caesar novus

Reread your post... i say forward slip and you respond with sideslip... they have little connection in intent. You could go a whole flying career avoiding a sideslip, but even an early student should learn forward slip for emergency landings without power. All airline pilots should know it in case flaps become inoperable in total power outs like air canada (dead apu). I didnt mean helmet cams for flyers, but firemen. It is becoming common and only a few places ban them including the now brilliantly timed sfo fire chief. I don't know her story, but california chiefs including police are famous for benefit extortion... so i hold them to high standard. I posted quotes here a few years ago on how something like 40%? get "chiefs disease" in california where they claim backaches and pension off at astronomical rates. Towns have been bankrupted. We had that here where an unmotivated minority figurehead was named as a chief, then soon went on leave for months due to backache, then retired young with benefits times three. The problem is no market economy in public sector... the hard workers dont get rewarded but the incompetant and manipulators hit jackpots.

I have only randomly seen a few news updates, but now the young genius who is playing grownup sfo firechief at probably hyper extortionate taxpayer expense has appalled many by banning the use of helmetcams that showed they were running over passenger. Even the crew want helmetcams as a way of improving, and in this case the cam evidence pointed to higher ups not passing on certain info to drivers. This is what you get by promoting public servants to the top based on alleged victimology rather than seasoned and effective candidates. PS, forward slip doesnt involve one iota of slipping to a side... you proceed absolutely straight as if on rails (altho crooked heading) and this has included air canada swept wing airliners (they can barrel roll for heavens sake). You snuff the sideward slip with counter yaw, and genteelly float downward using all that crookedness as dive brakes. It's not about correcting for sidewind, like crab or sideslip. Wiki has a better explanation with diagram somewhere, but that awkwardly phrased version is mostly correct and well emphasizes the centrality of this maneuver for even beginners.

Our version excludes the energetic Dan snow, except for a minute in Romania, where he was strangely dominant over the women who is OUR onscreen focus (non)personality... Hosted by a dull disembodied voice instead. They promised specific other site visits in coming episodes, but I don't see it scheduled yet. Maybe the advertisers are boycotting our bland version after seeing results. My recording cut off the end credits that might explain the origin of our series, which has content but no sizzle.

You worry about sink rate, but the aviation world doesn't need to. You can simply dive low to build up energy, then level out or even climb if you wish... simply on your retained energy with no engine power at all. Sink rate problem gone, you've just got to time it right when and over where your speed bleeds off, like Asiana didn't. At my previous location it used to be a fetish of recreational pilots to do a virtual suicide type dive on landing approach to blast thru wind shear layers... the surface wind howled in a much different direction than winds just a bit higher, and could stall or disrupt a pokey pilot at the transition. But they did it more for showoff and the excitement of flattening down on that ground effect at high speed. You criticize side slips, but I specifically said forward slip (contrasted here with sideslip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_slip#Forward-slip ) which go straight and worked great. Dialogue is going in circles partly because the difficulty of me multi-quoting. You denied my explanation of the control handoff, saying it required confirmation, then went back to agree with my original explanation with the addition that it is an eternal practice. Umpteen official crash evaluations disprove that, and in 1990's led various airline companies to train copilots to easily and assertively utilize that phrase, and for head pilots to respond submissively. If you disagree, take it up with the Smithsonian tv channel.

The time of year would color many decisions. I visit in shoulder season and the hotel values tend to be awful for the price. Maybe try hotels owned by the church http://italytravelista.com/where-to-stay-in-rome-convent-and-monastery-accommodation-in-rome-travel-to-italy/ , but the Italian gov't may have revoked their bargain tax free status. At the airport you can just show up at the kiosk for shared airport vans. It may appear chaotic, but soon you are flying like a racecar thru Rome with maybe a singing driver and won't mind the intermediate stops. I tend to take the overpriced train back just because there is more certainty about the schedule. Or use the Naples airport for one end of your tour... there is actually an infrequent airport bus direct to pretty Sorrento where you are in the backyard of Pompeii or Jovian palace of Capri... then you can train back to Rome. For the other end you could also avoid FCO if easyjet or whoever will take you to CIA. They have busses meet the planes and its a shorter drive than from FCO. Or land in Pisa, walk to town and sightsee before boarding the train. Ostia Antica is big, but in kind of appalling shape (degraded even in past few years) and not worth a full day. Holy cow, with that time you could do Pompeii, Herculeum, villa Poppea (sp?) etc! But for Ostia combine things along the way. I guess you could take a taxi there from extremely nearby FCO if they would let you store your bag like Pompeii let me store mine, then train to Rome. Or hit spots in Rome southern outskirts like power station branch of capitaline museum, st paul vatican church, or better things that slip my mind. EDIT: baths of caracalla! Villa Hadriana is a must-combine with the lesser Villa Este, but takes careful homework to schedule. There is an oft mentioned way you can find on the internet that uses a northern subway station/bus hub. It used to be the northern end of subway, since extended. The advantage is it has a manned window to buy all your bus tix (cotrel?) to a stop near Hadrian, onward to Tivoli for Este, then back. On the return get off the bus a stop or 2 early where 80% depart for the new subway end station. You can get all details on the web from casual and official web schedules with exact stop locations. It should become apparent that you don't want to use the closest stops to Hadrians place which would require complex transfers and bad scheduling. Use stops a half mile away with much more traffic, and be prepared to navigate the quaint neighborhood maze on the ground. There is a train between rome and Tivoli which I might consider for the return... I think you would walk down a virtual mountain to the north side of Tivoli for a rare, slow train or something. In any case, start super early and be prepared for overload at Hadrians. Like any sprawling place, you can attack it clockwise or the reverse. I wish I went clockwise because that left side starts with dense jumbles of famous stuff that got disorienting when I was tired near the end (was sick anyway). The other side is more serene and quietly monumental. But that right side does have a little museum with the usual ridiculous hours... closing for lunch or the day at practically half past dawn. I was annoyed that the guards were trailing great streams of breadcrumbs from eating their overflowing sandwiches among the exhibits, well before their ultra generous lunch closing time. I guess gov't workers there feel less obligated by their job because it is ruthlessly taxed, whereas private employees have great latitude to evade income taxes? Anyway pay close attention to days of the week closures... usually monday. Sunday pedestrian day is heaven for an Appian way walk... I might try a bus or archeo bus for that rather than the Tericola train next time. It is horrible to walk from Rome, not due to the distance but the extremely narrow roads and fast cars. Except if you take a roundabout path to include the really nice WW2 massacre commemoration site... that has a walkable shortcut to the racetrack/villa/temples part of appian way. There is a deli or two here for a nice carryout snack... i can still taste their nice eggplant sandwich and fruit juice. Use some planning to at least recognize the near-impossible constraints of opening times. For example the racetrack closes extremely early. The fantastic Q. Bros. villa complex may claim to open early but may not open their appian back door til quite late. These exhibits have shared tickets (aha... including caracalla baths in southern rome which you must see) and good bathrooms which are sparse further down the road (I complained earlier here about repeatedly seeing women apparently going to pee on the back of nice roman tomb markers, leaving piles of tissue and corrosive ammonia... yes, you mingle with the dog walking rich local mansion residents in early morning here). Don't miss the national museum branch near the train station and the baths near there which are particularly rich in Roman stuff and not as crowded as others. I think I already discussed getting in the great Roman-only section of the vatican, possibly bypassing the horrible mile long monday lines (4 or 5 people wide!) by getting an online ticket for garden or other vatican tour.

Is it worth having a discussion area for the Discovery Science TV docu-series "What Lies Beneath: Roman Empire"? I think it is getting rarer to have such a series, and maybe some don't have it available. Also it seems to have a weak presence online, and hard to tell what episode will come when (doesn't appear in the same timeslot next week). Anyway it seems to be an extension of a recent documentary on Egyptian archeology guided from computer processed satellite photos. Now the same researcher is panning around the whole Roman empire and knocking archeo-collegues off their chairs by what a few photo hen scratching appear to suggest about ancient villages etc. I'm not sure any great answers are made, but at least good questions... and some cool site visits or computer recreations that look scrumptious in HD. First episode focused on Ostia. Visited the hexagon port now inland, and eventually tramped around the surrounding wastelands. The photos suggested various canals (remind you of Mars?) such as a shortcut to Rome along the winding Tiber. I would guess the function isn't as they said to relieve congestion so much as to allow animals to haul the barges from paths alongside against the current, then riding the river current on the way down (riding higher over sandbars, etc). She found a possible extra warehouse area (yawn) and an oval interpreted as an amphitheater on the far outskirts of Ostia. Some hen scratching was suggested as the famous lighthouse, which they scaled using the base size to estimate about 35 stories in height. I guess the harbor was expanded by Trajan, so they took a sidetrip about his attacks on Rumania. The harbor received grain from inland Tunisia, so they used photo hen scratchings to ID an unknown inland fort to protect this. Those site visits were very brief... I almost preferred the unusual peeks of Rome proper thrown in. Some OxBridge accents had to chime in for the obligatory rants against Rome as a fascist bully... the architecture of large boatsheds and big Trajan statue supposedly being aimed at psychological terror of visiting diplomats. What diplomats did they need to impress, and do we even know the height or flavor of that disappeared architecture? Isn't most of Roman architecture alternatively understandable as an expression of societal pride and morale building? Anyway not like modern dictatorship architecture; here are quotes from Dom Joly's "Dark Tourist" book on visiting Pyongyang: "It was the usual, ugly, brutalist architecture so loved by totalitarian regimes." ... "I wondered if anyone had attempted a picturesque dictatorship." I note that public architecture/facilities/parks in the US often have prominent plaques giving credit to the mayor or governor. This seems strange when you realize that they aren't desperate for re-election... it's almost impossible to kick out incumbents, and it isn't always big egos. Rather, I think it is more more trying to gather of support of the majority who benefit a little bit from these improvements VS. the whiner self centered activists and the powerful not-in-my-backyard obstructionists that the mayor or whoever had to fight to get anything done. A canal thru the backyard of my villa... death to Trajan! I think today's plaques imply: It almost killed me to get this obviously beneficial thing done; I had to call in all my favors and still may get stabbed in the back, so give this project some props and support me to do more of this. And they went on to depict Rome as a chronic military and administrative bully, although this was done with such a skeleton crew (150k soldiers they said) that statically they would be absolutely lost among the millions of Roman citizens.

This post generated by error... see prev post here instead http://www.unrv.com/forum/topic/11550-coming-up-next/page-4#entry124582

It's a series, so look for it next week. Also repeats, and maybe online videos. The first episode seems to cover speculation about Rome's port based on satellite images leading them to new trace evidence. Computer reconstructions ensue.

High sink rate is normally easily tamed through ground effect and aggressive properly timed flares, if the runway is long enough. You get cushion from your wingtip vortices squashing against the ground, and flares can convert forward/downward speed into lift and drag. There can be a problem with moveable passengers; a bunch of people changing seats in a small turboprop can shift to bad CG which can prevent or prematurely promote flares. Airliners don't do well with off runway landings. There was one success recently covered in Air Disasters where a south/latin American airliner glided onto a random grassy area in California, and later even flew off after an engine and tire was replaced. But it turned out to be a manicured area at a Nasa facility that maybe was intended for future emergency air use, although unmarked and unused. Of course the French pilot I mentioned did better gliding to his island of departure rather than ocean landing (craggy coast without rescue infrastructure). He had the wisdom to set up biased toward overshoot rather than undershoot, but he didn't know how to angle down with a slow forward slip once the runway was guaranteed. So they probably got a lot of fright lawsuits from the fast and bumpy panic braking. The Canadian airline pilot did right to aim for an inland runway because he was also a sailplane pilot whose every molecule is tuned to never land short (a la Asiana) and with a bag of tricks to avoid running long after the runway is guaranteed. Landing off field is tricky with half invisible power lines, and even your runway may have stone walls or trees at the end. In Alaska, I guess they encourage light aircraft pilots to practice emergency landing on freeways even amongst traffic The "I have the controls" phrase and it's mandatory acceptance by the other was presented as an airline company policy. First by Korean Air, then by others. Even useless remedies may need to be followed to avoid lawsuits in future crashes. But I think it could have helped for instance the case of a Korean co-pilot who recognized the fatal mistake of his retired-general ex-fighter pilot. It was almost understandable that the co-pilot struggled for the right words, which probably was a familiar pattern because I think the senior pilot had been a poor student at airliners.

OK, the "What Lies Beneath: Roman Empire" series starts Monday and is bookended by repeats of 2 other quality Rome documentaries. Don't cancel that overpriced cable TV yet, or else tell us all an alternative way to access these from Discovery Science HD:

Well, I'm laid up again with a nasty foot injury... strange how disabling that can be, due to it's location rather than the severity. So I thought I would reflect here a bit. I just put on some background video of a Bocelli concert in Portofino, which makes somewhat sappy music in a pretentious location quite magical... is it the Italian touch, or maybe my memories of hiking the pretty hills in the background (better than crowded Cinque Terre!). I recorded it off cable tv and was about to flush it, but then found it is a real cinema movie, This trailer makes it seem brash rather than it's actual mellow, scenic character: Anyway, I didn't realize the extent of my injury because it had a numbing effect at first. I got all distracted by trying to create my own salt free Cajun seasoning by mixing up stuff on hand. This was after much frustration of trying to subscribe to that from Amazon... if you subscribe to 5 things at once regularly they deduct 15% and charge no postage. Anyway, why not mix various pepper, paprika, garlic, onion and others powders together? Came out a little harsh, so why not add some mellow thai seasonings and nutritional yeast... pretty good, but what is that throbbing in my foot... YIKES! Another liberating area of self-mix is sodapop. Got the neat Sodastream carbonating machine (did I mention this earlier?) and concoct my own syrups. A good one is root beer extract mixed with the super healthy agave syrup instead of the usual corn syrup. Or canned frozen concentrate of lemonade mixed with coconut syrup... refreshing! I found an adaptor valve online to use paintball co2 chargers which are vastly cheaper bubblemakers than from sodastream, yet fit in their machine. Real quality results, cheaper, and I save all the lugging of cans and such. My next mixing direction is something I touched on in a topic here about fermented applesauce. I am crazy about bubbles (not alcohol) in what I eat or drink, and accidentally created a perfect mix of fermented cranberry juice mixed with applesauce. The bubbles stay suspended in place and are amazing to encounter. But it's hard to perfect. Too thin and the apple pulp just sinks below a watery gruel. Too thick can be fun, but has problems I talked about earlier. The trick seems to be starting a tad too watery, then the yeast turns the mixture a bit gluey with absolutely immobilized bubbles. But you can drink it, sort of like a smoothie with tart bubble bursts!

There is a Rome documentary coming on the discovery science hd channel (and maybe elsewhere) called something like Rome... revealing the underground on Aug 12. It is new, and not the same as two very similar themed series in the past. Sched should appear at the bottom of http://science.discovery.com/tv-shows/tv-schedule.htm in a couple days. Computer aided reconstructions seem to be involved.

It's been confirmed that the fire truck killed one of the victims. It was under the supervision of a very immature looking fire chief, and just reminds me of the dysfunctional public sector situation in California. Steven Greenhut's "Plunder!" book documents a world where merit or experience can mean nothing but instead is on some reckless utopian social experiment. A local newspaper recently quoted a United Airlines pilot who instructed at Korean Air for 5 years. He also brought up the cultural issue of Korean copilots being reluctant to correct a pilot. Also he said those students tended to be overly trustful of technology (thus not monitoring autopilot closely?). Normally this would raise red flags for some who seem to believe the world is driven by racism, but this was a well documented issue in multiple Korean Air crashes. Last I heard Korean Air itself solved their safety record with strict training that a copilot in any doubt of the pilot immediately take over and simply say "I've got the controls". All airlines apparently teach that now, and insist pilots defer to it. The "Air Disasters" documentary episodes showed in chilling detail both a Korean and non-Korean co-pilot failing to over ride a pilot who they see making correctable but fatal mistakes. You're talking about good glide angle but high sink rate and thus excess speed. First of all, I only brought up Asiana's fast/steep glide as being a factor that allowed them to not notice their speed autopilot was disengaged. If they weren't playing training games and had a normal descent, they would have needed power kicking in earlier and overridden it before it was too late, Secondly, I think it's a shame airline pilots don't get elementary glider experience. The "Air Disasters" series had two episodes of airline pilots gliding into landing. You have to come in high, because as seen in SFO falling short is a disaster. Then you land steeply and fast as did a French airliner who took off with an empty fuel gauge which they thought was faulty. The pilot glided back to the Atlantic island for 45 minutes and scared the passengers with a fast bumpy landing. Or you land steeply and elegantly, such as a Canadian pilot who knew how to forward slip a sailplane. He had no power to lower the airliner flaps, but plopped down nicely even on a disused Ontario runway with kids biking on it. I love forward slips which synchronize the stick and pedals backwards to increase drag, and even wonder if it might help to alternate a forward slip from side to side to further increase the safe descent angle.

Caligula's reputation seems in an upswing over recent years http://www.unrv.com/book-review/caligula-review.php and even on the history channel, as can be seen on their documentary I recently posted under numismatica/Scotland (topic drift alert... grin). I abandoned an audio recording of Suetonius's 12 Caesars because it just rung so false. I mean compared to their refined level of architecture and bust sculpture. I am quite used to associating crass examples of that from crass totalitarians like Stalin, Mussolini, or Mao, and find it hard to believe the most sensationalist mud thrown at the "bad" Caesars who oversee such sublime art and engineering.

Maybe Grant brought logistics to the world stage, and Sherman brought counter-logistics to the equation... instead of just army vs army. I dunno; my closest related education is just reading umpteen pilot bio's in an Air Force library as a kid. Nice to know that Petreaus scares were overblown. I happen to live where such fringe movements come to roost after being rejected as too looney even in California. They get laws passed that just amaze unbiased mayors or governor as being of no practical use and very expensive and restrictive. But they don't dare veto them because the movements use exactly what Goebbels recommends... hit simple emotional rather than logical points, and repeat and repeat. Make your falsehoods big and brazen, which are harder to tackle than small lies which can be disposed of more easily.

I don't think he's saying who was best in a particular war, but who has special transcending qualities in all history of recorded warfare. I was unfamiliar with his Roman choice because that late eastern empire period doesn't grab me for some reason yet. It's nice he didn't rehash the obvious choice from second punic war, since I am reading Goebbels vast diaries and he was pushing that as a prime example to everyone why not to surrender and to continue the hopeless meatgrinder to the end. I barely knew about Ridgeways story because Korea was kind of an embarrassing, error prone conflict. I barely followed Petreaus because I was so disgusted at the left democrat agitprop attempting to deny him senate approval to head USCENTCOM. He was so obviously the ideal, effective, yet humanitarian choice which should have pleased the left, but they needed to stereotype some random target to make a point. They do the same Goebbels-style agitprop today for example on laws for (but sabotaging) green-ness. Of course Patreaus did a transformational job, and as this book says of course he was then reviled and torn down (by the right?). Sherman is spun so nicely in this video that it may be worth sliding the dial to find that section. He is of course reviled in southern memory, yet inflicted and incurred miniscule casualties in his famous march in the SE (I realize he had a rough start further west). He caused property damage that was targeted against warmaking capability and the elite, not against everyman such is remembered. With Grant's slow progress and high attrition, the north was risking to lose an election and the supposedly anti-slave european countries were itching to recognize the slave south to restore cotton trade. The north couldn't afford many more Grant style victories, so Sherman had to think out of the box. Goebbels at one point convinces Hitler and Goring to try something similar, in switching the final bombing of England from military or urban targets to the homes and neighborhoods of the elite ruling class, but I guess it wasn't followed up.

Well, here is a decent recent History Channel doc on Caligula... they seemed to use good judgment in choosing among less sensational explanations. Only marred by the usual over dramatic recreations, they had a few good site visits (be ready to pause because it goes away fast), and best of all had reasonable hosts. A few quirky greybeards and some younger presentable hipsters, all seeming to give plausible academic views. At least I was lulled into liking "Caligula: 1400 days of terror" http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZT6LVwZlQyU

Here is a spectacular lecture series (even if the subject itself bores you) by historian Barry Lewis, who loves hundred year old New York City architecture... often with Roman themes: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/search/?keywords=%22barry+lewis%22 Most of them are intense, entertaining, and end with loud whoops and applause... a study on how lectures should be. Well, the first GCT one on the list is not the best, and the last three I didn't intend to be included in the search. In a lost post, I urged folks to see the one on the demolished Penn Station which was modeled on a Roman bath. The Coney Island one will be on cspanTV this weekend if you don't like watching on PC.

GORGEOUS visuals, FASCINATING facts, but tiresome victimology spin. Maybe the noble caledonians themselves invaded as genocidal brutes in earlier years, and with less to offer than the Romans. Well, I don't want to diss whoever made the Scottish enlightenment possible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment I too wondered if such high technical documentary standards can be maintained if it will be paid for by local ratepayers absent English taxpayers and dwindling north sea oil. The US History channels and even BBC America standards plummet lower every year due to mass-market and price pressure. At least the professor didn't actually touch the morocco woodwork he was pointing out, and used gloves for things he touched (probably regulations, but often ignored by tv hosts). Whenever there was an absence of info, he chronically speculated Rome doing evil and Caledonians as hapless victims... rarely symbiosis. Maybe the wall was to prevent freeloading of Roman benefits without paying the price by way of taxes and obligations. However, a tentative frontier of Roman society maybe didn't provide many blessings unless it had stabilized more. Endurance of a plucky underdog makes an appealing foundation myth for a country I suppose, but insurgencies only work when you stay too primitive to develop ripe targets.

Cool... On android jellybean I side loaded my free ICS version of boat browser, which does not seem to be directly offered to native jellybeaners. I set the browser mode from android to desktop and the videos show up fine on this forum. No size problem in either my new 11.5 inch China tablet or 13 inch convertible win8 laptop. Either something changed here, or more likely boat browser rules the world... solved most of my other probs too.

You can access the video links by hitting the quote button... I had to do this on android, but not win8. The videos were interesting attempts to grab attention of youth, but heavy on the leftest victimology framework... An exaggerated but veiled commentary on more modern history and how it should be legislated. If this was presented as an anthropology 101 project, it would be failed due to stereotyping the society as if they had your aspirations and were stuck in chains of their own culture. Rather you should either respect or agnosticize their own values, and recognize their real tradeoffs and context. Look at the peace and prosperity within Rome vs without, for instance.

Thanks, that feed may be what my apps are relaying. BTW the early 1940's entries of Goebbels diaries are about the greatest tribute to Britain ever. Before US involvement or even Russian victories, the German inner circle are aghast at UK resistance. By spring 1942 their health and spirit is almost broken by British bombings and Russian resistance. Not many were killed thanks to bomb shelters, but it caused chaos, and they didn't understand how the Brits could be shrugging off their sub and aerial attacks. By spring 1943 the inner circle really sees defeat looming and only continue because of admittedly burning bridges behind in terms of crimes. Main US contribution to this point was just lendlease to UK and USSR.

OK, the still preliminary info seems to begin to gel now... The pilot doing his first landing with that type of plane and the instructor copilot doing his first teaching flight... apparently armed but didn't activate the auto speed control. Or it possibly deactivated... point being they thought the speed was taken care of until too late. In a car I notice if cruise control failed to activate or kicked off, because once you drop one iota in speed the sharks immediately swarm around you in reckless passing. They didn't have that feedback; so there's my quota of compassion and maybe a direction for improvement in yet another cockpit warning. I do wonder why they would put 2 first timers together in a landing. Anyway, to wrap up my myth paradigm: It may be a myth that the deaths were caused by the airline crash... one or both were possibly clobbered by "rescuers". I always am wary of good samaritans because they are blinded by their good intentions and tend to do unintended damage. And most importantly, based on the black box info that was unprecedently released immediately, I can still say the low and slow theory may be a myth. If they were in proper and normal glidepath, they should have noticed earlier the speed wasn't being automatically kicked in. But in that unusual steep descent, they had all the speed they needed just by gravity... until the last few seconds when they needed juice fast.

It's just too painful to hear the news muddle proceed... now they say a firetruck appeared to kill at least one of the 2 non-survivors. I saw yesterday an interview with the so-called firechief on the scene, and was struck by her seeming to appear about 17 years old. OK, maybe a young looking 27 year old, but what are the chances of her being more qualified for the top job than the huge pool of more experienced ones? SFO is the leading edge of spreading hiring practices based only on being a minority and not a drop on administrative qualifications. All fire departments should be privatized and jobs not treated as rewards to dole out, but with position, pay and benefits based on the actual job marketplace rather than rigged up monopolies. They are still harping on the low and slow glidepath instead of the root cause anomaly. If my detailed preliminary info is correct, the problem was an awkward recovery from a too high and steep glidepath. Then you are like on a roller coaster with too much energy/speed that has to be quashed. The inexperienced pilot appeared to overcorrect in flattening out and slowing down way too much in a drastic last minute fashion. The instructor co-pilot probably artificially set up this challenge to practice landing under difficult conditions. There may have been some equipment failure, but it wasn't that they were merrily coasting in and failed to power up. Everything was going their way in terms of excess speed and altitude even if their engines quit.. they had to intentionally try hard to slow down... it was almost more surprising they didn't overshoot rather than undershoot.

Although this is very early to analyze the Asiana Airlines crash http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/07/19337501-i-have-trouble-audio-from-cockpit-reveals-moments-after-deadly-crash?lite&gt1=43001 I would like to take the risk of denying the myths that I have already heard being spread by news commentators who don't have much clue about flight.. 1) "The gears started shaking in the cockpit": No gears, but they must mean the stall warning device shook the controls to get pilot attention. 2) "They came in too slow and low": NO! that was just during the last moment where they overcorrected or whatever. The glidepath was absolutely too high, too steep, and probably too fast for all but the last few seconds. 3) "The pilot was a trainee with lots more experience than his 43 hours in that aircraft implies": Groan.... so he had equivalent of 4 pacific crossings and a ton of hours in simulators and other aircraft. Do you realize he was offered rare permission to experiment with a manual visual approach without the usual autopilot guidence that would keep him nailed on proper glidepath? They were departing from Seoul; do you realize there was a famous co-pilot syndrome connected with multiple Korean Airline crashes, where they would fail to correct fatal but recoverable errors by the pilot out of respect for their social rank? This not a Korean airline, but what about the instructor copilot? Well, a timid instructor seems a stretch, but instructors often push their student to a stressful limit and may have setup something tricky for this trainee pilot.