BS: airplane window. baffled. please help

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: leeneia
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 04:51 PM

Sounds right. One source said they were basalt, and I supposed they knew what they were talking about.

Interstate 17 coming into Phoenix from the the north is labelled the Black Canyon Highway (or Freeway or some such term.) On the web the outcrops do not look particularly dark. What's going on, I wonder.

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: Scoville
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 05:59 PM

THis is a little thing, but I always think that the neighborhoods here, where backyard pools are common, look very odd with all those little unnaturally blue blobs in them.

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Feb 07 - 09:07 PM

"Perfect green circles" in the Midwest was one of the intriguing sights I was also thinking of. Good catch, Donuel!

I always love the patterns of agricultural fields, so much like quilts, and ever changing with the season or the region.

Flyng over the Caribbean or the Great Barrier Reef in NE Australia you see the intense turquoise of the coral reefs shallows around the major islands, with the darker blue marking the deeper waters.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 24 Feb 07 - 06:54 AM

If you follow I 17 north a bit, you get to Black canyon city, at the south western end of a river system with much darker rock in it than most of the surrounding area.

Based on the erosion patterns, and the spot height readings, I think I know why. The hills around are significantly higher than the area of Black canyon, and appear to be actively eroding, implying something quite soft.
The area bordering Black canyon appears fairly flat, with much less pronounced drainage patterns, implying it's reasonably hard, supported by the formation of typical mesa type cliffs. This would imply the Black rock is some softer material. The most likely kind of sequence to explain this is marine sediments. A quick look at web references shows Arizona did have a sequence of marine transgressions at about 300 ma

Top:
Poorly cemented ( ie softer) Sandstone
Well cemented ( ie harder) Sandstone
Shale ( organic matter rich mudstone)
Bottom.


It's amazing that we can get this kind of information so quickly and easily, and for free.

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: leeneia
Date: 24 Feb 07 - 10:50 AM

Thanks, Bun. You're right about that. Thanks too for explanation about the Black Canyon.

Charley, your comment about coral reefs is a good one. I can find coral reefs off the Florida Keys, I bet.

Somebody asked me if there are irrigation pivots (which make the bold circles) in California. There aren't. It turns out that the pivots are used where groundwater is tapped for irrigation. In areas where streams bring water from mountains, the irrigation ditches are linear and fields are rectangular.

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: SINSULL
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 12:08 PM

In the 70s I flew over the Grand Canyon and the pilot pointed out a forest fire. It was huge but from the plane, it looked like a candle had been snuffed.

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: InOBU
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 01:21 PM

A friend of mine from Boston was visiting Spaw... brought some Boston baked beans and a - at the time, brand new item, a bic lighter. Catspaw was quite grateful. The friend started back for Boston, on Northwest Airlines Shortly after taking off, something trailing fire zipped past, and when they landed in Boston, he found Spaw had beat him to Boston by two hours...

lorcan

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: EBarnacle
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 01:54 PM

YUP, That's Nawthwest, alright.

It's sorta like the one about the woman who went up to the conductor on the Trans-Siberian Railway and told him she was about to deliver a baby. He said "You should know better than to get on this train in that condition." Her reply: "I wasn't in that condition when I got on."

One of my favorite sights is New York's Finger Lakes. It is easy to imagine one of the Devil's hands digging them out as he is being dragged North.

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: Greg B
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 02:35 PM

What about things I've seen from airplanes with no windows?

Heck, you can even smell the hamburgers cooking at the airfield
where you're about to land for lunch.

That's the way I prefer to do my flying--- except that time
a bug got in me eye-hole. Didn't make for the most pleasant
landing I've ever done in my career.

(Being a pilot is all fun and games, 'til somebody loses an eye)

P.S.: To the question of why the shades must be up for
landing, they want you to be able to observe events outside
in the event that there is an accident. If there's smoke and
flames, you need to be able to see where they are to make a
decision about which way to run. For the same reason, they ask
you to remove your peril-sensitive sunglasses at such times.
My passengers' always go dead black the moment we leave the
ground in any case.

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 05:21 PM

A puzzling phenomenon that I should have recalled when this thread started relates to the "pilots' name" for Seattle, WA.

Due to lots of recent buildup of residential areas in what should be unspoiled areas, lots of "neighborhood associations" have formed, with restrictive rules prohibiting the parking/storage of boats, trailers, and other "recreational items" where they are "visible from the street."

It obviously is quite important to those who create and manage these little empires that the residents should not appear, visibly, to be enjoying themselves in any way, but should spend all their time mowing lawns and re-painting houses to conceal the shoddy materials and workmanship used in most of the newer construction.

Almost uniquely, in Seattle and immediately adjacent towns, it has been deemed that covering your boat/RV with a blue tarp makes it invisible (i.e. not visible from the street), and permits keeping it on your own premises.

As result, the air approaches into Seattle present a vision of thousands of tiny patches of blue tarp, resulting in the pilots' jargon of "Blue Tarp City" for Seattle.

I'm unaware of any decisions regarding the relative invisibility of things under other colors of tarp, but it is apparent that blue is the color (for sunfade properties) of the cheapest and most plentifully available ugliness (which is permissible) to avoid anyone being offended by the visible presence of anything "recreational."

John

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: Grab
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 07:23 PM

It's a strangely wonderful thing, but one of my best memories was takeoff in the rain. Spatters of raindrops on the window next to me. Then the plane picks up speed down the runway, and the droplets turn into a hundred horizontal streams across the window. And then the front wheel lifts off the ground, and all the streams simultaneously hang a left towards the top of the window.

On the weirdness side, the US and grid-system roads. Everywhere else, roads go from one somewhere to another somewhere. In the US, roads are a visible net of latitude and longitude, like they thought the land might escape and it needed to be held down. My first thought when I first looked out of the window over the States was that I'd arrived in Legoland, because Lego streets all come in those diddy squares, and that's the only place in Europe you'll see roads laid out like that, is on a Lego layout. Very strange.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 10:47 PM

like they thought the land might escape and it needed to be held down

Not an entirely frivolous thought.

In most of the US, the land was surveyed and essentially "platted" before it became available for settlement, and an orderly predetermination of "lots" was quite helpful in letting people know just what land was theirs and what belonged to the next neighbor.

In order that the roads not cut across individual properties, they were laid out along the edges, resulting in fairly square grids at mostly one mile intervals. Half of a "quarter section" (1/2 mile long x 1/4 mile wide = 80 acres?) was a common "homestead" in many parts of the country, although in populated farm areas in my vicinity now a quarter section probably is a more commmon farmstead size. (And isn't really enough land to make a living from.)

On the east coast, Boston is most notorious for breaking from the pattern, as the "Commons" was reserved for livestock quite early, and as the town grew they simply paved the cowpaths, resulting in streets that go "wherever the cows did." Many of them, to people from more orderly parts of the country, seem to not go anywhere in particular; especially as they don't take you to anywhere a cow would now want to be.

Washington DC is another notable exception, as some mad architect decided that the roads should be circles connected by radii that all lead to "downtown." Later buildup has obscured the pattern somewhat, but it should still be recognizable from the air.

In less populous areas, where there isn't really all that much need for many local roads, the cowpath philosophy is still quite apparent, although there does still tend to be a tendency toward north/south vs east/west routes in most places. This may be partly due to following the ridges and rivers, as they do tend to be "oriented" to some extent by the lie of the land - and in some places it's a big lot of land.

John

Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
From: wysiwyg
Date: 04 Jun 07 - 11:39 PM

I would guess that some municipalities require RVs to be covered (if they allow them at all) so that folks won't go trying to live in 'em and thereby have too many peeps on the street, with the anticipated sewer issues from dumping tanks. A lot of the "nicer" suburbs require that they be stored at sotarge facilities. Of course these regs are usually enforced somewhat selectively.

~S~