A380 Cockpit

[Arnel]

Is that Pheonix running on the centre screen?!? Does this thing have a built in MAME cabinet or something?!?!

Neil.
a.k.a. Arnel

[Tepic]

So they can only employ left-handed pilots and right handed co-pilots then?

I'm pretty sure it isn't that hard to adapt, I did it all the time after 10 hours on my vic

But as has been said the 'puter does all the flying nowdays

[stealthbanana]

Computers in planes, hmmm.

One of my cousins is a pilot and was telling me when he was coming into land in a new 757 and every instrument went dead, all he had was his eyes and the artificial horizon. He landed it with all the fire engines and stuff lining the runway.

Turned out that the forward septic tank of had sprung a leak and covered all the computers.

[Saint Sandy]

Computers in planes, hmmm.

One of my cousins is a pilot and was telling me when he was coming into land in a new 757 and every instrument went dead, all he had was his eyes and the artificial horizon. He landed it with all the fire engines and stuff lining the runway.

Turned out that the forward septic tank of had sprung a leak and covered all the computers.

those pesky American flight attendants, just can't trust them eh?

[defsdoor]

Theres a story - I don't know how true it is - of when helicopters joined the police in pursuits etc.. and the helicopter radios down saying something like "Car 57 - hes to your left now" - followed by all the pursuing police cars stopping, squeezing out their windows to look on the roof of there car to see what number they were.

I think they have it on the dash of the cars now too

[matt]

Great site - I've been looking for a good source of airplane stats.

matt

[Spoongod]

Nice picture.

[random]

Does it run MAME?

[Little stoned kiwi]

[kalmar]

Considering how often I've seen computers crash, all that tech in a plane is a bit unsettling.

A year or two back, when the new ferries were introduced for the Orkney and Shetland runs, the public were allowed to look round them.

It was a bit unnerving to see that all the built in computers on the bridge were running Windows 2000.

Because it works

[Source: Article by Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor, *Sunday Herald*
(Scotland), 10 Oct 2004]

The Royal Navy's new, state-of-the-art destroyer has been fitted with combat management software that can be hacked into, crashes easily and is vulnerable to viruses, according to one of the system's designers who was fired after raising his concerns.

Gerald Wilson, who has 25 years' experience designing naval software, worked for Alenia Marconi Systems (AMS) in a joint venture with Bae Systems and the Italian company Finmeccanica on the combat system for the Type 45 destroyer, which will rely on Microsoft Windows 2000. System failure in action, he says, would leave the ship blind, defenceless, and as good as sunk.

Dismissed after voicing his fears to the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA), Wilson wants to give evidence to the parliamentary defence select committee about the software.

Last night he told Channel 4 news that "the use of Windows For Warships puts the ship and her crew at risk, and the defence of the realm".

There are also plans to install a similar Microsoft Windows-based
computerised command system on Britain's nuclear submarines. Wilson said: "It is inconceivable that we could allow the possible accidental release of nuclear missiles. The people who survived such an exchange, if any, would certainly regard such a thing as a crime against humanity. And I can't help feeling that even planning to deploy such systems on Windows, with its unreliability and lack of security, is itself some sort of crime in international law."

-------------

The Navy's Smart Ship technology is being considered a success, because it has resulted in reduced manpower, workloads, maintenance and costs for sailors aboard the Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown. However, in September 1997, the Yorktown suffered a systems failure during maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, VA., apparently as a result of the failure to prevent a divide by zero in a Windows NT application. The zero seems to have been an erroneous data item that was manually entered. Atlantic Fleet officials said the ship was dead in the water for about 2 hours and 45 minutes. A previous loss of propulsion occurred on 2 May 1997, also due to software. Other system collapses are also indicated. [Source: Gregory Slabodkin, Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water, Government Computer News, 13 Jul 1998, PGN Stark Abstracting from http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1998/July13/cov2.htm]

[teamonkey]

Is that the controller for Steel Batallion on the 360?

[Bubba]

I fucking hope so

Cheers

Bubba

[F-ZeroOne]

I'm scared by that pic. I mean where's the big stick thingies???

Airbusses are Fly-by-wire. The big stick thingies are the dinky Quickshot II's next to the seats.

So they can only employ left-handed pilots and right handed co-pilots then?

Dead sensible that eh!

"The big stick thingies" are known as yokes, and are the domain of bomber pilots and airline pilots [1].

In military applications, sidestick controllers have caused some concern due to the prospect of piltos being wounded in the relevant arm. When Israel was developing the Lavi prototype fighter back in the 80s they actually opted for a central stick for this very reason.

There are alternatives to fly-by-wire. I once got to tour a B-17 bomber. There were cables running along the walls, and it took me a little while to work out that the B-17 is also a "fly-by-wire" aircraft - those cables led directly from the yokes to the control surfaces...!

[1] And pilots of the P-38 Lightning.

[Yak]

Israel has a flying Lavi?

[rowan]

Looks suspiciously like Windows to me with a command window open in the
lower left.