A Lesson on Christmas

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. My dogs, Orion and Meissa (pronounced "MAY-suh"), certainly did.

Orion and Meissa. They're as opposite as they look.

Orion, the black/tri-color guy on the left with the serious look, is a Border Collie/Australian Shepherd mix. Meissa, the merle on the right with the goofy grin who is slightly blurry because she has a problem sitting still, is pure Australian Shepherd. I mentioned Orion in my post Turn the Page: The Downside of Being an Airline Pilot. Since I wrote that in 2017, we've added Meissa. (Basically, we got our dog a dog.)

Although they're the same breed, their personalities could hardly be more different. In fact, we call the pair "Pinky and the Brain" after the old Steven Spielberg cartoon, and one of the nicknames we have for Meissa is "Narf", which is one of Pinky's tag-lines.

Orion is a highly focused, very task-driven dog. Once he sets about doing something, he has to see it all the way to completion, and is very good at ignoring distractions until his task is done.

Meissa, on the other hand, is a much more happy-go-lucky dog. She's very intelligent in her own right, and learns tricks and other things very quickly, but she has the attention span of a hypercaffeinated gnat. This is even more ironic since Meissa is named after the star that forms the head of the constellation Orion.

A perfect example of how these personalities play out is their reaction if their ball bounces through the fence when we're playing. Orion will stand by the fence where it went out, point at it, look back worriedly, and won't budge until I rescue it. Meissa will run around in a circle once, then trot back to me as if to say, "Hey, that one's gone. You got another ball?"

However, this Christmas she showed the advantage of not being so focused that she gets locked into one solution. We got them both a ball that holds treats, so they could have fun trying to get one of their favorite dog biscuits out of it.

They both took quite a while to get their treat out of the ball. Surprisingly, although Orion is the "Brain" of our "Pinky and the Brain" double dog duo, Meissa managed to get hers out long before he did. In fact, I finally had to sneak him a little help when he wasn't looking so he'd think he finally did it on his own.

They both initially tried pinning the ball against the wall and trying to push against it hard enough to be able to get the biscuit in their jaws. Unfortunately for them, the ball was slightly too big for this to work.

However, in this case, Meissa's lack of an attention span worked in her favor. After a while, it meant that she got bored with that approach and moved on to a different one. When that didn't work, she tried another different thing. Then another, and another, and so on. Finally she hit on the idea of holding the ball between her paws while lying on her back and letting gravity help her out as she chewed on it from the bottom. That let her break the biscuit into chunks that were small enough to fall out. Success!

Orion, on the other hand, stuck with the first approach and kept trying it over and over again. He had the determination, but his focus led him down a tunnel that wasn't ever going to lead to his objective. His failure wasn't due to lack of brains—he's one of the smartest dogs I've ever seen—but ironically because of one of his best qualities: his "stick-to-it-iveness".

Unfortunately, this trait is often seen in pilots who have accidents. The long chain of causes isn't linked together by someone who sets out to have an accident: it's often put together by an unintentional, unfortunate perseverance. The "accomplish the mission" mindset common in pilots is usually a good thing: after all, people who aren't willing to put in time, study, effort, and financial commitment don't accomplish the goal of becoming a pilot in the first place.

However, sometimes things aren't going the way they should and a solution is needed. Sometimes the solution is not flying in the first place. This is a hard choice to make when you're trying to make it somewhere for a business meeting or a family gathering or getting back home after a nice vacation and conditions at your destination are above your skill and/or equipment level. This often leads to "get-home-itis", and can be deadly. The AOPA Air Safety Institute's case study called "In Too Deep" is a perfect example of this scenario:

Another good example like that one is another AOPA ASI case study called "Cross-County Crisis":

In many ways, I have it easier as an airline pilot in these situations than general aviation pilots do: I fly a strictly-maintained, multi-engine turbine aircraft with good IFR equipment and ice protection in well-structured, controlled environments. If the weather is too bad for the plane I fly to handle, the no-go decision has probably already been made for me. In the remaining handful of cases where it's iffy, I have chosen to wait an hour or so to see if it clears up or passes through and that decision has never been questioned, but in most cases I've never even been given the chance to try to press on: the cancellation has already been made by that point.

That doesn't mean that airline pilots aren't immune to the danger of overly focusing on one solution to the exclusion of all others: Air France 447 is an example of my saying, "If what you're doing isn't working, doing more of it isn't going to work either."



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"A much unsung hero of the Apollo Program"

In case you missed it (you were living on the moon, you fell into the Kola Superdeep Borehole and had to climb out, your shady travel agent sold you a fabulous spelunking excursion at the Great Pit of Carkoon, or you somehow managed to be completely disconnected from civilization for the month of July), we Earthlings celebrated the 50th anniversary of stomping on the moon's face this month.

It's easy enough to practice touch-and-goes on the Earth: just show up at the airport with some cash burning a hole in your pocket and they'll let you turn that into burning avgas instead.

But what if you're an astronaut? Obviously you can't rent a lunar trainer from the FBO. In that case, NASA designed an apparatus designed to simulate lunar landings. In the video below from the Smithsonian Channel, you can watch Neil Armstrong have to use the 1960s equivalent of the Cirrus CAPS parachute system as the trainer has a malfunction and Armstrong ejects.

Although the video doesn't say why the trainer went out of control, a NASA page about it says that "a loss of helium pressure caused depletion of the hydrogen peroxide used for the reserve attitude thrusters." Basically, it would be like losing the brakes in your car: once you start going in one direction, nothing is going to stop you. Time to use your ejector seat.

NASA then goes on to quote Armstrong:

"(The LM) Eagle flew very much like the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle which I had flown more than 30 times….  I had made from 50 to 60 landings in the trainer, and the final trajectory I flew to the landing was very much like those flown in practice. That of course gave me a good deal of confidence – a comfortable familiarity."  Summarizing its usefulness to the Apollo training program, Armstrong said:  "It was a contrary machine, and a risky machine, but a very useful one."  All prime and backup Moon landing commanders completed training in the LLTV, and those who landed a LM on the Moon attributed their success to this training.

One final quote sums up how there is no substitute for being able to practice: "Dubbed the 'flying bedstead,' the ungainly contraption is 'a much unsung hero of the Apollo Program,' according to Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders."


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FaceApp and the breaking of the OODA loop

One would think that the Cambridge Analytica scandal would be fresh in the minds of the public, since it was only four months ago (March 2019) that it broke. In case four months ago is ancient history to you, the scandal was that an innocent-looking app, "This is Your Digital Life", collected data about users that were used for nefarious purposes.

However, the popularity of FaceApp, a Facebook application that does an admirable job projecting what you will look like when you are old (or younger, or a different gender, etc.), makes it obvious that millions and millions of people learned nothing at all from the revelations of a mere four months ago.

Top Gun meets FaceApp. Credit: no idea

To what should be the surprise of no one who paid attention to Cambridge Analytica, FaceApp isn't just changing your picture: it's collecting it for whatever use they decide to put it to.

One of the more popular psychological models in aviation is the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. In short, you see something, figure out one or more ways to react, decide which one to do, then do it.

The important part is that the OODA loop is a loop. That means that once you've acted, you observe what impact your actions had and start the loop again. The Wikipedia entry for praxis breaks down these post-act steps even further:

• Taking the action
• Considering the impacts of the action
• Analyzing the results of the action by reflecting upon it
• Altering and revising conceptions and planning following reflection
• Implementing these plans in further actions

That's a long-winded way of saying, "After you do something, see if what you did worked. Learn from it either way." If you don't do both, you break the loop. Your powerful "OODA loop" flops uselessly into a limp, wet "OODA noodle". An ooda nooda.

An example of what the OODA Noodle gives you comes from an experience I had this spring. So there I was, flying an approach. The winds are howling out of the west, stirred up and irritated by their passage across the Blue Ridge mountains, and are almost a direct crosswind, 25 knots gusting to 40. Suddenly, at about 300 feet above the ground, I experience a 30-knot gain of airspeed: in other words, some pretty bad wind shear.

Hope is a bad plan in an airplane, so I'm not going to sit there and hope this turns out okay anyway. I push the thrust levers forward and begin the standard go-around procedure. ATC gives us an altitude to climb to and a heading to turn to, and I'm steering the plane that direction, hand-flying it all the way.

As my First Officer changes the navigation source, we get a caution chime and the yellow blinking light on the panel illuminates. Since I'm not expecting a caution at that point in the flight, I look to the screen and see a "LATERAL MODE OFF" caution message. No big deal; with this plane, if you enter the navigation mode and then change the navigation source, it turns off the mode.

This makes sense, because it doesn't know what mode you want with the new source. That message is the flight guidance computer's way of saying, "You told me to do something, but you didn't tell me what that something is." In that case, it will put the flight director in roll mode. It doesn't know what to do, so it reverts to leveling the wings until you make up your mind. That's a logical choice by the engineers who designed the system: if you don't know what to do, don't do anything stupid.

My First Officer cancels the caution and continues doing stuff. I naturally figure that one of the things he's going to do is to fix the navigation mode, but he completely ignores the message. When it becomes obvious that he skipped the end part of the OODA loop (in other words, he never took the time to see what impact his cancelling of the caution had), I ask him to put me in heading mode so my flight director will match where I'm actually pointing the plane.

In the meantime, since we were the second plane in a row to have to go around because of wind shear, ATC switches runways and starts using the one pointing into the wind. We land uneventfully the second time around and the flight becomes just another line in the logbook.

I have my own "enhanced" OODA loop, which means that the flight isn't over once it's in the logbook. I spin one last time through the loop as I think about the flight afterward, using the praxis steps above in a post-flight analysis and reflection. I think about how what I did turned out, how it might have turned out had I done something else, and come up with things to learn from and/or do better in the future.

As I said in my previous post, "flying is a constant three-dimensional puzzle that you have to continuously be solving." Once you're done with solving that particular flight, you can use that solution as a basis for solving future flights. In some ways, OODA and the WOPR from the classic movie Wargames have something in common:

When pilots don't do this, they repeat mistakes over and over again. When people don't do this, they fall for two scams in less than a year. That makes as much sense as being beaten with a wet noodle.



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Pilots and Artists

One of the parts of the description of this blog back before I had condensed it into two sentences was that it is an "explanation of the art of flying." By that use of the word "art" I was referring to the more colloquial sense in how we sometimes refer to someone who excels in something as "turning it into an art form."

Nonetheless, this week I came across an article that briefly examines the neurobiology of art: what effect does art have on the brain, and why is art important to what it means to be human? While many artistic things have been said about flying, I was struck with the connection flying has with art here:

[P]aintings by Seurat or Mondrian stimulate an area of the brain that also derives joy from solving puzzles for pleasure.... The idea is that multiple areas of the brain cooperate to solve this "puzzle" of art that, as a result, creates a feeling of satisfaction. When this is happening, there are distinct areas in the frontal lobe that interact and bring together "memory, experience, [and] learning."

In some ways, what I enjoy most about flying is that it is a constant three-dimensional puzzle that you have to continuously be solving. Your brain has to construct a mental map of where you are in relation to multiple factors at the same time: weather, other airplanes, airports, terrain, fuel, engine condition, and so on, and it has to solve them into one flight path.

Even with the autopilot on, you still have to do this, since you have to know if what you told the autopilot to do is what you really need it to be doing. I find this challenge immensely enjoyable, and one of the things about it is that you don't just solve it once and be done with it: you have to update your solution to that puzzle moment after moment.

This constant puzzle solving is a form of search for truth and beauty in the laws of physics. One of the rewarding things about it is that you have immediate feedback: if you do the wrong thing in an airplane, you'll know about it. This constant process of path prediction is a search for what's constant in a world that is anything but constant.

That is why if you replace "function of art" with "purpose of a pilot" in the following sentence, the thread that connects "flying", "art", and "the art of flying" becomes clear: "I shall therefore define the function of art as being a search for constancies, which is also one of the most fundamental functions of the brain. The function of art is therefore an extension of the function of the brain—the seeking of knowledge in an ever changing world."

In other words, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, "I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things." I would add to the end of that, "It turns the tyranny of petty things into a litany of pretty things." The mundane becomes the sublime; the pointless becomes the poignant.

Art is sometimes described as an attempt to make sense of the world. Socrates, a man who never flew because he was born over two thousand years too early, said that we can do the same thing through flying: "Man must rise above the Earth—to the top of the atmosphere and beyond—for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives."


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I'm great. I said so myself!

I was recently reminded the other day of a somewhat oddball question that I've been asked more than once. This won't be the last time I come across it, and the answer is a little bit complicated.

The question is, "Can I endorse myself for knowledge tests?"

The answer is, "It depends. And even if so, it depends."

The answer is actually pretty clear if you are a CFI and don't hold a ground instructor certificate. In that case, the answer is NO. The FARs are pretty clear on this under Part 61 Subpart H:

§61.195   Flight instructor limitations and qualifications

3(i) Prohibition against self-endorsements. A flight instructor shall not make any self-endorsement for a certificate, rating, flight review, authorization, operating privilege, practical test, or knowledge test that is required by this part.

Things get murkier if you hold a Ground Instructor (either Advanced or Basic) certificate. In that case, there is no prohibition under the ground instructor part of the FARs (Part 61 Subpart I) against self-endorsement. There's nothing that says you can, but there's nothing that says you can't, either. With the way the United States legal system works, that technically means you can.

However, the other "it depends" part is dependent on your testing provider actually accepting your self-endorsement as an BGI, AGI, or IGI. Which of those you're even able to self-endorse for depends on what ground instructor certificate you have:

• If you have a BGI, you can't self-endorse for anything except a Sport, Recreational, or Private certificate.
• With an AGI, you still can't self-endorse for an instrument written—that requires an IGI.
• And if you have only an IGI (i.e., no BGI/AGI), the only thing you can self-endorse for is your instrument written.

If you're unclear on the difference between an BGI and an AGI or what you can do as an IGI, the most popular post on this entire blog goes into that.

As always, if you have questions, I love to hear them. Please ask away!



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POH vs. AFM vs. PIM vs. AIM: What's the difference?

As a student pilot, most flight schools will require you to obtain a copy of your aircraft's POH to study from, right? Well, actually, no.

They will almost certainly require you to acquire a copy of the PIM or AIM, although nowadays you can probably just download a free copy from the Internet. Cessna provides their PIMs online for free, so you won't even be violating copyright laws if you do.

First, let's expand some initialisms:

• POH: Pilot's Operating Handbook
• AFM: Airplane Flight Manual
• AIM: Airplane Information Manual
• PIM: Pilot's Information Manual

The terms are often used interchangeably, and often POH is used for almost everything. In everyday use, this isn't a big issue because they have almost the same information. The PIM for a Cessna 172 looks almost identical to the POH, with the biggest difference being that generic weight and balance numbers are used in the PIM, but the POH has the actual, measured weight for that particular 172.

The ever-trusty Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge (the "P-hack") summarizes it nicely in Chapter 9:

While the AFM/POH may appear similar for the same make and model of aircraft, each manual is unique and contains specific information about a particular aircraft, such as the equipment installed and weight and balance information. Manufacturers are required to include the serial number and registration on the title page to identify the aircraft to which the manual belongs. If a manual does not indicate a specific aircraft registration and serial number, it is limited to general study purposes only.

The only way you'll buy a copy of the POH is to buy the whole aircraft itself, because the POH is basically a PIM or AIM that is created specifically for that single aircraft. It is provided for that one airplane and that one only. It contains information specific to that aircraft, and it is the only one that satisfies the ARROW requirements. (The POH has the "O" for Operating Limitations contained in it.)

From FAA publication 8083-19a, which you can download for free here.

For that reason, when I had a student that was about to take a checkride, I'd check to make sure the POH was on board, and when doing general ground training, I would not use the POH itself; in that case, I would use an AIM or PIM. The POH is too difficult and costly to replace, so it was never to leave the aircraft without a very good reason. (AIMs or PIMs can be ordered by the dozen from aviation suppliers; the POH can only be replaced by the manufacturer and has to be approved by the FAA.)

I've been talking a lot about the POH, but what about the AFM? Well, the AFM and the POH are almost synonyms. The difference is that AFM is the older term for older manuals. The FAA didn't standardize the format and the terminology until 1975. After that time, the term changed to POH. That's why in the PHAK quote above, they use "AFM/POH".

Clear as mud now?


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Fifty years makes an out-of-this-world difference

Friday is April 12th. Two aviation firsts were set on the 12th, fifty years apart. The difference between them takes us from a short hop by today's standards to going all the way into space. Here's the entry for that day from What the Fact?! 365 Strange Days in History:

French aviator Pierre Prier piloted the first nonstop flight from London to Paris on April 12, 1911, covering a distance of 290 miles in 3 hours and 56 minutes. Exactly 50 years later, on April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin completed the first orbit of the earth, covering 25,000 miles in 1 hour and 45 minutes. Prier peaked at an altitude of about 200 feet. Gagarin topped out at 200 miles.
 
Both airmen were in their mid-20s when they made their groundbreaking flights, and both died shortly after during routine flight trainings: Gagarin in 1968, when his aircraft crashed near the town of Kirzhach, in Russia; Prier in August 1911, when his pupil shot him in the chest.

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There are worse ways to practice

My last post was a little on the serious side, so this time I'd like to lighten the mood a bit.

I've written many a post on practice in this blog; in some ways, that's the fundamental theme of this whole thing. How to use flight sims to practice, how to create efficient practice sessions, how airline pilots practice, and so on. The first video I ever posted on YouTube was a pattern lesson with the glass panel turned off.

Flight simulators are a wonderful tool to practice inexpensively and safely. But let's say that instead of a student pilot, you're a student proctologist. How can you practice then?

Well, it turns out that instead of flight simulators, they use butt simulators. No, really. I'm going to let you take a look at this post from Now I Know in case you want to know what a butt simulator looks like.

It certainly gives new meaning to "touch and go", doesn't it?



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This is where it's probably going to happen.

It is almost midnight on a mid-January day. In front of me, the windscreen is filled with clouds. The landing lights in the nosewheel light up the snowflakes that are still making their way slowly down to Earth, causing an eerie hyperspace effect as they streak by at almost 200 miles per hour. Behind me are 23 people: more than half the seats are empty, which is typical for this route. All around me is the wind which rocks the plane during this instrument approach.

The unseen ocean of air through which my jet swims is stirred up turbulently by the mountains which surround the airport on three sides in a C shape. The terrain gives me and my co-pilot little margin for error should one of the Rolls-Royce turbofans strapped to the back decide it doesn't want to play the big blowtorch game anymore.

The turbulence increases sharply, then dies down to a more normal level. Although I still cannot see the runway, this last burst is a good sign: I've been here before and I know it means we've passed the top of the southern ridge of the C. We're through the "shoals" of the air and ahead will soon lie safe harbor. Or at least what passes for safe in this remote winterland.

At 400 feet above the ground, we break out of the clouds. On a night like tonight in a place like this, there isn't much difference between being in the clouds and out of them: everything ahead is white. What little difference there is lies in the two white lights identifying the runway threshold and a narrow patch of gray in the vast blank expanse ahead. Black asphalt plus a white covering of snow makes for a narrow gray strip only 20 seconds ahead.

Although I'm out of the soup, I still can't let my guard down. In some ways, the easy part is over: this is a dangerous airport in the winter. Several of my colleagues, many of which I know to be good and experienced pilots, have their own stories of near-trouble here. If my flying career ends before I reach mandatory retirement at 65, I'm pretty sure it will end here.

As the Captain, it is up to me who flies what legs. On nights like these, I make sure it's always me. My skills sometimes seem to depend on the level of challenge presented to them: some of my best landings come in the harshest conditions. Tonight, I put it on so nicely that the flight attendant has to wake one of the passengers when we arrive at the gate.

As the wheels touch the pavement, they pass over the same place that hundreds of aircraft used on their way to Europe during World War II, back when this was an Army Air Field (later an Air Force Base). The tires—and I—connect through history with Clark Gable, who was stationed here in WWII; John Wayne, whose movie Island in the Sky was set here; and the real-world exploits of one of the most famous names in aviation literature, Ernie Gann.

We reach the gate, immediately causing the gate occupancy of the airport to go from 0% to 100% as our solitary aircraft comes to a full stop. Since we're in the middle of nowhere, there is no comfortable jet bridge for the passengers to walk onto. The ramp workers roll stairs up to the aircraft door and the passengers exit into the 8°F weather onto the tarmac just as if it were still sixty years ago. They walk the fifty feet to the door through the subzero wind chill and enter the terminal which (if you don't include the office space) is smaller than my house. Welcome to Presque Isle, Maine, population 9106.

I pack up my things and shut down the plane. The taxi ride to the hotel is through a canyon of snow, the snow banks a dozen feet high on either side of me. I have 30 hours here, and to take my mind off of the last 30 minutes, I look forward to trying that odd, decidedly New England game called "candlepin bowling" tomorrow evening.

The night slowly dissolves into just another line in the logbook. Other crews will not be so lucky, but fortunately this night's flight takes a quiet place among the 3167 entries covering 5112.3 hours so far. Some are beautiful, others less so... but each one is an experience I've been privileged to have.

Thus the day ends: 2/16/2019 N11193 EWR-PQI Total: 1.73 Night: 1.73 Instrument: 0.1 Pax: 23



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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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X-Plane to Real Plane

One of the original themes of this blog was supposed to be bridging flight simulators and the real world, with occasional diversions into other topics. It may be hard to tell that anymore, since I've spent much more time on the "diversions" than the core themes, but the universe seems to be reminding me of that this week.

I've encountered two interesting articles on the subject in the past couple of days. Although I rarely post "hit and runs" (posts that just link to other articles without much discussion), this week also happens to be the start of yet another semester for me. Since I also work a full-time job as a pilot, I'm unfortunately too busy for a deep post this time around. Nonetheless, these articles (especially the first one) were too good to just let pass by.

The first one, Learning To Fly on Simulated Wings, is a very nice look at how Bill Forelli (no relation to Sonny, I presume), saved himself a ton of time, money, and embarrassment by learning much of a standard pilot curriculum in X-Plane before transferring it to the real world. It's a success story for FS to IRL training, with a particularly notable accomplishment within:

Forelli... soloed in less than 10 hours, which includes two discovery flights followed by 6.7 hours of focused training in a Piper Archer.

As an instructor, I only soloed one student in less than 10 hours, so that is quite an accomplishment indeed. Back in the old days, when flight training was just "keep going around the patch until they've got it down," single-digit hours to solo wasn't all that uncommon. However, in the modern world, the regulations have so much that is required to be covered before solo there is just too much to go over it all and still solo in less than 10 hours. Since Forelli learned much of that beforehand, he was able to do something that not many people can do nowadays. Kudos to him.

The second one, From Filmmaking to the Flight Deck: An Animator’s Guide to Training in VR, is one person's approach to creating a customized flight sim solution for herself to aid in her flight training. Her approach to it is interesting, even if it may be a bit more than most people are willing to put into the effort. Nonetheless, her list of five advantages that flight simulators have over the real world is right on the money:

1. There’s no drive to the airport — your virtual plane awaits you whenever you have the time to fly.
2. Your flight time is never canceled due to inclement weather — you can change the weather in X-Plane.
3. You can pause the simulation and look up questions you may have or zoom in on an instrument dial to see exactly what’s going on.
4. You can inexpensively train in a plethora of planes from every era that are never grounded for maintenance.
5. You are flying in complete safety.

I have written more than one post here on how important #3 is when learning to fly, and especially how useful that is when it comes time to expand one's skills and get an instrument rating.


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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.

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.