Discussion moved to the proper thread...
Bruce wrote:
Robert, first you suggested that Sail sit in an open air cockpit in flight and see is he froze his ass off. Now, you want me to roll down a window in a moving car.
What does any of that have to do with your comments about wind chill on the aft stairs of a 727?
Please explain.
I keep asking you why you don't believe the reports about the lack of wind on those stairs from those folks who have actually been there.
Perhaps other posters here can help me understand Robert's apparent difficulty in answering these questions.
Bruce,
And perhaps other posters here can help you understand what I have been saying.
But first, let's ask Georger a question since a recent post of his bears directly on this matter.
Georger, when you and your friend were doing 156 MPH in that sports car, was there any wind in the car cockpit? Please note that I am not asking if there was a 156 MPH wind in the cockpit itself. And I am assuming that there was no top on the car.
We had the top on but had we not it would have been unmanageable ... Ive driven many cars at 120+ many times and upwards of 150+ the blast is basically unmanageable unless you have goggles or something on - just the wind blast on your chest is significant. Now lets consider an open cockpit plane. At 150+ its a hurricane. Must use goggles and everything in the cockpit must be nailed down. Sun glasses dont stay on your head at 120+ in any open cockpit (car or plane).
However, I think I know where Bruce is coming from. He is referring to Carr comments, and other people's comments, about wind at the rear seat with the door open and stairs out, and wind on the stairs "during the test flight". As I recall this supposedly there was no wind on the stairs (the stairs were protected). That was the testimony? That is what Bruce is going by. Once you got off the stairs and left the protective envelope of the fuselage, then you were "Into the Blast", as the book title refers to. That "blast" according to Boeing Sky Diving team testimony would ... rip your shoes off, have Cooper knocked unconscious by the money bag, etc etc etc. That dire testimony was the basis of "Cooper died". Then skydivers like 377 surfaced saying: "no big deal! survivable. easy. fun..." and the like.
I dont question the physics of this. Little wind on the back seat, ie 'papers laid flat on my lap' is believable. No appreciable Bernoulli effect at the back seat, or in the doorway, but when you close the hole abruptly then instruments react and Anderson is seeing a pressure affect on his panel. People may feel it in their ears. That's telling and predictable.
It is also worth saying that crew brought up Tina being tethered for security if she was going to open the rear door and get the stair down. As I recall this Cooper said "no problem"? I forget what Cooper said ??
Take your choice.
Georger, thanks for the information.
Bruce, Georger has answered your questions about the wind situation in autos and open cockpit airplanes as well as the rear cabin area of the airliner. Below is my response to you about the aft stairs.
There are two or three aft stair steps, just aft of the rear pressure hull door, that are permanently fixed to the fuselage structure. The hinge line for the rest of the stairs is placed so that the bottom of the stairs will be flush with the adjacent areas of the fuselage outer skin when the stairs are retracted.
When the stairs are deployed, there is a fabric "modesty panel" on each side of the stairs. As can be seen in some of the pictures taken of the airliner at Reno, these modesty panels were damaged despite the stairs being only slightly deployed on most of the flight to Reno.
When Cooper passed the stairs hinge line as he headed down the stairs, the stairs would start lowering and he would be exposed to increasing wind forces. To minimize these wind forces (and this does not mean they are being eliminated) Cooper would have to lie down on the stairs and slide down until he went off the end of the stairs. But Cooper would still be exposed to wind forces of some magnitude. Those wind forces would also increase the wind chill factor that Cooper was exposed to. And I see nothing further to discuss on this matter.
To add something to Georger's remarks, once upon a time an aircraft called the F-16 was being prepared for entry into the USAF inventory. It was equipped with a single piece canopy over the cockpit area and a rather small "windshield" over the instrument panel. The question came up as to the pilot's ability to function if the single piece canopy took leave of the airplane without any other problem with the aircraft.
So a wind tunnel test was set up to answer the question. The human test subject in this experiment was the F-16 program director (two stars) and, if I remember correctly, he said he could barely function at all at 180 knots and couldn't do anything meaningful at 200 knots. This meant that the aircraft would have to slow to something less than about 180 knots if the canopy was lost. The F-16 program director in this test went on to acquire a third star, direct the Star Wars Program, and to get the NASA Space Shuttle flying again after the last shuttle loss.
