[Tom Haws]

And I suppose that further they must invoke the same esoteric physical rule of perspective to explain the orderly and gradual daily veiling and unveiling of the sun and moon at the horizon?

You could always just read a book of two on FET and find out for yourself. Cause Of Sunrise & Sunset

Thank you for kindly sharing the link. The problem with reading Zetetic Astronomy Chapter IX, CAUSE OF SUNRISE AND SUNSET is that the reasoning is very poor:

1. The explanation of a horizontal trajectory does not square with the hourly trajectory I see. His explanation would have the first degrees of sunrise and the last degrees of sunset taking a very long time, and then the movement at noon being relatively very fast. But instead, a sundial sees the sun proceed in regular angular hourly increments. The sun would have to be speeding up and slowing down for me in Arizona. But then that would ruin the effect for Rowbotham in England.

2. His mention that "ALTHOUGH the sun is at all times above the earth's surface, it appears in the morning to ascend from the north-east to the noonday position, and thence to descend and disappear, or set, in the north-west" does not square with what I see from Mesa, Arizona in the winter. No matter where he thinks the sun goes, I am not seeing that from Mesa, Arizona in the winter. The sun chart I use for gardening has this charted very accurately for Mesa.

To quote the mind-controlled slaves in "Meet the Robinsons", "I'm just not sure how well this plan was thought through. Master?"

[Roger G]

  Haaaaa. Nice one Thork, you nearly caught me with your porkies, and there was I thinking 'should I give him the benefit of the doubt'. Tow aircraft using steel cables to launch a glider, now that would be really interesting and illegal!!

Well whatever this configuration is, that's what went past my window. Pretty sure they don't make those cables out of rope.

You may well say that you hate glider pilots to try to wind me up, but as you have never flown one or know any glider pilots, you won't be able to verify or disprove my own observations.

I have flown gliders, twice. I found it incredibly boring. You spent your whole time looking for fluffy clouds and hill sides so you can prolong your incredibly dull descent. I might add I was towed up by an air tractor using a steel cable!

If you want to have a go at flight sim gliding, try the Condor programme, it's the only one that gets anywhere near real soaring.

I don't play computer games. I'm an adult.

You may well say that you hate glider pilots to try to wind me up, but as you have never flown one or know any glider pilots, you won't be able to verify or disprove my own observations.

Well this going to really wind you up then. Before I became a pilot I did a degree in Aerospace engineering and I used to work in the Flight Physics department for a major manufacturer designing aircraft wings. Specifically I worked in both Loads and Aeroelastics and Aerodynamics departments. And the chances are, you have been on an aircraft that I did a small part of the maths on.

As for my own relevant experience, I have never ever in all my time flying or designing, had to account for curvature on the surface of the earth. All the design makes the assumption earth is flat
(indeed nasa do too if you bothered to check - http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19890005752.pdf
The very first line of the summary (page 7 after the contents) sums up how NASA do their aircraft calcs.), and I don't ever remember modifying my altitude to fly a curve downwards as I traveled around a ball.

Sorry Thork but I am finding it increasingly difficult to believe anything you say after your previous post with all the untruths and misinformation. You window that you claim the picture was taken from of the towed glider, is of a gliding and light aircraft club in France and clearly lifted from the internet. The tow rope is a rope with a thousand pound breaking strain weak link. Rope is used because in an emergency release, dropping the steel cable would be highly dangerous. I have never hear of an air tractor at any club I have flown at, so I assume you mean a winch launch, which is where a steel cable would be used which drops back to the airfield, with a small parachute attached to slow its descent. I assume that you flights were the standard two flights that the ATC give in gliders.

Your comments about not modifying your altitude to fly around a curved ball are not the comments of a pilot, they are the comments of someone who follows Eric Dubay's theories. Whether or not you were involved in the design of aerofoils or wings is irrelevant as aerofoils would work in the same way on a flat or globe earth.

What I would like to know is what experiences your piloting and navigation have given you to prove that the world is flat. I have 2 friends that are current commercial pilots flying heavies across the world, one of whom was the youngest female captain ever for Air Canada and is still flying Airbus A380s, the other currently on Airbus A319s for Easyjet. I have another friend who was the youngest ever Canadian Airforce fighter pilot who subsequently had 35 years as senior Captain with Air Canada, and another younger friend who is an aerobatics pilot and also runs the Utterly Butterly Stearman wingwalking team. I have discussed a flat earth with all of them and they have all agreed it is totally impossible. Google them if you wish, I wouldn't want you to think I am giving you false information. Perhaps you would like to meet one of them to discuss your theories and experiences 

As for not playing computer games, I thought your whole business involved playing with computers!

Roger

[Dr David Thork]

This is an air tractor. Also known as a Pawnee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Tractor_AT-802

They often have windstruts as they are used for crop dusting and fire fighting. This means they are built like tanks and very good for hauling things like gliders into the air and then sideslipping down very fast to get back on the ground with their wings not in any danger of bending. I attach an image of one doing just that job below.


It isn't my fault you haven't flown many places or experienced different types of gliding. I forgot before, I happen to have an old friend who owns a motor glider and I've been in that too. I expect you'll tell me a glider with an engine is also impossible and that I have been playing too much Kerbal space program. 

These aircraft don't 'drop' the cable. They release at the glider end and the ruddy cable dangles around behind them as they come in to land. The buckle release thing is a meaty bit of metal and it bounces and flies around like no ones business as the plane lands. And those cables are pure steel. Get one of those in your prop and its goodnight. They are heavy too.

I do not mean a winch launch. Booker Airfield near me uses a winch. Denham use Tow aircraft. My airprox was with a tow aircraft, not a winch. I was too high for a winch to bother me and there was an aircraft on either end of the rope. Just because you don't have a vast experience of different airfields doesn't mean I do not. You are obviously a club pilot who always flies from the same airfield every single time and have no concept of aviation outside of your little 5 mile bubble.

I'm not interested in your friends. I know more pilots than I care to. I trained with them at a flight school, worked with them, sold aircraft to them, did air shows with them, dated them, lived with them, am related to them and they all think the world is round. They also think that fiat currency is a legit system not based on fraud and backed by central banks with real assets. They can all be blissfully wrong about things they don't look into deeply.

[Dr David Thork]

I assume that you flights were the standard two flights that the ATC give in gliders.

No.

One flight was after 3 days of demoing my company's aircraft to an airschool that had gliders. After all the flights I had done with them, they wanted to say thank you and took me on a glider flight as I mentioned I'd never been in one.

The second was because the company I worked for got it into their heads that our stunt aircraft would make an excellent tow aircraft. I spent all day towing people up to height in a Robin with their instructor ... Oh that's right, I had towed a glider myself! I'd have mentioned it earlier but I couldn't make you look stupid if I gave you all the info at once. Again at the end of the day they towed me for the last flight of the day. It was a stupid idea and I knew it was stupid before I went. It would be like buying a dodge Viper to tow a caravan, but I got paid for my feedback to the factory. 

[devils advocate]

I don't ever remember modifying my altitude to fly a curve downwards as I traveled around a ball.

I've never understood why anyone would think planes would have to adjust their altitude in this way. If I have a picture of a circle and a plane on top of it and I spin the circle round  the plane transverses the circle without ever having to dip its nose.

Same could be argued against the flat earth map that planes would have to keep banking left or right to keep on the curved longitude lines to circumnavigate the plane.

[Dr David Thork]

Aircraft are trimmed to fly straight and level. They are neither designed nor trimmed to fly circles around a globe.

[Roger G]

It isn't my fault you haven't flown many places or experienced different types of gliding. I forgot before, I happen to have an old friend who owns a motor glider and I've been in that too. I expect you'll tell me a glider with an engine is also impossible and that I have been playing too much Kerbal space program. 

These aircraft don't 'drop' the cable. They release at the glider end and the ruddy cable dangles around behind them as they come in to land. The buckle release thing is a meaty bit of metal and it bounces and flies around like no ones business as the plane lands. And those cables are pure steel. Get one of those in your prop and its goodnight. They are heavy too.

I do not mean a winch launch. Booker Airfield near me uses a winch. Denham use Tow aircraft. My airprox was with a tow aircraft, not a winch. I was too high for a winch to bother me and there was an aircraft on either end of the rope. Just because you don't have a vast experience of different airfields doesn't mean I do not. You are obviously a club pilot who always flies from the same airfield every single time and have no concept of aviation outside of your little 5 mile bubble.

I'm not interested in your friends. I know more pilots than I care to. I trained with them at a flight school, worked with them, sold aircraft to them, did air shows with them, dated them, lived with them, am related to them and they all think the world is round. They also think that fiat currency is a legit system not based on fraud and backed by central banks with real assets. They can all be blissfully wrong about things they don't look into deeply.

Oh Dear calm down, I am a trying to find out your experiences as a pilot that give evidence that the earth is flat and you are now resorting to attacking me and my integrity.

I took my instructors and advanced instructors course at Booker in 1976 with Brian Spreckley the then world champion and did much of it in a Motor Falke. There are a number of motor glider types including those with retractable Rotax engines which avoid having to land out on a cross country flight. I am not going to get into an argument with you but suffice it to say that I have over 2500 flights in my logbook covering most of the gliding sites in the UK and still know many of the instructors from across the years at those sites.

You misread my post when I said that tow ropes are dropped, that is only in an emergency, they are released by the glider pilot then the tug aircraft (Not Tractor) returns with it to the airfield. Now not all, but most tug pilots drop the rope on the field before landing as there have been a number of accidents in the past from ropes snagging on fences. See the BGA accident records for details.

You mentioned winch launching at Booker, but I am afraid there certainly isn't any winch launching there, only aerotow where I have used their excellent and very powerful Pawnee tug aircraft. I am also sorry to say that you are also wrong about aerotowing at Denham, there is no glider flying there at all. BGA website will confirm.

Because so much information that you have posted is factually incorrect,and you are unwilling to answer my one flat earth question I will respectfully refrain from discussing anything more about flying on this thread.

Roger

[Dr David Thork]

Roger Roger, what's your Vector, Victor?

So you've gone from never having heard of aircraft towing, to being at an airfield that only does towing and saying you used their Pawnee aircraft (and then say they don't use an air tractor - a Pawnee is an air tractor), and then you try to give me a lesson on them dropping cables when I know for a fact they don't.

Being as you allegedly know Booker (I doubt it very much), you should know I flew from a few bases like Stapleford, North Weald and the one 2 miles from my house ... White Waltham. I have been to Booker many times. I demoed to their air school. I delivered aircraft to clients there. It was one of the few places that had a female air traffic controller ... Only Cranfield and North Weald stick out as other small airfields with women. It had a very expensive cafe and I did aerobatics at their aeroexpo twice and a static display with a tent and models in hot pants draped over my aircraft 3 times! I also met Nicholas Lyndhurst at Booker at an Aeroexpo and invited him to sit in my aircraft. When he declined I said "Don't be a plonker all your life, Rodney". For a comedian, he didn't have a very good sense of humour  .

Anyway, my flying credentials far out-weigh yours, so you can drift off to another thread you feel more comfortable in.

[Roger G]

So I'm doing a school project on the Flat Earth and I wanted to know a couple things:

How do you explain eclipses?
If gravity doesn't exist than what did Isaac Newton discover?
If the World is flat, then how do you explain ships on the horizon seeming to rise up out of the ocean as they come to shore instead of just appearing if the world was flat?

Thanks for the help.

Does anybody still want to talk about the OP? To be fair it looks like the poster got bored and didn't bother to come back 

Roger

[Dr David Thork]

Isaac Newton discovered what Einstein would later rename the equivalence principle.
Ships on the horizon ... nope, can't do it.

Its in the wiki. Why would we do his homework for him? These are FAQ questions.

Besides, this is such a boring part of the flat earth society. The simple Q&A. Surely the history is far more fascinating? Rowbotham's use of human brains for phosphorous experiments at the university of Edinburgh. He got those brains from Burke and Hare. His subsequent creation of a phosphoric acid soft drink that would later be sold and marketed as Coca Cola! Links to Deism and the FE battle with the illuminati. Galileo's middle finger of modernity, the law suits with Alfred Wallace, the cult of Voliva, Aristotle and his prime movers, the symbolism of Ophanim and their role in the heavens, the tale of the monk who found the edge of the world ...

And we get "explain gravity". 

[devils advocate]

Aircraft are trimmed to fly straight and level. They are neither designed nor trimmed to fly circles around a globe.

But the earth that they fly over is flat and level, even on our globe earth. Earth is too huge for the curve to be noticeable at such low altitudes. Would you also expect that when planes arrive at Australia they are upside down? (Not a dig, there is YouTube FE proof vid where this was cited)

[Dr David Thork]

Aircraft are trimmed to fly straight and level. They are neither designed nor trimmed to fly circles around a globe.

But the earth that they fly over is flat and level, even on our globe earth. Earth is too huge for the curve to be noticeable at such low altitudes. Would you also expect that when planes arrive at Australia they are upside down? (Not a dig, there is YouTube FE proof vid where this was cited)

If you fly half way round the world, you have to turn your aircraft 180 degrees so the sky is still above you on a round earth. Somehow this just happens, no steering or alterations required. You flew straight and level, and now your aircraft is flipped 180 degrees from where it started.

[devils advocate]

Exactly the same as if a picture of a plane is positioned on top of a circle and then the circle rotated through 180 degrees. Same result in that the plane is now over the opposite side of the circle but no alteration of the plane required. Surely it's down to gravity's pull towards the centre of the sphere?

[Dr David Thork]

Exactly the same as if a picture of a plane is positioned on top of a circle and then the circle rotated through 180 degrees. Same result in that the plane is now over the opposite side of the circle but no alteration of the plane required. Surely it's down to gravity's pull towards the centre of the sphere?

Rotating the earth would take quite a lot of energy to turn it around. You are getting something for nothing here. Imagine the gyroscopes on the aircraft. They provide resistance to being moved in such a way. And yet you are claiming an energy free reversal of position. No steering, no compensation ... just upside down in time and space.

[devils advocate]

Sorry I was just making the point that when viewed from another perspective you get the same result. I just can't see why a plane needs to dip it's nose to circumnavigate a globe when it's just rotating around the centre of the circle as it were.

[Curious Squirrel]

Aircraft are trimmed to fly straight and level. They are neither designed nor trimmed to fly circles around a globe.

But the earth that they fly over is flat and level, even on our globe earth. Earth is too huge for the curve to be noticeable at such low altitudes. Would you also expect that when planes arrive at Australia they are upside down? (Not a dig, there is YouTube FE proof vid where this was cited)

If you fly half way round the world, you have to turn your aircraft 180 degrees so the sky is still above you on a round earth. Somehow this just happens, no steering or alterations required. You flew straight and level, and now your aircraft is flipped 180 degrees from where it started.

And if you fly halfway around the world on the FE, you've turned 180 degrees to keep North the same direction. Same deal. Q&A though, not the place to be getting in a deep discussion.

[douglips]

It feels like hell might freeze over, but Baby Thork is right about Air Tractors. I'm surprised you hadn't heard of them.

https://airtractor.com/

They're different from Pawnees, but they look sort of similar.

The name comes from the agricultural usage of the aircraft, you see.

[Roger G]

It feels like hell might freeze over, but Baby Thork is right about Air Tractors. I'm surprised you hadn't heard of them.

https://airtractor.com/

They're different from Pawnees, but they look sort of similar.

The name comes from the agricultural usage of the aircraft, you see.

Hi Doug,
Pawnees have been used for years as crop sprayers because of their strength and all around visibility. I have no experience of agricultural flying or their terminology, although I suspect the word 'Airtractor' is used by the manufacturer in the sales to the agricultural world, seems like a good ploy as it's Farmer friendly. In the UK Gliding world, towing aircraft are universally known as 'Tug aircraft' or simply 'Tow planes', with the pilots being called 'Tug Pilots'. Wheeled tractors are frequently used for towing gliders on the ground because of their low speed ability and torque, and using the word 'Tractor' for a towing aircraft could be confusing. I doubt there are any other experienced glider pilots on this forum, but if there are I'm sure they will be in agreement.

BT is not right about tug aircraft in gliding being called Air Tractors, but may be familiar with that particular aircraft as an Air Tractor from other experiences, but not from the world of gliding :-)

Roger

[StinkyOne]

Aircraft are trimmed to fly straight and level. They are neither designed nor trimmed to fly circles around a globe.

But the earth that they fly over is flat and level, even on our globe earth. Earth is too huge for the curve to be noticeable at such low altitudes. Would you also expect that when planes arrive at Australia they are upside down? (Not a dig, there is YouTube FE proof vid where this was cited)

If you fly half way round the world, you have to turn your aircraft 180 degrees so the sky is still above you on a round earth. Somehow this just happens, no steering or alterations required. You flew straight and level, and now your aircraft is flipped 180 degrees from where it started.

What you think is straight and level is actually a very large curve. At a local level, the curve is irrelevant and local features are more important. It seems like you probably don't quite understand the globe and how level is determined.

[Roger G]

Aircraft are trimmed to fly straight and level. They are neither designed nor trimmed to fly circles around a globe.

But the earth that they fly over is flat and level, even on our globe earth. Earth is too huge for the curve to be noticeable at such low altitudes. Would you also expect that when planes arrive at Australia they are upside down? (Not a dig, there is YouTube FE proof vid where this was cited)

If you fly half way round the world, you have to turn your aircraft 180 degrees so the sky is still above you on a round earth. Somehow this just happens, no steering or alterations required. You flew straight and level, and now your aircraft is flipped 180 degrees from where it started.

What you think is straight and level is actually a very large curve. At a local level, the curve is irrelevant and local features are more important. It seems like you probably don't quite understand the globe and how level is determined.

The purpose of the trimmer is to reduce load on the control surfaces, so when a pilot settles into a steady climb after take off for example, he would trim the aircraft so that there is no need to constantly pull back on the controls. The same during descent or with any change of altitude. In normal straight and level flight, as BT said, the aircraft would indeed be trimmed for flight with no pressure on the controls being required. The effect would be the same on an RE or FE because the same lift/drag/thrust/weight ratio would be maintained to balance against the downward pull of gravity or the upward movement of UA. Curvature of the earth is irrelevant, because for the aircraft to gain height would require an increase in vertical acceleration and therefore thrust, as would a downward movement require a decrease in both models.

Roger