UPDATE #15 - March 13, 1998

PART 1: Upcoming Chats
PART 2: Prizes for Early Contest Entries
PART 3: Preparing for Heavy Turbulence
PART 4: Subscribing & Unsubscribing: How to do it

UPCOMING CHATS

Thursday, March 19, 11:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time:
Jason Hill, Flight Simulator Technician. Jason is responsible
for maintaining two of NASA's flight simulators. Registration
information is at

http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/chats/#chatting
Read his biography prior to joining this chat.

http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/team/hill.html


Tuesday, March 24, 10:00 a.m.- 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time:
Stephen Jaeger, Aeroacoustics Engineer
Stephen develops tools for measuring aircraft noise. He 
also conducts acoustics research on wind tunnel models 
of supersonic jets, airliners and aircraft engines. 
Registration information is at

http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/chats/#chatting
Read his biography prior to joining this chat.

http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/team/jaeger.html

PRIZES FOR EARLY CONTEST ENTRIES

As you know we are holding two contests: Draw a Picture of an
Airplane and Write an Essay Describing the Airplane You
Would Like to Design,

http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/aero/events/index.html

Early bird prizes will be awarded to entries received
by March 30, 1998.

PREPARING FOR HEAVY TURBULENCE

by Jason Hill

Thursday, March 12, 1998

Today turned out to be pretty busy. We start an experiment
next Monday, so I have some extra tasks on top of my normal
duties. The three of us on the morning shift arrive at
4:30 a.m. and started the daily check-out routine. That involves
loading the software for the two simulators, visually
checking on the hydraulic pumps and major components, then
making a short flight designed to verify everything works
normally.

During the test flight, my shift lead wanted to do an extra
test on the motion system, because the experiment requires
heavy turbulence. We turned it up as high as the system would
handle, until everything was so bumpy it was even hard to
press the buttons!

After the daily checks and our turbulence test, I started
adjusting the visual system. (This is basically a system of
three big-screen TV projectors that share a wide, curving
screen. The screen forms a complete half-circle, so that the
view out the window looks seamless.) The three projectors
have three color tubes each; red, green and blue. When the
three colors are mixed together in the proper amounts, the
result is a complete spectrum of available colors. My job
was to adjust all nine tubes so that the colors are balanced
and a white cloud actually looks white. If there is too much
green, it looks slightly greenish. Not enough green
makes it look slightly pink or violet.

When I was finished with all that, it was almost 8:30. Lunch
time! My day starts so early, I'm eating lunch when most people
are still on their way to work!

After lunch the software programmers and experimenters were
working on their part of the experiment preparations, so I
started assembling a group of simple boxes we need for a future
experiment. I was cutting holes, stripping and soldering wires,
and attaching parts for most of the rest of the day.  Before
I left, though, I helped install a few cables so that the
experiment operator could record extra data on a second
videotape.

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