FW: [LINK] F-22 Raptor stumped by International Date Line

[Daniel Rose]

There is a possibly apocryphal story about fighters going from Europe south over the Equator.

They flipped over in mid air and flew along upside down.

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at anumail0.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at anumail0.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Gordon Keith
> Posted At: Thursday, 1 March 2007 9:06 AM
> Posted To: Link List
> Conversation: [LINK] F-22 Raptor stumped by International Date Line
> Subject: Re: [LINK] F-22 Raptor stumped by International Date Line
> 
> 
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:00, Tom Worthington wrote:
> >   t 07:35 AM 28/02/2007, Stilgherrian wrote:
> > > >From http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=6225 ...   On a
> > >
> > > 12 to 15 hours flight from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, 
> > > Japan. The U.S. Air Force's mighty Raptor was felled  by the 
> > > International Date Line (IDL)....
> >
> > It is a little difficult to see what the bug could be. The military 
> > use "Zulu" time, known to civilians as Coordinated Universal Time
> > (UTC) or colloquially as GMT
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time>. 
> They don't 
> > use local time, so there should have been no change when 
> crossing the 
> > international date line; neither the date nor time recorded on the 
> > aircraft would change.
> 
> It's unlikely to have anything to do with date/time.
> 
> It's very likely to have something to do with latitude going 
> from -180 to 180.
> 
> If the navigation computers are doing any calculations based 
> on the start of flight position and don't know the world is 
> round then crossing from 180 west to 180 east is likely to 
> really confuse them.
> 
> I suspect they might not do well flying over the poles either.
> 
> Regards
> Gordon
> 
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