01x03 - There Goes an Airplane

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all kids love to play with toy airplanes but if you ever wondered what it would be like to be a real pilot

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hi kids at pie with Dave well I'm not really a pilot but the real pilots have

agreed to let me pretend for the day so that you I can learn all about airplanes this is a biplane and in a biplane the

real pilot rides in the back okay you got it wait a minute I don't

have anything

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Wow that was quite a flight I'm glad the real pilot was really in control by the way I want to tape about this airplane

now this is a very special airplane it's a biplane as you can see it has two wings this is a brand new airplane but

it's an exact replica of a plane that flew back in 1935 so how do planes fly

well let's take a look at the wing and see if you notice the bottom of the wing is fairly straight but the top portion

is rather curved now what that does when the wind flows over the wing is it

forces the air on top of the wing to go faster than the air on the bottom it has further to travel that creates a suction

which lifts the airplane into the air so how do we get the air to go over the wing well come right with me this is the

propeller and the propeller is like a big fan or a big screw that pulls the

airplane through the air and forces the air over the wings which causes the lift it's really pretty simple looks clean

Vioxx is the man who really flies this plane he's gonna show us how the controls work the control stick is

normally flown in the mid position like this when we want the airplane to dive towards the ground we simply push it

forward when we'd like to take the nose of the airplane and pull it up into the air we'll pull it out like this when we want

the airplane to roll to the left we simply bring the stick over to your left like this and if we want to go to the

right we simply bring it over to the right

and of course we've got panels down below and many of you are probably thinking once an accelerator pedal and

one's a brake pedal however those are called rudder pedals they make the nose come left or come right now a skilled

pilot is able to take all of these different motions and combine them into one single motion and that's what a

pilot calls the pride and joy of flying is when he gets to the point where he can skillfully maneuver all of these

controls to make one precise movement you can tell by advanced loves his job

we'll see you later pilot Vince [Music]

the very first plane to fly was also a biplane it was invented by the Wright

brothers in 1903 it was first flown in Kitty Hawk North Carolina

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all of the first planes were made out of cloth wire and wood and they were all

built by hand [Music]

some look pretty weird and they didn't always fly this was one of the first

passenger planes it's really strange [Music]

this airplane is called a gyrocopter

back then very few people got to fly in airplanes and nobody can imagine what

planes would look like today today

airplanes are fast and sleek and flying is one of the safest ways to get from

place to place [Applause]

[Applause] we're about to pay a visit to Southwest

Airlines at an airport near Los Angeles California

Wow what do you think of my outfit I really feel like a pilot now well we've

seen some small airplanes and what makes them work and how they fly now we've come to a busy Airport where we're going

to see some much larger jet airplanes and how they work these big airplanes

have to get gas just like your car at home the baggage is stored in a special

compartment in the belly of the airplane these baggage handlers have to be strong

to carry all these bags and have to be very careful to read the tag so that the bags get where they're supposed to go

my name is Bruce Bennett and I'm the station manager for Southwest Airlines well the airplane Southwest flies a

Boeing 737 and they hold from 122 passengers all the way up to a hundred

and thirty seven passengers they go about 350 miles an hour they fly about 30,000 feet if you come

in close to the engines before the engines are shut down it's like a giant

vacuum cleaner and it will take your hat and your tie and anything it'll suck it

into the engines and of course those blades are spinning very fast so it's very dangerous and that's why we have

all of the safety rules on the ground that we have cause it's very dangerous hi I'm Christie Hernandez and I'm a

flight attendant for Southwest and I'm going to show you some of the features on this 737 aircraft that you know part

of my job consists up I'm going to show you everything that the flight attendant would do okay from the moment you step

on the plane we welcome everyone we're like hi hello good afternoon and what I'm gonna do is

I'm gonna board you so I help you sit down on these feet this is a little lounge area it has a little bit more

comfort in here okay and if you step back a little bit more we have the rest

of our seats all have these little tray tables that come down okay you put your

food there your drinks and I help you and I make sure that you're nice and safe in these states with the seatbelts

I have to make sure that everyone has our seat belt located right around them

okay so put your seat belt on for takeoff during the course of the flight I'll serve you your drinks here we have

our cokes up here dr. pepper all that good stuff straws okay we can make our copy hair

and we have stir sticks okay so it's just like a little kitchen you can make

all of our stuff up here vine is fun I could hardly wait to see you real soon

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well this is the part of the airport that you usually see when you come to the airport this is where you check-in

your bags and well pilot Dave's gonna help out a little okay let me let me get

this bag here put it on the conveyor what oh wait a minute Mike my tie is

stuck in the bag [Music]

thanks guys I really embarrassed I don't quite know how that happened but thank

you very much this this is this is where the baggage goes huh yeah Wow

we're behind the scenes now at the airport usually they don't let people back here but because I'm pretending to

be a pilot today they've let me come back and you'll find all kinds of little trailers and tractors back here each

one's a little different and each one has a specific job what they do is they service the airplane while it's on the

ground now this machine looks really cool this is called an airplane tug it's

actually used to hook to the front wheel of the airplane to move it around the airport when the engines aren't working

hey here comes a big airplane now I better let the real tug drivers take over

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at a busy airport like this one there are lots of airplanes on the ground and

in the air all the time you may be wondering how they keep from running into each other well they do that by

talking on the radio to the people up in that tower that's the control tower

hello my name is Blaine and I work in the control tower and my job is an air traffic controller and basically the

position that I work here I talk to the airplanes that land and that take off what they do is they come they call me

on the radio and they ask for clearance for takeoff much in the same way that you'd probably ask your parents permission to go to a friend's house

hernan's eight five three doll runway two six left cleared to land wind two four zero at six basically I use the

radio which I'm connected to right here and the bright radar so I can determine them and this is Ontario Airport where

we're working right now these dots that go around here in the basic airspace that I'm responsible for

these rings here are five mile range marks to give me an idea on how far people and airplanes are this is an

airplane on a four mile final landing runway two six left which is the closer of the two runways and this is an

airplane ten miles northwest of the field coming inbound this is pilot Dave

going to tower from ups flight 747 requesting permission to land over

Dave we see you and you're cleared to land on runway two-seven left

runway two-seven left that's a Roger - seven left which one is that I guess that one

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we've just landed at the United Parcel Service hub in Ontario California these

big planes don't carry people they carry packages every day millions of people

have United Parcel Service fly packages across the country and around the world

Wow now we've seen little airplanes and even bigger passenger planes and now

we're going to see a really big airplane I mean a really big airplane in fact

this is one of the biggest airplanes in the whole world no by the way you've

probably figured out that I didn't really land that airplane these guys are the real pilots and they give me a

special assignment well the pilots have given me a special

job because I was such a great pilot such a big help down there well let me chock the wheel that's what

this is just put it down there that keeps the wheel from rolling when the plane is parked on the ground

now to give me an idea just how big this airplane really is if you were to stand it on end it would be about as tall as

an eight story building and a weighs almost as much to when it's fully loaded weighs something like 700,000 pounds so

how do you get that much weight in the air well with one of these great big engines as a matter of fact they have four of these huge engines and the way

they work is they suck the air in the front and then they squeeze it together ignite it with the fuel and then that

forces the pressure out the back with more power than a huge tornado and that drives this great big airplane through

the air and just like your car at home these big engines need their oil changed

from time to time there's lots of activity here the planes have to be serviced on a regular basis they check

everything from the big wheels and the landing gear to the very tip-top of the tail and of course the packages have to

be loaded and unloaded as quickly as possible [Music]

these big machines are specially built to help lower the containers gently from

the airplane each container is full of packages one of them might be headed for

your house the ground crew has to work

quickly to unload the packages because more and more airplanes full of more and

more packages are arriving all the time

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[Music] this container is clear you can actually

see the packages inside [Music]

and if you thought the outside of this cargo plane was big just look at the

inside it's huge look at all those

instruments I'm not even gonna try to guess what all of them do but I do want you to meet our pilot today this is

Captain Jim from UPS and we're on the flight deck of a 747 airline are a great

big huge airplane used for hauling cargo for UPS Captain Jim tell us a little bit

about what all these things do they this is the steering wheel for the airplane this lets you climb into sin and turn

left and right that's like a steering wheel in a car yes sir here we've got the trials in your car you've got a

rudder pedal or I'm sorry you've got a pedal on the floor for your throttle and here we have throttles right here this

would go forward yes sir and these would shut those big engines down right all

these instruments up here in front of you Dave there to tell you what the attitude of the airplane whether you're

climbing whether you're descending whether you're turning left or turning right and you've got an airspeed indicator it's just like a speedometer

in your car you see that you see the numbers are a lot bigger than in your car though don't you hear this phenomena

goes up to 400 miles an hour Wow it's a lot faster than your car how fast does this plane fly when it's

actually this airplane can fly up around 500 miles an hour and how hot oh and how high up around 40,000 feet that's how

many miles high Oh 5,000 feet per mile that's about eight miles eight miles high

Dave you notice my feet are on the rudder pedals you've got a set over on your side and the rudder pedals are used

when we're on the ground the top of the rudder pedals are the brakes and you just tap these lightly very gently and

that'll stop this big airplane when we're in the air then we use these rudder pedals to help us fly and they

help in our turns captain Jim there's a lot of kids watching this that may want to be pilots when they grow up what

would you tell him I tell him it's the most fun you can have being a pilot is the best job I've ever had

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well if you ask any pilot they'll tell you the one of the most exciting and dangerous things to do is to land on an

aircraft carrier we've been real lucky because the Navy has given us permission to land on the Kitty Hawk as you're

about to see now we're going to take this airplane out there it's called a cod and the most unusual thing about

this airplane is that the wings fold back as you'll see and that's safe space while they store the planes on the

aircraft carrier they're about to fold those wings out so we can fly out over the ocean and land on the aircraft

carrier so if you're ready I'm ready let's go hi I'm the commander Linda

shape of an area my callsign is Vegas you can call me Vegas today we're gonna be flying the c2 Greyhound out to the

carrier and I think it's the experience you're gonna remember for a long time whether you get to go to the carrier one

time or a thousand times it's always an equal amount of fun now that we've met our pilot it's time to buckle up and

take off

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Wow there she is the USS Kitty Hawk it's a huge ship

but I can't believe we're actually going to land on that tiny runway

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here we go hold on tight and watch the hook on the bottom of the airplane it has to catch the wire in order to stop

the airplane or we won't make it nice line pilot Vegas

now watch as the wings are folded up that's so we won't take up too much space there isn't much of it to go

around on a busy aircraft carrier

we're on the flight deck now this is one of the noisiest places you could ever be and one of the busiest also it's one of

the most dangerous because these planes land at more than a hundred fifty miles

an hour and then come to a complete stop if they catch the wire in three seconds

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good morning I'm Captain Bill pick advance Manning officer the USS Kitty Hawk welcome aboard an aircraft carrier

is a is a seagoing air station it's a it's a it's a ship that carries about 80

airplanes they can fly all different types of types of missions and in do it

at sea we have f-18s the Hornet which is a very fast very fast airplane that has

the capability to drop bombs as well as fire missiles the f-14 is also a

platform that can sh**t the bad guys down with their missiles they have some real long-range missiles and long legs

and it can also drop bombs so we use them for both the a-6 intruder that's

one of the funny airplane with the big nose in the in the air refueling probe

is used for long-range bombing when we have to go up very long distance and they're also used for tanking the e2

Hawkeye which is a big airplane with the big big looks like a big flying saucer on there on the top is a is sort of our

eyes when we're down low down here we can't see as much as an airplane way up high he has a further what we call a

radar horizon he can see further over the horizon so we use the e to to get

out away from the ship and look for all the bad guys that could be coming in from the air the carrier onboard delivering airplane since we're away

from land we don't have the trucks and all that stuff that you see that you see coming in and out of your local towns

and things so we have to have all of our stuff flown out all of our bananas and all of our mail and all of our people

and all that stuff has to be flown out to the show we were shorter we're not as long as it is a normal runway on it on a

on an airport so we have to use catapults and arresting gear to land the airplanes they have a tail hook that

comes down and grabs the wire to stop it and we have kind of like a slingshot on the up on the forward part of the ship

that shoots the airplane off and the airplane goes from about from from standing still to about 160 miles per

hour in about two and a half seconds

today this is the tailhook for the e-2c aircraft use the catch the aircraft when it lands on the flight deck it stopped

about 150 to 0 in about 4 to 5 seconds there must be incredible stresses on

your right incredible monster thanks for exploration problems dude today let go

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this is pilot Dave getting on clearance required track six six five zero Roger

on that but there's a plan through its paces

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emergency situation here pilot dead New York Tower

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pilot Dave to the tower Dave you okay

nevermind Thanks hey kids I'm captain

bill pick advanced if you like what you've seen and there goes an airplane and you want to be a naval aviator stay

off drugs study hard keep your motivation up and you can do it [Music]

we've seen big airplanes little airplanes old airplanes and new

airplanes but if you still want to learn more the best place to do it is at an airplane museum like this one in San

Diego there are some amazing things in airplane museums did you know that

people used to think that the only way to fly was like a bird here you can see what the very first planes looked like

today it's hard to imagine that these fragile little planes could fly but they did you can see how they changed year by

year and see some the changed history some museums show you planes that flew past the sky and into space you may see

more than history you may see part of the future well I hope you've enjoyed

watching and learning all about airplanes I've had a great time pretending to be a real airplane pilot

so until next time this is pilot Dave saying see you in the wild blue yonder

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you [Music]