a few commercials in the air. :mg:
"I doubt you're going to get much of anything if she hits so far Northeast of you. Just sit back, relax, have a couple drinks, and make sure you're prepared for the power to go out".
Yep I live about 135 miles from where Katrena made land fall, 11 days w/out phone or power. Still no one has come by from insurance co. Look at some of my other post. Might be enlighten for some. So kick back and have a beer!
I talked to Fred ( plthijinx ) about 11am , he is fine , has power , water , and a hang over , but no Net connection .
Howdy Y'all! yeah xob the air traffic was NUTZ!
no damage, like zip said, just no net connection. i'm next door at NBN's house. he, however lost his back fence and will post a pic sometime today i think.
i wound up taking Mike and Karen from the flight school in at my house. i let them have my bedroom and i passed out (literally) on my lazy boy. funny as hell though, mike had to tow our tool truck with his trailer and fuel truck. i'll let the following pics tell the story. i did have a poker/hurricane party and won $45.
yeah, i was a little toasty! :drunk:
remember the guy i talked about that was with scinto the night he shot himself? here he is (2nd photo) i wouldn't allow him in my house. trust me on this one. it takes alot for me to not be hospitable, but i won't let someone in my home that i even think would steal from me.
Awww man that looks like fun!! I love poker. And beer. And storms. And dogs.
My good friend stayed behind (hunkered down) in Huntsville. We haven't heard from her yet. I could just shoot her - I offered her a plane ticket outta there, but she wanted to stay because of her pets. I guess I can't blame her.
she should be fine, seak. the worst of it happened east of there. louisiana and such. poor bastards, they've been through enough already. i have to fly relay again in the morning in the geronimo, door better be fixed by then!
yeah, i was a little toasty! :drunk:
Hey jinxy, your dog looks a bit like mine (see below - he enjoys displaying his manhod but no photoof that position....yet!) - mainly a French breed called Beauceron, but not pure - great temperament.
Just put the phone down on a shipowner we have a current contract with who is based in Houston (home) and Galveston (office). He's just got back home and phone just been turned on. Office he believes is still completely out but will be checking in morning - all blue skies and still air now outside he says!
pretty dog! cuba is mike's rot, i do though plan on getting a rot in november though...
yeah, the day turned out alright. can't complain....
The first thing I see when I go outside is my neighbor's flagpole. Old Glory may be a bit tattered, but never torn. This was encouraging.
At approximately 0400 today, we were awakened by a loud crash. Forty feet of my back fence just blew down into my yard.
We were more worried about the palm tree, but as it turns out it probably provided additional protection. A few more inches and the fence would have been inside my bedroom.
I could look at this as losing a fence, or I could look at it a gaining a boardwalk. The other pic is a rare view from my back neighbor's. His place is so nice, I'm thinking of suggesting we don't need to rebuild.
Damn NBN , See what happens when you PISS on your fence posts !!!!
On a short walk around the 'hood, it appears I got the only damage. I found a birdnest that was blown out of a magnolia tree, but remarkably intact. I took it home as a souvenir.
Glad to hear you guys are OK. :thumb:
Thanx, Brucie. Actually I was surprised there weren't any crossbow bolts sticking out the other side.
You want to rebuild that fence. Not for the sake of your view of your neighbors, but for the sake of the neighbors' view of you. We've seen what happens behind that fence. Think about it won't you?
NBN needn't worry.
Neighbor will build fence Sunday morning following Saturday night.
Looks like you all didn't get much than a good summer thunderstorm might have been able to do. After all the dire predictions, it is good to see that you've emerged relatively unscathed.
You are exactly right. All throughout we never got more than a hard drizzle and gusty winds in the 60 MPH range, but certainly no worse than a decent summerstorm. What was bad was the duration, 18 hours of this shit. Could have been a lot worse.
Glad you guys ducked it. Now let's set those posts a little deeper this time... unless a view of your neighbor is what you really are going for...
I heard from my friend - she is fine. She says they didn't even lose power or anything!
well i've got one. and go freaking figure that when i left my house this morning at 5:30 i forgot my camera for my helicopter relay mission. only good news out of this is i got to fly the
geronimo which is valuable twin time ($160/hr) for free and get paid to do so. but that's mute in comparison to what i saw today people. my post was Abbeville Louisiana, same as with Katrina. Abbeville is 90% under water. the coast from at least there to into Texas looks as if the jolly green giant himself (not being so jolly) took a straw broom and swept the gulf onto the mainlands. you could see wind swaths and the water that came in with them. La has been losing it's marshlands for a while now, and thanks to Rita, more is lost. i circled over a VOR (aerial navigation transmitter) for about 3 hours plus and looked in awe at the destruction the whole time. fields, houses, trucks, cars, trailers, you name it, destroyed. if we are still doing the relay missions this weekend, i'll get some pics for sure. you see pictures and video on TV. that's one thing. Busterb, just damn bro. i know katrina was worse but i didn't make it that far east on the missions to even grasp what i saw today. just damn. i feel for everyone that has suffered these recent tragedies.
Okay, I'm sure I missed the explanation somewhere, but:
1) What is a helicopter relay mission?
2) How does one fly it in a fixed wing aircraft?
lol, right! this goes back to katrina, and rita did the same thing: the radio repeater towers were knocked out offshore so a helicopter company contracted us to relay the choppers flight plans to their base. i.e. go circle over said given point and fly there for several hours, take flight plans and radio them to their base in Galveston since they can't hear one another. yesterday i was over abbeville for about 5 hours before returning to my airport for fuel and a quick bite then i went to a fix southwest of Abbeville for about 3 hours. it can be boring but, hey, it's free time in the aircraft.
So, essentially, you were an airborne human repeater?
yep. sample call:
"Relay 1, Relay 1, 814 off of west cam214 enroute to westcam 300, 30 minutes, 4, and 60 gallons." pretty self explanatory, helicopter 814 is leaving oil rig west cameron 214 and he's going to west cameron 300 and it's going to take 30 minutes to get there, there are 4 on board and he's got 60 gallons of fuel on board.
so i copy that down and radio base operations and give them the info. then when the dude is landing he calls and reports that to which i relay that to base ops.
or sometimes after the enroute portion they'll just say 30, 4 and 60.
ok, i have some more pics, not from the abbeville area, but Sabine Pass/Beaumont area that was slightly less hit. yeah, it's where the eye went through but either the damage wasn't as bad or they've done a bang up job in a week cleaning things up. the first coupla pics are the shoreline where there used to be a beach but the runoff ate it up, eight more pics to follow...
this rig was stuck in the channel leading to port author and the second is/was an area where houses were. hopefully trailers or something that was easily moved by man.
these pics were taken from 9,500 feet so please excuse the quality....
the next two are of still flooded low lying areas
more low areas. in the second one here if you look hard enough you can see the direction of the wind during the hurricane
a small residential area devistated and another of the texas coastline, i just thought it made a cool pic
and finally can anyone tell me the purpose of the diamond shaped cuts in the ground? and the last one is a rig being taken in for repairs through the houston ship channel.....possibly more pics tomorrow. i have the 6 a.m. shift.
I found a picture of your and NBN's neighborhood!
Glad they are lucid enough to follow basic safety rules and that none of those arms are directly pointed at someone else's head.
it looks like you could just give those 2 ships a shove , provided the channel was deep enough ,
Just imagen , the "Fonzerelli touch does it again !!!!!"
I was installing a BIG truck scale a few years back , the scetions didn't want to fit togather , I had Iron workers with 6 foot pry bars prying this way and that way , I had every body stop ( they were working against each other ) , I walked around survieying the situation , stoped , kicked one part and the WHOLE structure shifted and fell into place , I just looked up and said " HEEYYYY !!!!!"
yesterday i left my camera behind since i knew i was going to be over the same area. turned out to be a mistake. i could've taken a movie of me flying backwards! the winds were strong enough out of the SSE that all i had to do was drop the flaps and back off the throttle and PRESTO! i was flying backwards at about 3 knots!
:eek:
Like the gulls do as they "surf" over the waves looking for a tasty morsel?
yeah, i'm telling you, it was wild. i was laughing my ass off! then after a little while something did freak me out though. there are temporary flight restrictions, TFR's, everywhere in that region from the surface to 5,000 feet AGL and eventhough I was at 9,500 a light twin (maybe a baron?) came out, flew past me, turned around and went back to where it came from leaving me perplexed as to whether i'd busted a TFR or not. i called "flight watch" and confirmed that i was in fact legal. maybe it was just someone goofing around. i don't know. still left me freaked. he passed within a mile of me.
If you're flying directly into that strong of a head wind, what kind of special techniques are needed? Would you try to use less banking and more rudder to turn out of it? I would imagine that once you banked, the wind would catch you and toss you around pretty fast.
it's not as bad as you would think. in fact when your in "slow flight" - a technique taught at the private/student pilot you learn to turn the aircraft with the rudder only. if you use aileron you run the risk of stalling a wing and entering a spin. on the other hand you can only use so much rudder or you can still enter a spin. double edged sword. but, to answer your question, you let the airplane weather-vane into the wind and when you want to turn with such a strong wind all you do is put in a teeny bit of rudder and when the wind hits the upwind side of the plane then yes, it will turn you quickly but nothing uncontrollable since your not banking but yawing in the turn.
clear as mud?
I got it I think.
If you're flying at -3, you would lose a lot of lift immediately once you turn, huh? You would want to be at full throttle before turning at all?
in the configuration that i was in, yeah, so i recovered before i turned. add power, take out a notch of flaps and simultaneously gracefully lower the nose, increase speed, another notch out and so forth until your back to "cruise" settings. that's the procedure for manuver recovery, i just made sure i had foward speed. let me think about this though. did i have to do the recovery proceedure? probably not. it could have been a sporty recovery but i don't think i would have entered a spin. i did the recovery because i had all kinds of shit laying around the cockpit. i.e. kneeboard, clipboard, books, maps and such and a spin might have stirred it all up so....
from
Here so you can see the figures
In order to discuss how an airfoil produces lift or why it stalls, there are three terms we must understand. These are relative wind, angle of incidence, and angle of attack.
There is a noticeable motion when an object moves through a fluid or as a fluid moves around an object. If a thick stick is moved through still water or the same stick is held still in a moving creek, relative motion is produced. It does not matter whether the stick or the water is moving. This relative motion has a speed and direction.
Now let's replace the water with air as our fluid and the stick with an airplane as our object. Here again, it doesn't matter whether the airplane or the air is moving, there is a relative motion called relative wind. The relative wind will be abbreviated with the initials RW (see figure 3-3). Since an airplane is a rather large object, we will use a reference line to help in explaining the effects of relative wind. This reference is the aircraft's longitudinal axis, an imaginary line running from the center of the propeller, through the aircraft to the center of the tail cone.
Note in Figure 3-4 that the relative wind can theoretically be at any angle to the longitudinal axis. However, to maintain controlled flight, the relative wind must be from a direction that will produce lift as it flows over the wing. The relative wind, therefore, is the airflow produced by the aircraft moving through the air. The relative wind is in a direction parallel with and opposite to the direction of flight.
Let's look a little closer at how relative wind affects an airplane and its wings. As shown in Figure 3-3, the chord line of the wing is not parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. The wing is attached so that there is an angle between the chord line and the longitudinal axis. (We call this difference the angle of incidence.) Since we describe relative wind (relative motion) as having velocity (speed and direction), the relative wind's direction for the wing is different from that of the fuselage. It should be easy to see that the direction of the relative wind can also be different for the other parts of the airplane.
Very briefly, angle of attack is a term used to express the relationship between an airfoil's chord and the direction of its encounter with the relative wind. This angle can be either positive, negative, or zero. When speaking of the angle of attack, we normally think of the relative wind striking the airfoil from straight ahead. In practice, however, this is true only during stabilized flight which is in a constant direction.
Is stress on the aircraft itself ever a consideration? I mean just additional routine stress, not going beyond what it's rated to do.
Like, when I back up, I never to kick it into first gear while the vehicle is moving quickly backwards, because that's harder on the clutch. Sure it can do it but why force it to?
I remember about 40 years ago, I was shooting touch and goes at lake front airport in NO. I came in high and hot, so added a bunch of flaps. AND forgot to dump them on take off. I was about 50 feet off ground going no where wondering WTF. So I played with the trim tab and things got a little better.Then It dawned on me what was wrong, so I started dumping the flaps and the trim. Then it flew off like a bird.
That might have been the day I decided, this ain't for me.
that's a loaded question of sorts. you have the value Va, or maneuvering speed, to which the airspeed actually lowers as weight is reduced. Va is loosely defined as an airspeed at which abrupt or full control deflection can be done without over stressing the airframe. why does this speed decrease as weight is decreased? simple, the lighter the object, the easier it is to through it around. take my trip back from paragould a few weeks ago. ATC (air traffic control) had me fly through a towering cumulous cloud that was not yet cumulonimbus. i got thrown around, badly. in an airframe that was built circa 1958. i remember looking at my airspeed upon entering the turbulence and immediately reaching for the throttles. right when i grabbed the throttle levers i got jolted again but thankfully i caused me to bring the throttles to idle as to get my speed around 120. i was doing 140 but when i closed the throttles at the same time i pitched up as best i could and quickly slowed down. back to the question in a way, the aircraft has a gross takeoff weight of 3800 lbs. would it be easier or harder to throw that plane around fully loaded or half loaded. it's all about inertia. your more apt to overstress the frame at a lighter weight because it's easier for the airplane to react to an abrupt or full deflection or both. in that one instance ATC asked me my on course heading to which i replied 210ish but that i couldn't hold it (with a stressed voice due to the situation, it's not easy talking on the radio whilst being bounced around) so she asked if i wanted another altitude and i said i couldn't do anything about it at the moment because i was along for the ride.
clear as mud?
why did you quit buster? that's just a rookie mistake.....
Fred. I guess I just wasn't interested enough. And just maybe a little scared? I hated flying solo over the marshes east of NO. 40 years ago wasn't anything there. Kind of like driving around the same block, over and over in a car with no radio. Ha ha.
Then I went back overseas to work and just never tried again. Often wish I had.
Wife problems also. You couldn't pour her in a plane. :smack:
It does not matter whether the stick or the water is moving.
Wind tunnel. ;)
yeah, it's not for all people that's for sure. hehe, my exwife, ah shit. this is a good one, i hope i can type it out as good as it actually happened. the very last time she flew with me i had gone to kileen, tx to pick her up and fly her home. on the way back to houston we were at 7500 ft i think and when we were flying over lake summerville i noticed a plane flying at about 500 ft agl perpendicular to our course and i mentioned it to her. well she was looking out the window from the right seat and said that she couldn't see it. i said hang on and when the plane dissapeared from my view under the plane i counted to three to myself and then turned the plane on it's side to the right and said there he is right there. instead of an "oh ok" i got hit repeatedly in the right arm with her screaming to "put this plane back level you asshole!" i was like "what??" it wasn't like a snap role or anything. oh well. of course now that she's my EX-wife, i'm glad it scared the shit out of her... :D
"put this plane back level you asshole!" i was like "what??"
You evil basterd !!!!!
Did you have to scrape the shit from the seat ?????
it had me laughing so hard i didn't even notice!
Fred I'm going to make a wild guess that this is rice fields?
http://cellar.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=6979&stc=1your guess is as good as mine. that's why i was asking, maybe they are. it makes sense.....
My dad was a pilot for a long time (he's medically unfit now) and I have a few logged hours, but no ground school. My favorite thing was rolling back and forth. I LOVED it. Course, I love rollercoasters, too....
with these radio relay missions I've been on, I've rolled the wings, made the plane imitate a boat in 10 foot seas, done countless lazy 8's, flown backwards, flown forward at less than 5 knots as well as other countless bored out of my mind goofy tricks. at least today I get to go someplace. we have 2 planes left in Mexia, Tx. so i'm taking the Geronimo and 2 other pilots to get them. one of the planes though has a dead battery so I have to hand prop it. and then this coming Tuesday I have to fly some lady to Memphis for a seminar she's speaking at and then fly her back afterwards.
Fred. I'm going to stick this here, since couldn't PM it. We used a twin Otter on floats in Peru while I was working there.
I have always been facanated by sea planes , not only do you have to fly and land the plane but you have to deal with wind , tide and drift , you have to think about 5 steps ahead !!!
your guess is as good as mine. that's why i was asking, maybe they are. it makes sense.....
I'm nearly positive those are Sections of 4 Quarters. This land was probably divided for sale or granting back in the mid 1800's. Most of the land West of the Mississippi is surveyed and title given that way since the Homestead Act 140 years ago, but the article at the link below says Texas went by old land grants except in the panhandle, so this might be a more recent partitioning. People tended to clear a road of sorts all the way around their square quarter, which is why in ranching country nowdays you find paved roads that run for miles straight as an arrow and suddenly make a 90-degree turn; it's because the road reached a corner of the original holdings. Those regular squared fields you see from the air in Kansas and Missouri are composed of quarters too, and that is why they are so perfectly sharp-cornered. It's very possible those are fields in your photograph, but the reason they are shaped like that is the Homestead Act. I suspect the boundaries are flooded, which gives the impression of roads from reflections on the water.
http://www.uta.edu/paleomap/geol1435/township.htmok, i'll buy that tonchi. after the last few flights i deduced that they were not and couldn't be rice fields because they'd never been turned. cool, thanks for the info.
busterb, that's way cool! the first plane i ever flew was a beaver on floats on great slave lake in the great white north back in '84 and i loved it! i wish i could get ahold of that pilot today to let him know how much $ he's cost me! lol! nah, j/k, to thank him for my passion.
