How did they fly the plane so close to the ground?

Neat D5! Ilike how you can answer a question in a way I can understand without following it with something silly and unfounded like other experts here often do.

Not the spot for you to do it, as ground effect is often taken as making it impossible for a 757 scale plane to have done that deed. But you seem unfazed? Is such an attack actually possible despite the squished vortices? I'm actually curious tho I may be alseep before you answer.

I am not sure I understand your question Caustic. However, I am going to have a guess at it, so if I misunderstood you let me know.

To my knowledge there is no set altitude that a 757 would float at, most ground effect craft seem to be only 5 or so feet off the ground, either way though there is another factor to take into consideration as well, and that is the “White Smoke”. White smoke is an indicator that there has been damage done to the engine and its now burning oil. He might have been stuck in ground effect when he hit the light poles, and crossed that field in front of the Pentagon losing altitude the whole way until hit the generator and totally lost it. At his rate of speed he would have crossed that distance in a very short amount of time. The engine damage, especially if he FOD’ed the engine (FOD’ed means he broke the blades with debris), would have acted in the same way that decreasing throttle would have and brought him closer to the ground. Also if he did in fact FOD the engine it would have caused his trim to shift so we would see the aircraft start to roll just before impact, which it did.


[edit on 5/2/2007 by defcon5]

Originally posted by defcon5

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
I would like to know how the pilot of flight 77 knew how to program the autopilot to aviod radar for as long as he did.

I thought you had more aviation background then to ask something like this. As john quite correctly mentioned above, there is primary and secondary radar. With the transponder turned off the secondary radar is worthless, and the object can only be tracked by the primary radar.

But i do know enough about radar also to know that the pilot would have had to know how to avoid the primary and NORAD radars for several minutes.

I was hoping for some discussion on this but it got buried.

Originally posted by Caustic Logic

Originally posted by johnlear
(1) Now what kind of a hijacker would bother to reset his altimeter EXACTLY at FL180? What for? He's going to crash!

Now what kind of data would tell us the pressure WAS re-set at that point creating that interesting question? NTSB data right from the FDR? Mmmmaybe. It don't match the animation also from the NTSB. Or is it from them? Mmmaybe.

I've looked into the evidence trail supplied by the proponents of this data and its troubling questions, and I'm not convinced. I'm not calling the Pilots liars, but I'd like to see better evidence linkage and verification - like the right FOIA response cover letter for Snowygrouch's request that mentions anything about animation files. Could this animation fit on a single CDR?

Basically - two sources proving a 440-foot flyover (which oddly discredits the PentaCon) by their discrepancy - the CSV data file and the animation - who really made them? Are they both accurate?

[edit on 2-5-2007 by Caustic Logic]

[edit on 2-5-2007 by Caustic Logic]

Originally posted by Caustic Logic

Now what kind of data would tell us the pressure WAS re-set at that point creating that interesting question? NTSB data right from the FDR? Mmmmaybe. It don't match the animation also from the NTSB. Or is it from them? Mmmaybe.

The Flight Data Recorder tabular data. You can download it from the web. CG and CH are the channels to look at. They are titled Baro NO. 1 and Baro NO. 2. Each second of flight is divided into 8 parts so you can pretty well tell when the altimeter was reset: what time, what altitude and compared to about 100 other recorded parameters.

I've looked into the evidence trail supplied by the proponents of this data and its troubling questions, and I'm not convinced. I'm not calling the Pilots liars

What would the pilots being lying about and which pilots? That seems llike a pretty strong accusation.

Guys something just dawned on me while I was sitting here thinking about the ground effect aspect of this, which relates to why he might have reset the altimeter, but I need John to answer something for me. I will try and find the answer myself as well, and am not sure if this is what was done or not. This is may not be a question that is easy to find the answer for either, so it may take some time to see if this is what was done, why the altimeter was reset, and why the altitude was off buy a few hundred feet.

John, according to what you’re saying he set the altimeter so the aircraft thought it was at a higher altitude then it was, correct?

What is the lowest setting you can set the autopilot altitude knob to?

Originally posted by defcon5

John, according to what you’re saying he set the altimeter so the aircraft thought it was at a higher altitude then it was, correct?

The correct phraseology of this question should read, " John, according to what your're saying the hijacker set the altimeter to field barometric but the person who read the flight data recorder (not he NTSB) didn't realize that the FDR records altitude at 29.92 (Standard) not field barometric. So when they faked in a final altitude of 180 feet on the FDR they didn't realize that the true altitude would be 320 higher because of the difference between field barometric and pressure altitude".

Yes, that is correct.

And for those who have forgotten or didn't read my previous comments the reason the FDR records at pressure altitude (29.92) is because it would be too complicated to record the altitude from the pilots altimeters as the pilot and copilot keep resetting their altimeters for local pressure. During an accident investigation the investigators know that they will have to make that correction but the """""" did not.

What is the lowest setting you can set the autopilot altitude knob to?

I have not flown the Boeing 757 or the operated that autopilot so I don't know.

I've only seen the timelapse footage of the "explosion", where is the plane?
If anyone knows of any other footage can you link it me? does it exist?