When it was raining cats and dogs all day last Friday, I had to drive out to Sunken Meadow State Park because it was the last day I could buy a Stargazer's permit for 2017. I should have made the trip on a nice day, but I only remembered at the last minute. Driving on the LIE - the Long Island Expressway - reminded me of flying IFR - by "instrument flight rules" when you can't see where you are going while flying in the clouds, and have to rely on instruments.
in that case good thing you don't have IFR in your car unless you meticulously program it yourself. not like the the way the instrumentation flight path was altered on new zealand flight 901 "the accident was caused by a correction made to the co-ordinates of the flight path the night before the disaster, coupled with a failure to inform the flight crew of the change, with the result that the aircraft, instead of being directed by computer down McMurdo Sound (as the crew had been led to believe), was instead re-routed into the path of Mount Erebus." now I'm not that highly informed i just saw a weather channel story about this tragic incident in 1979. remember hearing about it too.. and i may be speaking wrong about ifr something i know little to nothing about so back to your reality glad you were able to navigate safely in that weather. all the best to your and yours
ReplyDeleteOh man, Air New Zealand flight 901. So terribly sad.. It is interesting that within the last 6 months I read about that crash again, at Wikipedia. I must have seen a reference to it somewhere. The shame is that, if I remember correctly, that the mountain is covered in snow and there is snow at the base, and there were clouds, which matched the color of snow, and they were down to about 1,500 feet. With the navigation errors, the pilots never stood a chance! Such carelessness on the part of the ground crew to make changes and never inform the pilots. I was fine in my driving - I could easily see all the cars in front and all around me. Thanks so much for posting a comment!
ReplyDeleteyou are so right about the visibility issue with that flight everything was the same color of white. no visual clues. just depending on programming. i saw the show just after my oldest son and daughter in law came back recently from an awesome trip to new zealand... they travelled from auckland north island to past milford sound south island via auto and hiked nearly everywhere for 2 weeks. awesome photos from those 2 including some pretty cool shots of the southern cross at night. yep we brought him up right to appreciate a dark sky and a really good camera now he dazzles his wife with fun stuff about the stars.
ReplyDeleteNew Zealand seems like a stunningly beautiful country! Never been there, although I was in Australia. I saw photographs our two daughters took while spending two weeks in New Zealand back in 2006.
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