The spirit of Larry Walters . . .
. . . lives on!
https://www.wired.com/2009/07/dayintech-0702/
'A guy in a jetpack' seen flying at 3,000ft within few hundred yards of passenger jet landing at LA airport
The pilots of a passenger jet landing at LA International reckon they were approached by a mysterious flyer equipped with what was described as a "jetpack," passing within a few hundred yards of their aircraft. The encounter occurred Sunday evening local time as American Airlines flight 1997, flying out of Philadelphia, was …
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Tuesday 1st September 2020 22:31 GMT jake
Same question.
The A321 has, what, 45 or 50 windows down each side? Every time I ever flew commercial, people had their cameras out when coming in for a landing ... this was true even in the days of film! These days, everybody has a camera, and everybody loves that aerial shot. Shirley somebody managed a picture (or six) of this thing, even if it was somewhat blurry. It's not like the lighting would have been bad at ~6:30PM local time. (This is a daily commuter flight, currently over the Iowa/Nebraska state line, just south of Osceola as I type.)
In the words of the GreatUnwashed, pics or it never happened.
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 10:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Same question.
in theory, you're right. But then, it's not like many people out of those 45 or 50 window seats look through them. My impression and memory of flying as a passenger is that most people just hunch over and prey to their screened Masters reverently held in their paws.
Also, it's not like that rocket-riding individual would have kept pace with the aircraft for people to notice and point their Masters towards the strange phenomenon, it probably lasted no longer than a few seconds and they parted their ways.
Now, I wonder, which one of the thousands of jetpacks in use in California it might have been...
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 15:58 GMT chivo243
I actually saw it twice, once in the morning, on the way to a Gaelic village, yes Gaelic, I would hate to sound crazy twice in one thread, https://www.village-gaulois.org/en/p110-getting-to-the-gallic-village.html and then on the way back in the late afternoon, both times I got really Tabloid looking photos!
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 08:15 GMT Torben Mogensen
I wonder why commercial airplanes don't have cameras recording everything visible through the cockpit windows? That way, you could review all sightings after the plane lands. Such cameras would not need extensive testing, as they do not affect the flight (except by drawing a small amount of power, and even that could be replaced by batteries).
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 09:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Cameras out the window
I wonder why commercial airplanes don't have cameras recording everything visible through the cockpit windows? That way, you could review all sightings after the plane lands. Such cameras would not need extensive testing, as they do not affect the flight (except by drawing a small amount of power, and even that could be replaced by batteries).
I suspect aircrew would object for the same reason that policemen like to have body cameras that can be accidently turned off when suspects are about to fall down some steps.
Civil aviation is not as clean and orderly as it seems. There are hundreds of near misses reported - and probably vastly more unreported - each year plus thousands of bad landings and takeoffs, and plenty of accidents and other incidents on the ground for which blame might be more fairly apportioned.
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 10:33 GMT Cuddles
For the most part cameras just aren't good enough. The average dashcam is just barely able to make out a number plate from a few metres away. They're great for having a record of nearby events leading up to a crash, since the important details tend be quite big and close. But dig up some footage and try making out useful detail on something happening just 100m away. Same for police body cameras. They can record interactions with a person right in front of you, but they're useless for seeing anything further - basically if you can't talk to it, you can't record it usefully either. Same again for all the action and sport cameras around, which are essentially the same thing in a slightly different package - it's actually a lot of effort to get any decent footage because you have to be a lot closer than you might think to be able to see anything at all. There's a reason real cameras with decent lenses and zooms still very much have a place in the world.
So sticking a dashcam on planes would be largely useless. Something close in aircraft terms is going to be much too far away for a dashcam to actually see. Same for mobile phones; as much as they've improved, they're really not up to capturing good pictures of a fast-moving, human-sized object from several hundred metres away, even before you start worrying about the state of the windows. Use a better camera, and now you need to worry about zoom, depth of field, and so on, and are unlikely to capture useful footage without significant manual intervention.
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 10:45 GMT Stork
Totally agree
The photo linked is taken with a DSLR and at slight tele (70mm, ~105 on Full frame), on a clear day and through a clean window.
In that case you may make out something slightly larger than a person at 100m distance. With a mobile which is wide angle, not likely
https://casaflordesal.com/index.php/en/gallery-en?near-us?132
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 11:58 GMT Mike 137
Alternatively
"Use a better camera, and now you need to worry about zoom, depth of field, and so on, and are unlikely to capture useful footage without significant manual intervention."
During WW2 reconnaissance fighters were fitted with forward facing wing tip cameras with 20" (500 mm) fixed focus lenses. Diving at the target at 300 mph they produced remarkably clear pictures. It can be done - see the relevant plates in "Most Secret War" (R. V. Jones 1972).
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Thursday 3rd September 2020 13:16 GMT Cuddles
Re: Alternatively
Exactly, although it's not so much the sides but the variability that is the problem. If you have cameras set up to point in a specific direction and focus at a specific distance, with pilots given detailed instructions on exactly how and where to point the plane, you can no doubt get some decent pictures. When the idea is to just generally record everything in every direction at all times just in case something turns up, it's rather more difficult.
The other thing to bear in mind is that dashcams aren't really there to watch other people. If I'm driving perfectly sensibly and legally and someone suddenly drives into the side of me, my dashcam isn't likely to have seen anything. But it will be able to prove that I wasn't the one at fault, without needing to have a clear view of anything else. If you want to actually have a decent view of everything happening around you, that would be much more difficult even for a car.
After all, that's exactly what self-driving cars need, and current efforts already compromise with mostly just forwards and backwards views, limited resolution, and so on. Take the most advanced vision system from a self-driving car, fit it to a plane, and see how good a view you get of person-sized objects a couple of hundred metres away. It's not technically impossible, but you're going to need a hell of a lot more equipment than just sticking a regular camera in the cockpit and hoping to get a good picture of anything.
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 14:03 GMT Stork
Back of virtual envelope calculation
If we assume a distance of 100m, 1 degree Field Of View (FOV) is equivalent to 1.75m, appr the height of a person.
Most phone cameras have lenses with a view like a 28mm (in 35mm film), which is about 46 degrees in height. If we assume a useful image* of 2000x3000px, 1 degree is about 2000/46=23 pixels. If the item is perpendicular to your position, that is.
*) some phones claim to have higher resolution, but if it is useful is another question.
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 16:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Anything placed in the cockpit will require extensive testing and certification, even if its not critical to flight. A simple camera that falls off its mount and hits the wrong control at the wrong time could be a disaster. A simple electronic component bursting into flame can destroy an aircraft (reference a recent airworthiness directive for Cirrus as an example)
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 17:12 GMT Robert Carnegie
Re: Dash cam?
The main use of dashcam is to sell footage of the incident to show on TV - or so it appears. Once off the ground (that is a point), an aeroplane isn't going to see much that's interesting and that isn't going to be covered by the accident investigation anyway. And anything on board costs fuel to carry.
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 08:59 GMT Phones Sheridan
Re: 3000ft!!
That wasn't flying, that was falling with style!
Seriously tho, his first crossing was more of a powered glide, he launched at 8000ft not sea level, people have been power gliding across the channel for over 40 years. For me, his best achievement was his hoverboard crossing where he did take off from the beach. Yes he had to make a fuel stop half way across, but maintaining a steady 30-40 feet requires a lot more skill than jumping out of a plane at 8000 feet and travelling downwards all the way.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/04/franky-zapata-crosses-channel-by-hoverboard-at-second-attempt
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Tuesday 1st September 2020 21:56 GMT AdamWill
hah
"And before people start with the conspiracy theories that this is government tech gone wrong, LAX is about 100 miles from Edwards Air Force Base, 160 miles from Vandenberg Air Force Base, and 270 miles from Area 51 – and all would likely be well outside the range any wearable flying device would be able to travel."
Well, that's all *you* know...
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 10:28 GMT tony72
Re: Mistaken identity
Agreed. Three hundred yards is a long way away; if you assume the guy is 2 yards tall, and you hold up a ruler three feet away from you, the guy's apparent size on the ruler would be 1/4 of an inch. Not very big at all. Highly unlikely that you can reliably identify something that size at that range. I'm sure whatever it was kinda looked like a guy in a jetpack, but it most probably was not.
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 01:34 GMT Barking mad
Did the guy look like Elon Musk?
Jack Northrop Field. 3 miles east of LAX. To quote Wikipedia:
"SpaceX and its spinoff The Boring Company are headquartered at the southeast end of the airport. The Boring Test Tunnel cuts runs just under the fence line at the north-east corner before running under West 120th Street. Tesla Design Studio is located at the airport as well. "
'nuf said.
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Wednesday 2nd September 2020 05:43 GMT jake
Re: Did the guy look like Elon Musk?
It wasn't feet to meters confusion, it was altitude vs distance to landing confusion. It stated clearly in TOA that the aircraft was at 3000 feet 10 miles from LAX. That would put 'em somewhere over South Gate (ish). That's almost all residential.
I was making a smart-ass reply because I know that large passenger jets are typically at or under 1000 feet as they go over Crenshaw Blvd. (the East end of Hawthorne Municipal Airport's runway) and down to around 750 by the time they get to Prairie Avenue (the West end of Hawthorn).
The East end of LAX and the West end of Hawthorne are about two miles apart east-west, and about a mile north-south. Note that the passenger jets don't actually fly over Hawthorn, they parallel it about a mile to the north.
Hawthorn (HHR) is the real name of Jack Northrop Field ... It's probably easier to go ogle it than it is to picture it from my description. Clear as mud?
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