1

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: May 05, 2022, 12:26:35 PM »

The statement behind that originally stems from the narrative of the wider Flat Earth movement. There are a number of videos of pilots saying that the gyroscope of their planes don't dip for curvature, that they don't actually take Coriolis into account, that radar on F-15 jets go further that RE should allow, and so on.

A RAF document saying that the earth is round, or even that it spins, is almost irrelevant and does not directly address how pilot are "taught to fly".

I humbly suggest referencing these videos (I note none of them are about pilots being taught to fly over a flat earth as the wiki claims), so we can discuss their merits, rather than the diversionary quote of the letter which you agree is unrelated to FE.

There’s no evidence provided on that page to show that pilots are taught to fly over a flat earth. Just a baseless claim.

Actually, the Wiki does provide a number of links referencing that pilots say they are taught to fly over an FE -

I did watch the video and can personally attest that it was full of half-truths and implications about flying over a ‘flat earth’.  There were plenty of false implications made in the discussions of the GPS system, aircraft gyro systems, and the flight tracking systems.  Who knows if the statements were made because of ignorance or because it fit in with the sponsors of the show and the fact that there was some promotional time given to his business?  It was funny because this flying service in right in my ‘back yard’ so to speak.  I learned to fly in the same state and area and have 3 or 4 times the flight experience stated by the pilot in the video.  Years ago, I had an electronics shop at a nearby airport and actually worked on aircraft radios and flight navigational equipment including gyros.  My shop was FAA certified.  The flight instructor did state that everyone should do their own research, think for yourself, and form your own opinions.  I did all that and the preponderance of the evidence shows that the earth is a sphere.   

2

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: May 05, 2022, 02:34:01 AM »

I personally took flying lessons for many years and rose up from being a private pilot to getting an instrument rating and then on to getting my commercial pilots license.  Never in all that training did I ever run across any written training material that referred to flying over a flat earth.  My flight instructors didn’t ever refer to the flat earth meme either.  I will admit that when in the cockpit operating an aircraft, that the shape of the earth is of little consequence.  When you are flying an instrument flight plan you will always try to maintain the altitude assigned to you by air traffic control.  This altitude is either a height above the ground or a height relative to a particular reference atmospheric air pressure, when maintaining a particular flight level.  In either case if the earth is a sphere, you are automatically following the curvature and it’s of a minor consequence and you never really know or care about it.  Even the long-haul pilots flying an over the ocean route wouldn’t consider the shape of the earth in their everyday activities.  Their flight route is gotten from a computer and all the pilots need to do is enter two points. 


Anyone using GPS is, by default, using an instrument whose accuracy depends upon the earth being spherical.  This fact is designed into the software that’s being used in every GPS system.  Everything that was previously done manually by a navigator using a sextant now is being done automatically by the software operating inside all GPS units and is completely hidden to the end user.  Certain commercial GPS units can output the raw data that you can download into your computer and do some spherical trig on to verify how the calculations are done if you have the time, knowledge, and desire to do so. 

3

Flat Earth Theory / Re: HF Radio Signals, Propagation and DX.

« on: May 04, 2022, 06:15:04 PM »

Your evidence of a round earth using HF radio propagation isn’t quite right.  On both the flat earth and globe earth models it would be possible for a radio signal to be bounced off the ionosphere and returned to the earth.  There wouldn’t be any significant differences between the two.  Using the flat earth model a radio signal could bounce between the ionosphere and the earth multiple times until it reached the edge and then would go off into space never to be heard again.  On a globe earth the signal could bound back & forth around the globe and return to the same location.
Years ago, while living in the USA I could occasionally hear Russian stations using CW (morse code) with a definite echo in their signal.  If you used your beam antenna and turned it to the North the signal would peak up.  You could also rotate the antenna 180 degrees and again it would peak up.  Clearly there was a short path signal and a long path signal.  One signal coming in via the shortest path on a globe earth and another signal from the same station but coming in from the opposite direction from the longer path around the globe.  One signal would be delayed from the other because of the difference in distances and would produce an echo.  This kind of phenomena wouldn’t be possible on a flat earth. 
The sunspot cycle doesn’t make it easy to observe this kind of thing these days but will improve in the future.  Unless the FET can show how electro-magnetic waves can be bent around in a circle in the horizontal plane the theory is deficient.     

4

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New Star Map

« on: April 29, 2022, 10:54:35 PM »

Ships sailing north from different lines of latitude converge toward each other. They don't get further away from each other. That is the reality modern navigation has revealed to us. Leaving the discussion of rotated constellations behind (because it is definitely unresolved), you don't account for converging paths as people move north from various longitudes.

The courses of two ships would converge on a Northbound voyage assuming that they are both North of the equator. If they were South of the equator the courses would continue to diverge until they reached the equator.

5

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: ISS Photo From The Ground

« on: April 23, 2022, 02:38:30 PM »

Saying ‘prove it’ is a totally disingenuous answer because there are no stated ‘proof’ standards.  How can someone prove something without having acceptable procedures or standards?  Start with clearly defined standards in advance, then design a carefully documented experiment to lead the observers to a logical conclusion.  All the flat earth community would have to do is come up with VERIFIBLE alternatives in response to the round earth extensively verified observations. 

6

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: ISS Photo From The Ground

« on: April 22, 2022, 12:12:35 AM »

If you want something else to contemplate, then give the following some thought.  The path over the ground of the space station is well known and can be verified by those on the ground.  At any particular time, there is a zenith point where if someone was on the ground at that zenith point the space station would pass directly overhead at a 90-degree angle.  Now you could assume that you could stay in that same location and see the space station pass directly overhead about 90 minutes later.  However, you would be wrong.  On a flat earth map the known path of the zenith points wouldn’t be in a circle.  That would mean that there would have to be a winch on the north pole to constantly adjust the rope length in or out to maintain the known orbit.  Maybe NASA has control of that?  Perhaps Santa is providing the facilities for that equipment?   Perhaps the most well educated flat earther has some additional knowledge that could be passed on to provide us some more interesting insights. 

7

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: ISS Photo From The Ground

« on: April 21, 2022, 04:31:44 PM »

I suppose you could have a bunch of that ‘dark energy’ bend back around the edge of the earth and then make a turn in the opposite direction again to provide the shove upwards to keep the space station aloft and keep the tension on the rope attached to the North Pole.  That would mean that the ‘dark energy’ has mass.  You can’t have a massless object A impart any kind of momentum to object B that does have mass.  The implication then is what other kind of force would be available to cause a change of direction of the ‘dark energy’? All that ‘dark energy’ would also have to be ‘smart’.  Forces would have to be constantly adjusted because the winds (and the swirling dark energy) would be constantly blowing on the space station’s restraining rope and would distort the orbit if not compensated for.  Can you imagine what the effects would be in the summertime with all the typhoons in the Pacific?  I can personally attest to their presence and effects that can happen in the atmosphere.  There have never been any reports of turbulence caused by the ’dark energy’ to aircraft traveling to and from the research stations in the Antarctic. Surely there would be some swirling of that energy as it passes by the edge of the ‘flat earth’.  Try dragging a flat plate thru some water to see what happens at the edge of the plate.  I think that there’s just too many problems with the ‘theory of dark energy’ for it to have any credence at all and it needs to be revised.  Perhaps someone with plenty of education could be put to work.   

8

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: ISS Photo From The Ground

« on: April 21, 2022, 03:38:09 AM »

Could you imagine what the weight of a rope would be that would be heavy enough and long enough to restrain the space station in orbit?  So whatever fictitious force is causing the acceleration of the earth would also have to accelerate the heavy line that extends from the North Pole all the way up to the space station.  That would be a very tall order, don’t ya think?  The force would have to vary with the altitude.  Even if you could consider all that it still wouldn’t explain the forces necessary to keep the space station circling.  That would require a force vector that also had a horizontal component.  So, is that horizontal component constant, or variable?  What would happen if an airliner flew into the rope while on a great circle route between the USA and Asia.  I know they fly in that general area because I’ve been on flights that did, many times.  I know of no airspace restrictions on the air navigational charts because of space station ropes.  If the force horizontal components are constant, then the Sun couldn’t change its orbital diameter to explain the seasons.  If the forces are variable, then you could expect the space station’s obit to vary.  Wouldn’t it be easier to just accept the globe earth and gravity?  Occam’s  razor, don’t ya know? . 

9

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: ISS Photo From The Ground

« on: April 20, 2022, 08:00:13 PM »

There’s a small problem with the contention that the space station is anchored to the North Pole under the flat earth theory.  That’s the fallacy of the earth’s upward acceleration to ‘simulate’ gravity.  In order for the space station to maintain a tension on a rope attached to the North Pole there would have to be a rocket engine on the space station to also maintain an upwards acceleration.  I’ve never seen any evidence of a rocket exhaust in any of the pictures.  Clearly there’s humans aboard the space station because I’ve personally heard them on the HAM radio frequencies.   

10

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Experiment to Distinguish FE from RE

« on: January 20, 2022, 04:54:34 PM »

The problem that Bob Knodel had was the unexpected reading of a rotating earth from the ring laser gyro that was purchased.  It was hypothesized that there was some external force causing this, not the rotation of the earth.  I don’t know if they ever fabricated a metal cylinder to house the gyro and buried it to see if they could do some shielding to eliminate the unexpected readings they got, but I wouldn’t expect that to be published if they did because if it was done in an honest manner the results wouldn’t change.  In any event, I’ve personally seen large, heavy, mechanical gyros do the same thing and I wouldn’t expect  ‘aether’ to have any measurable influence on a heavy rotating metal disk.   

11

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Where is Google Maps wrong?

« on: January 20, 2022, 04:43:46 PM »

I believe that the flat earth beliefs involve the same thing that keeps the Sun and Moon orbiting and that is the barycenter argument.  Of course, this contention can’t be supported.  Even if it could there are all kinds of other difficulties that can’t be explained in a rational manner.  One would be the necessity for the ‘dark energy’ to provide the exact push necessary to keep all the satellites accelerating upwards and at exactly the correct rate independently of their mass and surface area.  This ‘dark energy’ would have to be extremely ‘smart’ in order to do this.  All these things have been discussed in previous posts and no answers have come out of the flat earth aficionados.  I don’t believe that there’s anything in the Wiki that could provide any detailed answers either. 

12

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Fortuna's Epic DoorDash Adventure

« on: January 20, 2022, 04:18:46 PM »

If you are going to make a significant amount of money doing some side gigs be sure to form some kind of LLC first and keep separate books on the money you receive.  Failing to do that will cause you all kinds of problems in the future.  When I started a business 50 years ago, I kept my incomes from that business in my personal checkbook.  My income increased significantly, and things got screwed up.  Eventually I earned an audit by the IRS and ended up paying some extra taxes and fines.  An accountant was hired, and I separated all my business finances from my personal ones.  That’s the real downside of all the side gigs people have.  There’s nothing wrong with doing that and indicates all kinds of good things in people but if the finances are not handled in a professional manner there can be some significant accounting (and IRS) problems down the road.  Take this from a boomer who has personally made these mistakes and ended up paying for them.

13

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Experiment to Distinguish FE from RE

« on: January 20, 2022, 04:05:47 PM »

Your experiment would work but would assume that the earth was rotating.  My experiment would have to compensate for a rotating earth but also shows unambiguously that the earth is spherical because of the changes in the z axis during the trip.  If the trip is reversed and you return back to the original destination the changes in the z axis also reverse and you return to nearly the same readings.  I say ‘nearly’ because the earth is also rotating around the Sun so you would expect to see a small change in readings do to that.  A change back to the original readings wouldn’t be expected unless you waited a full year before you returned. 

14

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Where is Google Maps wrong?

« on: January 20, 2022, 01:12:21 PM »

Satellites above a flat accelerating upwards earth would not be practical.  A big supply of fuel would be necessary to keep them accelerating upwards to maintain a constant distance above the earth.  Extremely basic physics.  I would also think that all that burning fuel would distort pictures taken thru the hot exhaust gases. 

15

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Experiment to Distinguish FE from RE

« on: January 18, 2022, 04:26:11 PM »

There’s the gyroscope experiment.  It would be very difficult and expensive but indicates in a non-ambiguous way that the earth is a sphere.  Bob Knodel gave it a try and was surprised at the outcome however he was only trying to confirm that the earth was not rotating.  What he didn’t or couldn’t do was take the gyroscope on a trip around the world.  When I was working on cargo ships, we had multiple gyroscopes and I had the maintenance software on my computer.  If I logged the gyro readings at precisely noon (GMT) everyday I could see a progression of changes in the Z axis that you wouldn’t ever expect to see on a flat earth. The gyros in question were the large mechanical types.  These types of gyros were also used on submarines to allow them to navigate while underwater and out of contact with any other electronic navigation facilities.  It would be interesting to see what other explanations the FET has for what indicates a spherical earth when observing gyro readings.     

16

Flat Earth Community / Re: Flat Earth maps?

« on: January 06, 2022, 05:24:45 PM »

Stars are so distant that they are pretty much a point light source, so no.

The article quoted on the page I linked says that this is false and that the angular diameter of Sirius is over one-tenth the visible diameter of the Moon, for example.

I'd also suggest that the constant angular size fits better with the RE model than a FE one. Your explanation is to invent a mechanism rather than accept the simplest explanation - that the consistent angular size is because of a consistent distance.

Yet the articles cited in page above explains that the sizes of stars do not represent their distance from the observer, and that they are not point light sources.

This system depends on a spherical earth and the positions wouldn’t be accurate if it were not.

Not sure about that one.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog862/book/export/html/1644

• “ Welcome to Lesson Six of this GPS course. And this time, we'll be talking about two coordinate systems. And I have a little bit of discussion concerning heights. We've touched on that a little bit. Now these coordinate systems that we're going to discuss are plane coordinate systems based upon the fiction that the earth is flat, which, of course, immediately introduces distortion. However, much of GIS work—and GPS work as well—is done based upon this presumption. ”

It’s not unusual for some concessions to be given to the guys in the field who can’t spend hours & hours making detailed calculations to be accurate to within an inch when it usually doesn’t matter much.  I would sometimes log the exact GPS position of the ship when we were at the dock in Japan and compare that figure with the one I logged months previously.  The readings were usually very close and usually plus or minus 10 feet.  Did this really matter that much on a ship that was 1000 feet long?  Many years ago when I was first experimenting with my sextant and learning navigation I started checking my work by using the known survey markers on my land.  I couldn’t get everything to correlate and spent an inordinate number of hours working out the details.  The results were that the survey markers were incorrect and the coordinates on my property deed were incorrect.  Eventually I went to my lawyer to get everything fixed.  We have known each other for 40 years and the other day he said “yea, you cost me $200 to get your deed fixed, with a smile”.  The geodetic system is an invention by man and as long as accurate maps can be made detailing arbitrary boundaries that everyone can agree with everything should work out OK.  If there’s a seamount in the middle of the ocean its precise position is good to know.  You wouldn’t want to run your ship aground and damage the hull costing the shipping company millions and the captain and navigator their jobs.   

17

Flat Earth Community / Re: Flat Earth maps?

« on: January 06, 2022, 04:36:06 PM »

Signal based navigation which gives your coordinates is also based on the stars. Whatever the signal is coming from gets its coordinates from land based stations, which themselves have a known coordinate which was based on a survey of the sky at some point. The LORAN broadcasting towers had to know their own coordinates to be able to provide ships their coordinates via radio wave, which was ultimately derived in the traditional manner from celestial bodies.

The only way to know your latitude is if it was somehow based on the stars or celestial bodies down the line. It doesn't just come from nothing.

Loran is based upon known locations on earth, that is true, but Loran hasn’t been in common use for many years.  Ship owners have uninstalled the Loran receivers years ago.  GPS is obviously a space-based navigation system and has no fixed location. Receivers on ships, or even in your cell phone, use the signal data transmitted by several GPS satellites to resolve the current position.  The GPS satellites use built in atomic clocks to provide the precise timing necessary.  This system depends on a spherical earth and the positions wouldn’t be accurate if it were not.  The same goes for the navigation procedures used ancient navigators using a sextant and the sightings of the Sun, Moon, planets, or stars. These days you wouldn’t need stars to establish your position because particular spots on the earth have agreed upon coordinates.  Ships are still required to carry sextants, navigation tables, and accurate maps based upon a spherical earth in case of a massive GPS failure.  It’s the law.   

18

Flat Earth Community / Re: Flat Earth maps?

« on: January 06, 2022, 12:47:16 AM »

No, "navigation" doesn't imply that you are in a ship on the ocean.

Obviously, you could be on a sailboat, a life raft, or on an airplane.  A nice road map would even be handy if you were driving a car.  ‘Navigation’ implies operating and/or planning a trip on your relevant conveyance, between two, or more, points on the earth.  It’s obvious that to do that job safely and efficiently that you have an accurate map that can be used to determine distances and bearings between any two points on the map. 

19

Flat Earth Community / Re: Flat Earth maps?

« on: January 06, 2022, 12:43:05 AM »

You don't need a map to go from one coordinate to the next and to navigate between two points. In the North the coordinates are based on the altitude of Polaris (which latitude is based on, which is why 90 degrees N is the North Pole) and timezones (which longitude is based on). With that you can travel between any two points in the North.

Wrong.
 When you are navigating a ship between two ports on the Pacific Ocean, for example, you always want to have an accurate map showing all the relevant land masses and sea mounts or other locations where there may be obstacles to navigation.  At any moment along the way you may be required to change course because of weather, or other factors.  It is always critical that a good voyage plan has been made before leaving the dock, but that plan is subject to change when factors change along the way.  Maps are updated on a regular basis as well.  The fact of the matter is that it would be illegal for a ship or an aircraft to depart without relevant maps showing the areas where they expect to go.  An accurate map is obviously a critical safety factor.   

20

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Where is Google Maps wrong?

« on: January 01, 2022, 09:32:24 PM »

Pilots always know exactly how fast over the ground they are flying.  They also know the exact distance between the two airports they are flying between.  What isn’t known is the exact optimal route they need to fly when winds are taken into consideration.  Airline companies have, or hire, flight planning personnel to design the optimal flight route.  Computers are used along with all the available wind & temperature data to plan the best route to minimize the flight times and/or fuel burn for the individual aircraft.  Once an aircraft departs conditions can change.  On a short flight the differences are insignificant.  If a flight is 15 hours long, then obviously things can change a lot while enroute.  New flight plans can be sent to the airplane and/or the pilot in command can make some alterations in the route.  An airliner flying at 40,000 feet on a 5000-mile flight would also need to fly an additional 9.5 miles more than the exact distance on the ground between the two airports.  When you add an additional 7.5 miles to the radius of the curve you will have a longer path.