FranLab Live: Shirts!!!!
Added 2024-03-17 23:52:35 +0000 UTCLast chance for C-64 shirts - https://www.customink.com/fundraising/c-64-basic-shirt
Comments
Ha Ha, shortcut P shift O
PFitzart
2024-03-21 05:56:40 +0000 UTCFran, actually the DC-10 and 747 main engine attach pins were specifically designed to fracture when enough force was applied. If an engine experiences an uncontained fan failure, or some other violent malfunction, and if it was violent enough, the pins would give way to prevent the engine from breaking the wing structure. So dropping an engine is terribly rare, but there have been many survival stories where just that happened. I saw the smoke of the DC-10 disaster in 1979 from the third floor of my middle school. It was very far away, but clearly visible. When I got home all the news was about the dropped engine and burning aircraft. Turns out it was American Airlines maintenance that caused the accident. The plane had heavy maintenance recently and they didn't follow the McDonnell Douglas procedures for removing an engine which involved a ton of fasteners and a lot of time. They decided on their own that using a forklift to lower the whole engine and wing attachment pylon as one assembly because there were a lot less fasteners and connections at the wing side of the pylon, the forklift was used to hold the engine up. The problem was that it was shift change and the forklift suspending the engine lowered slightly down. When they tried to put the engine and pylon back on the wing, they had trouble aligning the brackets that the mounting pins was slipped through. This caused a major structural mounting point to crack. The plane flew a number of flights with no problem while the crack at the pin mounting point grew larger. Eventually the rear pin gave way and the engine, at full takeoff thrust, pulled itself up over the wing and taking electrical and hydraulic lines with it. From there a number of systems failed and the pilots never knew they lost and engine as they tried desperately to regain control. But the DC-10 was a real hack job of technologies as they threw it together with proven systems on older planes to beat the L-1011 in first deliveries of a tri-jet engine airliner. The L-1011 was light years ahead of the DC-10 and even had a Collins autopilot that could perform the first hands-off takeoffs and landings. Now that's on new all jumbo jets. I have taken apart an entire DC-10 cockpit, and a 747-300 cockpit. The 747 was truly a work of art that was engineered with quality and safety worthy of a jumbo jet. The DC-10 was a collection of shortcuts where I had to shake my head again and again thinking "Why would they do this?". The materials used, the layout of panels, routing and handling of wire bundles, etc. was atrocious. Even the hundreds of circuit breaker rating caps numbers were oriented 90 degrees from the breaker description text light plate above. Looked like no one cared. Boeing routed cable bundles very creatively and there was real effort to separate systems electrically and mechanically. The DC-10 had a 14" diameter "wad" of wires leading from the flight engineers station down under the floor. What would happen if a single wire in the middle of that disaster burned up? How many adjacent wires would burn up? Douglas even used tri-wing screws that required special tools and were totally unnecessary compared to a regular Phillips head screw. There was no doubt the DC-10 was less expensive than the L-1011, but you got what you paid for. A plane that was designed with a critical cargo door failure that resulted in crashes costing hundreds of lives and earned a reputation of the "flying mausoleum". Much worse than the 737-MAX. Those DC-10s that are still left fly cargo. I don't think they transport passengers any longer. At least not in the US. I know this isn't about your shirt. I used NEC personal computers from 1980-87 and BASIC was burned into ROM. The Microsoft BASIC language utilized line numbers, like your Commodore 64, and shared a bunch of language similar/same, like "REM" but I don't know the syntax below it on your shirt. Amazingly enough, the early 1890s NEC computers STILL work! The 5" floppy drives, the large custom RGB monitor and CPUs just won't die. No viruses, no multi-tasking, a 65K max RAM, 4 MHz Z-80 processor, etc. Thousands/millions of those old 8 bit computers might add up to a common smart phone. But there was something about the early computers that were too simple to be corrupted. When I saw a 20/20 story about our ICBM launch systems still using 8" floppy disks, and old computers, the Air Force explained that they wanted it that way since those old computers were extremely reliable and could not be "hacked" as modern systems can. They only performed one function, the management and launch of an ICBM. NOT a system you want to see the "blue screen of death" when the launch key is turned.
Matt Wietlispach
2024-03-20 04:29:19 +0000 UTC
