To kind of tie into the “how i became a pilot” thread. I remember studying and sitting my exams, there was some utterly ridiculous stuff that was “required” knowledge.
So post some of the stupid things in any career that you had to learn that you would never use again.
To kick off.
(actual exam question) how far can you see in 3d?
My thought response… who the ***k cares. I paid a fortune to some overpriced medical examiner to say my eyes are ok, he didn’t stick a label on my forehead with my eyesight limitations. Maybe they should be placarded on my eyelids.
How does the internals of a laser ring gyro work. Dither, laser lock etc.
My thought response… it either works or it doesn’t, i am certainly not going to get my tool kit (which i smuggled through security) and start doing a MacGyver with a chocolate bar wrapper and a hosties hair pin and repair it whilst flying at the same time as not letting my lobster bisque get cold…
I could never understand those questions, and for the life of me, i can’t understand why i cant forget them
All the different altitude settings you can encounter, QNH, QFE, QFF… It’s not as if I will ever use them. I get that we need to know the design and functions of the flightdeck instrument, controls and layout because most of them are used in ground ops too. And perhaps once you get to testing barometric instruments you need the above functions but I haven’t seen anyone do that yet, besides our pressure equipment has a simple dial that put the desired pressure in, you can then compare this on the instruments.
In regards to your point 2- I appreciate your point (and lobster bisque, of course) but sometimes knowing the 101 of something helped me “jury rig” a temporary fix.
I think the point is that having a generic idea about stuff is better than to be completely blind about it.
That said, I have been wrong before…
Yeah, nobody is going to jury rig a ring laser , if it’s broken it needs to go to calibration and by any definition back to the manufacturer. Now if it were something in GA then you have a bit more leeway to make it work I suppose but I doubt they use a lot of ringlaser. Don’t know that for sure though.
While a good grasp of systems knowledge is important for a pilot, I have always held the opinion that if something breaks, the pilot’s job is to get the aircraft safely on the ground and hand it over to a mechanic or technician. I don’t mess with things too much in flight if they fail. If there is a procedure in the QRH then that will be followed of course, but that is about the extent of it.
As for useless information that has stuck with me since training…
9 x the square root of the tire pressure gives you the speed at which dynamic hyroplaning will start.
Token ring networks. Whenever I saw a question relating to them I thought, if I ever encounter one I will have to grab a book anyway. 25 years later I still haven’t seen one. For me they exist only in books and slides.
When I began my IT career (no 3) , Broken Ring was all that we had at my first two employers. What a pain, both logical and physical. I can tell you that it was a b–ch to troubleshoot. You were stuck without a network analyzer because if one station went down, so did the whole network. A scope helped ID the offending system. Cables, switches, gateways, and the like were all neanderthal grade.
One skill that I used to have, which is pretty much evaporated, is tuning up a car. You know, replacing points, condenser, and plugs after you properly gapped them, then setting timing and dwell. That was a necessary skill for high school kid not wanting to miss a date because your 12 year old hand-me-down ride wouldn’t start. I remember my dad making me learn how to do it so that he wouldn’t be the only mechanic in the house. At least he invested in a good timing light
They made a fantastic clicking noise (honestly). Very prevalent in IBM based places. I personally used to like the ol coax based 10BASE5, where network admins would run around the building trying to find bad cable terminators. Good times.
, if it’s broken it needs to go to calibration and by any definition back to the manufacturer. Now if it were something in GA then you have a bit more leeway to make it work I suppose but I doubt they use a lot of ringlaser. Don’t know that for sure though.
