Flight 77 Animation

Are there any pilots here who can comment on this?
Where's Billzilla when you need him?
 
I think it's telling that the focus of the CTers now seems to be not on what hit the Pentagon, but what hit the lightpoles.

They have a flight data recorder that shows a passenger airliner diving into the Pentagon, but are still questioning whether a passenger airliner dove into the Pentagon. Why?

.... Because of lightpoles. They have become this movement's equivalent of the 'magic bullet'.
 
Speaking of Light Poles, anyone have some good photos of all of the light poles and the generator that was hit?
 
Once again, a lot of questions, with the implied answers being nothing like the reasonable answers...

"The Pentagon Straight Ahead: Why start this turn? Why not push the nose straight down into the Pentagon?"
Implied Answer: He was incompetent.
Reasonable Answer: He knew what his objective was, and hitting the Pentagon at the angle that maneuvering the plan in that fashion would not achieve that objective.

"This pilot doesn't seem concerned about intercept.. ???"
Implied answer: He knew that there wasn't going to be any.
Reasonable answers: He was concerned but knew he couldn't do anything to prevent it; he had lots of other things on his mind at the time; he figured that no one would shoot him down over a city full of civilians.

"wow... no F-16's? No F-15's? The WTC has just been hit! Where are our defenses?"
Implied answer: The government was in on this all along.
Reasonable answer: The US didn't have defenses against this kind of attack at the time. Fighter jets take time to deploy even if we did have defenses against this kind of attack. The previous attack was hundreds of miles away; if any defenses would have been deployed, it would have been there.

"For someone who was refused to rent a 172 because he couldn't control it... He sure is doing a pretty good job in this 757 without having any training in type."
Implied answer: It was someone else piloting the plane.
Reasonable answer:Yes, he is. He has planned this moment for months, if not years, and he's giving it 110% of his concentration. Besides, the implication in the first question was that he was incompetent to fly this airplane. Now the implication is that he was too competent for the amount of training he received. Which is it?

"Still not a worry in the world of being intercepted. Hmmm...."
Implied answer: See question 2 above.
Reasonable answer: See question 2 above. There is no reason why he would be any more concerned with interception now than he was a minute and a half ago. Besides, it is unclear what counter-interception steps the questioner thinks would be appropriate for the pilot of a 757. Shields up, red alert, perhaps? Tell Chewbacca to punch it?

"Anyone have a book to read while this maneuver is completed? Where is the intercept?!?!?!?!?!?"
Implied answer: See above.
Reasonable answer: Chewbacca has apparently still not punched it. Besides, every FDR animation I have ever seen takes this long for anything to happen.

"Cue the Top Gun Music[.] Watch this incredible control and precision. Keep an eye on the yoke."
Implied answer: Someone with better training than the terrorists had was piloting.
Reasonable answer: He's coming in for the terrorist equivalent of a landing. It is not unreasonable to compensate more for small changes in the plane's orientation at that time, since failures have bigger consequences if the pilot doesn't.
 
Beleth said:
"For someone who was refused to rent a 172 because he couldn't control it... He sure is doing a pretty good job in this 757 without having any training in type."
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I thought the animation made him look like a terrible pilot. His altitude is all over the place. The flight path looks like a roller coaster.
 
"The Pentagon Straight Ahead: Why start this turn? Why not push the nose straight down into the Pentagon?"

I am a pilot. The reason is quite simple, he was too high. You cannot simply point an aircraft at a point on the ground and hit it. If you go a too steep and angle, the airspeed will increase to the point where the plane is not controllable. A highly skilled pilot might have made the steep dive and hit the target, but a low skilled pilot probably would not, so he did just what he should have to be successful.

ixp
 
Actually the watching the flight path reconstruction was quite interesting and a bit chilling. The comments, on the other hand, are beyond amusing:

"The Pentagon Straight Ahead: Why start this turn? Why not push the nose straight down into the Pentagon?"
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At least one explaination why - note the altimeter at this point: Altitude = 7900 feet. Note how close the plane is the pentagon at this moment.


"This pilot doesn't seem concerned about intercept.. ???"
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I didn't realize the "Pilot Concern" was one of the data points the FDR tracked.

"wow... no F-16's? No F-15's? The WTC has just been hit! Where are our defenses?"
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I didn't realize that F16 and F15 air defense data was included on the AA77 FDR. For all we know based on the data being simulated here, there could have been a squadron of F-16's buzzing the airspace.

"For someone who was refused to rent a 172 because he couldn't control it... He sure is doing a pretty good job in this 757 without having any training in type."
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Boy my (unprofessional, amateur) observation is that he looked like a rookie pilot, bouncing all over the place. And the Cessna wasn't rented to him because he "couldn't control it" at all, it was because he had "trouble" controlling and landing it. And while there's no proof he had 757 training specifically, there is evidence he had 737 simulator time.

"Still not a worry in the world of being intercepted. Hmmm...."
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How exactly would have "a worry of being intercepted" manifested itself in this simulation or in the AA FDR data?

"Anyone have a book to read while this maneuver is completed? Where is the intercept?!?!?!?!?!?"
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I'm confused a little by this. Is this implying that the manouver was taking too long to perform? Was there some prescribed amount of time it shuold have taken? I was under the impression (from the ATC comments) that it was actually a lot more severe and faster than one a commercial jet woud normally use. And again, more questions about an intercept. I'm confused - does the 757 have airdefense warning mechanisms that would have altered the pilot to a fighter jet intercept? Would these have shown up on the FDR?

"Cue the Top Gun Music[.] Watch this incredible control and precision. Keep an eye on the yoke."
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Top Gun? No - a Top Gun move would have been to aim at the side of the Pentagon, then pull up at the last second and do a barrel-roll flyby at 500MPH. This looks like someone pointing an airplane straight at an object and hitting it.

"The recording stops here. At 180 Pressure Altitude above the light poles. The actual altitude of this aircraft is 480 feet. Too high to hit the light poles"
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I don't know enough about these measurements to be able to comment intelligently, although I sense some mixing of numbers. What is "pressure altitude"? Why is this being stated as "above the lightpoles". What's the difference between that and actual altitude? Is it "above the ground" or "above sea level". Also - how far away from the Pentagon is the aircraft are these last numbers are recorded?

ETA: I would ask these questions directly to JDX on the LC forum, but of course I've been banned over for asking him these exact kinds of questions.

-Joytown
 
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"The recording stops here. At 180 Pressure Altitude above the light poles. The actual altitude of this aircraft is 480 feet. Too high to hit the light poles"
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Um...then how did they get knocked down?
 
KingMerv00 said:
Squibs bend things?

Edit: AND create the holographic illusion of a jumbo jet?
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Klingons/Romulans. CTers claim 9/11 was a pretext for war in the Middle East. Needless to say, this is extremely short-sighted.

Bush wanted to go universal.
 
Loss Leader said:
I thought the animation made him look like a terrible pilot. His altitude is all over the place. The flight path looks like a roller coaster.
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Did you ever see graphs of the FDR altitude data? From the time that the plane turned around and started heading to DC, there were long periods of solidly controlled altitude (flat lines), followed by periods where it looked like they were on a roller coaster. Obviously, Hanjour knew how to engage the autopilot, but at times when it wasn't in control, he had a hard time with altitude.

But the deal is, when you're trying to hold altitude, you are relying on your instruments, not nearly as much visual cues. You have to find the right pitch angle at that speed that results in a constand altitude, then if you notice that you're gaining, you have to push the nose down, but it's easy to over-correct, and all of this is done with instruments, therefore it takes more experience and skill. On the other hand, hitting a building is a visual thing - point the nose at the building. You can see from the FDR data that the altitude looked like a roller coaster up until the point where he made the final descent, then it was a straight line in.
 
According to JohnDoeX, the plane could fly perfectly happily into the building without striking the lamp standards. If that's the case, why go to the amazingly difficult task of faking their destruction? I mean, there were witnesses to the lamp standards being knocked over--are all those witnesses part of the conspiracy? What about the people who had to wire them with explosives? If you were planning to do a fake plane strike against the Pentagon, why would you throw in this gratuitous detail which makes it so much more likely that your cover will get blown?

Even more troubling: the question about the plane's altitude seems to be throwing doubt on the existence of the plane at all (surely no one is suggesting that a plane hit the pentagon but they faked the light poles anyway?). But then what's the stuff about "watch the joystick on approach"? If the whole FDR is bogus information for a flight that never happened, what's the point in doing a "fake expert pilot" for the last few seconds of the flight?

Has anyone ever come across a CT theory or theorist that wasn't just absurd on its face?
 
Joytown said:
"The recording stops here. At 180 Pressure Altitude above the light poles. The actual altitude of this aircraft is 480 feet. Too high to hit the light poles"
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1. Huh? Altimeter setting of 29.92 (when the hijackers took over the plane, at 33-35,000 feet well west of DC). If they don't change it, we have a 300 foot error between MSL and AGL? That means altimeter setting of a high pressure system, 30.22, in the Washington area. Without the actual barometric pressure setting at Reagan was that morning at about that time (1000 Local time would suffice) it is hard to analyze.

2. Without that info, where do they get "actuallly 480?'" Radar Altimeter?

The plane, when it hit the light poles, was a second or two away from impact at 460 knots to an impact point about 40 feet above mean sea level. At 3600 fpm it would take 5 seconds to sink 300 feet. I think the simulation stops before the plane went over the parking lot.

At 460 knots = 7.5nm per minute = 15,000 yds per minute = 45,000 feet per minute = 750 feet per second = 2.5 football fields per second. Are the light poles some 3750 feet from the wall of the Pentagon's E Ring that was hit?

Speed: Think "low pass" by a Blue Angels solo pilot for how fast they were going, roughly.
What is "pressure altitude"?
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Pressure altitude is referenced to local barometric pressure, which is measured in inches of mercury by a barometer. Pressue above mean sea level for that pressure setting. Standard day at sea level is 15 deg C 29.92 " Hg.
Why is this being stated as "above the lightpoles". What's the difference between that and actual altitude?
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They are full of beans, perhaps?
Is it "above the ground" or "above sea level".
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To get Light poles "above sea level" altitude, add height of lightpole to elevation of parking lot above sea level. (roughly 15-30 feet?)
See my earlier post, 2641about sea level and Pentagon, and the light poles.

Also - how far away from the Pentagon is the aircraft are these last numbers are recorded?
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Isn't that the question? FDR isn't real time, it is slices of time. Whoever made the emulation did what manipulation of raw data? I smell a conspiracy. :D

DR
 
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