The Airbus A320

My second flight was on an Airbus A320 with registration VT-ADS owned by Air Deccan. I am a total fan of Airbus and I strongly believe in the engineering superiority of Europe over the USA. Thus I made yet another set of deductions for my second flight and pondered again how many would be correct.

Deductions

The journey on the A320 would be much smoother than the 737. Reason : My belief that European engineering is superior to the Americans.

The plane would be all economy class. Reason : Air Deccan is a low cost carrier.

I could take a lot of pictures inside the aircraft. Reason : No food was served to the passengers and thus the flight attendants would just sit down.

I would be able to see the Anna University Dome. Reason : I knew from observation that all aircraft had full view of the campus during their approach.

Touchdown would be much smoother. Reason : I love Europeans :)

Conclusions

Right I was. The plane was smooth and handled perfectly. In spite of going through clouds very often, there was considerably less shaking than there would have been on a Boeing.

That was a simple one. Air Deccan charges more than Jet yet gives nothing to eat!

Wow I took a lot of photos. Inside the cabin, outside, etc. The plane was only 3/4th full, so I could get 2 windows all to myself.

Not only did I see the dome, I also saw people playing in the AU grounds!

The difference was too small to make out. So Boeing and Airbus stand at the same level :( .


I had also, in my awe-stricken state, forgotten to observe many things about the working of the aircraft during my first flight. For example in both flights I was sitting in full view of the wings and could see the control surfaces moving. It was only during the second flight that I observed a few things about the control surfaces.

The ailerons moved very little during the rolls. This is probably because of their being far from the fuselage on the side.

Flaps with their fairings are used with great efficiency in commercial jets. If not for them the plane could never fly at such low speeds required for landing.

Slats and flaps produce so much noise pollution. Contrary to expectations, about 40% of all the noise from an aircraft is from the slats and flaps. I experienced this first hand. Within the cabin the engine noise could never be heard. But before landing when the slats were deployed I was able to hear the whine of air around it. That must have been a lot of noise outside.

The spoilers or air-brakes are also used efficiently during landing.

I could clearly distinguish a series of sensors on the wings to measure various parameters like temperature, pressures, air-speed, etc.

Some Pictures



The A320 I was on. Registration VT-ADS


The sky looks blacker at 33000 feet.


A packet of chips blown up due to differential pressure.


The sensors that measure some parameters clearly visible.


Close up of a sensor in one of the flap fairings. Click to view large image.


The spoilers deployed to reduce air-speed.


Is the Captain looking at me!? Click to enlarge.

The Boeing 737

My first ever flight was on a Boeing 737-800 with registration VT-JGP owned by Jet Airways. In the research paper that we sent to NASA, the base of our design was comparable to the 737-900ER. Thus I had to read a lot about the 737s. All this translated into total transparent knowledge when I flew on the 737-800 that day.

On the eve of my first flight, before I knew which variant of the 737 I would fly on, I read the 737 manual and familiarized myself with the characteristics of all the variants. I made the following deductions and pondered how many of them would turn to be true.

Deductions

There was a 35/54 chance that I would be on a 737-800. Source : Wikipedia

The aircraft would have both I class and Economy Class. Reason : Andaman & Nicobar islands are a place where only the middle class and rich people could go and so the plane will have to have both classes.

The plane would have cramped spaces. Source : 737 Specifications from its manual.

I would feel nothing while flying. Reason : I am on a plane and flying! That is what people say.

I would see other planes flying under or over my plane. Reason : Madras Airport is a fairly busy airport.


Conclusions

What happened to my deductions...

I was on a 737-800(VT-JGP). Probability works!

The plane had both I class and Economy class.

The plane was cramped like a bus. The overhead storage spaces were big though and there was good legroom.

How wrong I was! I discovered something very peculiar, one that nobody who had a previous experience in flying has told me. Normally while travelling in trains or buses, one feels motion(jerk due to changes in acceleration) in one or two different directions. You may rock from side to side or forwards and backwards. Whereas in an aeroplane the jerks are in all directions! It is like hanging in space and rocking slowly in all directions. It was awesome!

I was right again. I saw a Srilankan take off immediately after mine and another plane flying under me near Marina Beach.

So overall I was correct in all but one deductions. That is neat for a first-time traveller.

Some of the pictures of the aircraft VT-JGP. Taken by others. I have a video that I will post later.

My first Flight and first research paper

Flying has been the fascination of mankind from time immemorial. Aeroplanes have been my fascination since my childhood. Naturally the first flight is an exciting experience, especially since I come from a middle class family where people rarely fly. So I was fairly excited when I was informed that I would be flying to Port Blair and back on two of the world's best selling aircraft.

But the entire episode is not without irony. Normally people see very little when they fly on an aircraft. Neither do they see the type of aircraft they are on nor do they see the ground below. I, being a student of photogrammetry, could not, in the least, forget to observe the ground below (in 3D of course). Even more importantly I could neither forget to see the aircraft because I have just finished a research paper on a futuristic aircraft design with one of my seniors and have submitted it to a NASA competition. And as if all this compulsion were not enough I won a prize for it too! (You can see the abstract of the paper here and the result declaration on this NASA page)

So as a result of all this compulsion to perform and of course a (hell) lot of fascination, it inclines me to think that a series of blogs on my most overwhelming experience on board aircraft will be quite a treat for myself when I read it after some years. Therefore, I will be writing a series of blogs on the same.

The Great Arc

I read very few books these days, but I am glad that The Great Arc was one among the few. It is wonderful book written by John Keay, an Englishman, about one of the greatest scientific feats of the 19th century. Before you start thinking about mile-long bridges or sky-high buildings, hey... There are things in life that people rarely know about and the science(and art) of Surveying is one of them.



I am in fact gifted to have learned this subject as part of my curriculum, though I wonder how many of my classmates share my opinion. People have often asked me what Surveying is. I am no expert in it and therefore my explanation does not make any impact on them. I say,"It involves getting the measurements from ground about the features there and transferring it to a map." People say,"Oh great. Is that all? You study only that for a year at college?" The point is I would recommend to these people the book I just mentioned.

The book is about a series of measurements made by two Englishmen, William Lambton and George Everest, of the entire Indian subcontinent spanning a period of fifty years. They made what are called triangulations across the entire subcontinent in times when there were no lights, no telegraph, no telephone, etc. It was no simple feat. For example, the beginning of the series of triangulations, called the Great Indian Arc of the Meridian, was at St.Thomas Mount in Chennai. A baseline of 12 Km was measured for some 50 days. The presicion with which these measurements were made was phenomenal. In a distance of about 1 m, the error would not exceed 1 mm. (In today's measurement the tolerances are 1 um in 1 m !!!). This was a stupendous task for times when no modern equipment like GPS were available. The author of the book goes so far to say that the amount of computations performed by the surveyors back then would take several days to complete in a supercomputer today.

The measurements were made in the field for years together in places where tigers roamed free and malaria wrecked havoc. There are more things I would like to mention but might end up writing an entire book!

The second name is probably familiar to many, George Everest. You guessed it, Mt.Everest is named after him, but not because he measured its height but because of the services he rendered by looking after the Great Arc for 30 years. This comes to show the respect these two commanded for their feats. Had it not been for the Great Arc we would never have had maps of India and we would never have known the heights of the Himalayas.

I read the book twice, once in my III semester and once in my IV. I found that it complemented my Survey course. I understood it better when I read it for the second time, since I knew a lot about the instruments like theodolites, levels, chains, etc.

The Great Arc was also publicised as a documentary in NDTV's Documentary 24x7. But it did not go beyond what I read in that book. I hope that I have made a little effort in bringing some light to this mammoth event that took place 200 years ago.

Links

Survey of India's Celebration

Surveying

P.S.: I took the photograph of the book myself. One of my many efforts in photography.

Enough is enough

I have been committing myself to a lot of projects lately. My last count shows me that I have five in hand. But it is time for introspection.

Being involved in a project is good. But it is also my responsibility to make sure that the project succeeds. I had thus far been under the impression that the more I do the more I win. But this is certainly not the case. So from now on enough is enough! I am going to take up no more projects but am going to complete the ones I am currently involved in, to perfection.

MY OPEN LIVING
This is for Atma anna

I am now fairly used to Ubuntu. I am doing almost everything in it. Some of the screenshots:















I haven't even spruced up my desktop using screenlets or widgets and even before that it looks so good. I will now address the issues raised by Atma anna.

1.) I agree that Linux is not so convenient as Windows. Most tasks need to be performed from command line interfaces. But that is power. You can change the display settings all in one go by editing a file called xorg.conf. You cannot do that in Windows. Again I think engineers are power users of computers. And Linux is power.

2.) There is an alternative to almost every software from Windows. The best part is they are all OpenSource. There is K3B for Nero, Pidgin or Gaim for Y! messenger, Firefox for IE, QCAD for AutoCAD, Blender for Maya, VLC for Media Player, the list could go on... (Watch out for a download accelerator and manager that we are currently developing at CEGLUG )

3.) I do not know much about GIS and DIP. GRASS GIS is OpenSource, so is MapServer, gvSIG, etc. MATLAB is also available for Linux for DIP and e-foto is a photogrammetric workstation.

I would recommend any user to switch over to Linux. But a basic knowledge of UNIX and some commands maybe essential. It is a lot easier to learn these UNIX commands than to spend Rs. 20000 on Windows Vista! Believe me!

Linux is GOOD

Finally I have switched to Linux - Ubuntu Linux. It is wonderful! Really! Imagine running flip 3D with 256 MB of RAM. Vista cannot do that but Ubuntu can. It is not just about the looks but the overall flexibility of the system. Also the stability and security are amazing. Imagine that Windows was a small skinny boy and Ubuntu, like Terminator. When you give a powerful blow to both and compare... Windows shows a BSoD. But Ubuntu just logs-off, more like a powerful man getting a little dazed by a punch in his cheeks. That's stability.

Security is also good. I do not need antivirus software. When I changed the permissions of the /usr/share folder to 777, Ubuntu refused to work anymore. That's security. If I did the same in Windows by deleting some system files, the system would work but show a thousand alerts with codes I cannot even understand.

All said Ubuntu is not totally free of bugs. Compiz sometimes behaves strangely. Copy-paste does not work everywhere unless you are root. And the shade of brown where ever you go irritates me. Of course I could change the theme... Hey! I cannot do that in Windows! :) Now that's Open Source and I like it!

Hooray!

Hooray! I have finally got my NVidia FX5200 card to work on Ubuntu Gutsy! All thanks to ENVY.

There can be no stopping me now from my Open Living.