An aviation dogfight on the back of the car

Since I have the best wife ever, I bought her a new car for Valentine's Day.

This meant we had to get new license plates. The old car was in my name, and I had Airborne plates on it:

Photo from Ohio BMV.

We put the new car in her name, so that wouldn't be an option now, since you need a DD-214 to get paratrooper plates. We decided to get the "Leader in Flight" plates with the Space Shuttle and the Wright Flyer on them. They're an extra $25, but $15 of that goes to support the National Aviation Heritage Area.

Photo from Ohio BMV.

Notice that both of those plates (and all recent Ohio license plates, too) have "Birthplace of Aviation" prominently written just below the "Ohio". The plate I got even takes that one step further and proclaims Ohio "The Leader in Flight". But what about this plate:

Photo from NC DOT.

It says "First in Flight", but it's not an Ohio plate: it's from North Carolina. Technically, they're both correct: Ohio is where the Wright Brothers dreamed of, researched, designed, and planned the world's first airplane, while North Carolina was where they brought those dreams to fruition that historic December day in 1903, and where one of the most famous photographs ever was taken:

Photo from the US National Archives.

The first flight took place in North Carolina, but December 17, 1903 would be the only day the Wrights would fly there. After three more flights that day, the first plane was flipped over by the same winds that drew the Wrights to Kitty Hawk in the first place. It was damaged beyond easy repair, and the brothers returned to Dayton satisfied.

Having demonstrated that the concept was indeed possible, all further development for the next several years was done in their bicycle shop in Dayton, with the flying done at nearby Huffman Prairie. They would not be in Kitty Hawk again for almost 8 years, and that was to only test improvements to their designs that they had made in Dayton. The data they acquired there would be used for improvements once they again returned to Ohio, and that's where the first airplane manufacturing plant would be built.

This friendly rivalry resurfaced when the United States Mint created their 50-state series of quarters. North Carolina used the famous photo above and "First Flight" for the back of their quarter. Ohio one-upped them by using an image of a later-model Wright Flyer taken at Huffman Prairie plus an astronaut along with the words "Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers".

So who wins the dogfight? Ohio gets the kill because while North Carolina is where we learned it was possible to fly, Dayton is where flight was born.

See you next Wednesday!

Turn the page: The downside of being an airline pilot

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a short post that sums up one of the best things about my job. This week, I'll share what the worst thing about my job is.

It's actually so simple I can describe it in pictures. The worst thing about being an airline pilot is this:

That's the sad look my dog has the night I've left for a trip and it's bedtime and my side of the bed is empty. But there's more:

Our Australian Shepherd, Orion, went from that tiny puppy who was smaller than our cat to a 55-pound ball of energy. Each of those pictures (except the first, which was from the ad the puppy rescue had that brought him to us) was taken by my wife because I wasn't there to see him.

As he was going from the little Frisbee show-off who would catch it and trip over it while bringing it back because it was wider than he was to the solid dog in the third picture, I missed out on a lot of his growing up. As he was going from the runt in the first picture to the dog in the last picture who is so big he would be hard to hold up like the puppy rescue did, I was in a hotel room somewhere. Maybe Maine, maybe Missouri, maybe Florida or North Carolina... I don't know where.

What I do know is that being in a hotel room more often than your home is hard at times. It is wearying living out of a suitcase so many days a month, carrying your whole life with you, city after city. I've said that you're not a real airline pilot until you've woken up in your own bed in the middle of the night and tried to remember what city you're in.

More than once, I've had the chorus to Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" in my head. He does a great, poetic job describing what having a job on the road is like.

Say, here I am, on a road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playing the star again
There I go, turn the page

That said, I still wouldn't want to do anything else, just as I doubt Bob Seger would want to be anything else but a rock star. This is just a small glimpse into a downside of a job that has a huge upside.

Besides, being an airline pilot lets me afford nice things like new cars. Next week, I get one and examine a dogfight on the license plate. See you next Wednesday!


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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

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Embrace the Suck, Squeeze, Bang, and Blast

One of the things that any basic pilot ground school covers is how engines create power. Jet engines and piston engines have the same four stages:

• Intake
• Compression
• Combustion (also commonly called "Power")
• Exhaust

It's easier to remember them the following way (although you do need to know the "proper" names above for the written exam)

• Suck
• Squeeze
• Bang
• Blast (or "Blow")

How jets and pistons create these stages is much different. Jets use an almost seamless process, where one stage flows in a line from one to the other. Pistons do them in separate stages, one for each stroke of the piston. This is why 4-stroke engines are called that: one stage of the 4 cycles occurs during each stroke.

Since most people learn to fly in piston airplanes like Cessnas and Pipers, almost all of the time spent on the engine power cycle is spent in ground school on the piston cycle. Unfortunately, it often comes down to rote memorization, since it's hard to see inside an engine to watch what is actually going on.

That all changed recently, however. Thanks to the wonders of high-def, super-slow-mo cameras and YouTube, there are videos that show this process as it happens. Two very good ones were in my email this week.

The first one is by one of YouTube's better channels, Smarter Every Day. They have close to 5 million subscribers for a reason. In the following video, he visits a couple of people who have created a see-through piston engine, gives a review of the basics of an internal combustion engine, and films it in action. If you want to skip the setup, just go to about 4 minutes in:

The second one is by Warped Perception, a channel that films things in unusual ways. It uses the same sort of video equipment and engine, but focuses more on trying different types of fuel to see how it looks different inside the combustion chamber:

These exact principles govern the Lycoming or Continental engine under the hood of your training aircraft. Even if you already understand the power cycle, they're still amazing videos to watch.

See you next Wednesday!


Like Larry the Flying Guy on Facebook:

Follow @Lairspeed

The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

It takes hours of work to bring each Keyboard & Rudder post to you. If you've found it useful, please consider making an easy one-time or recurring donation via PayPal in any amount you choose.