tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52063127087920800072024-03-13T02:04:26.439-04:00Keyboard and Rudder: A blog on the Art of FlyingDemystifying the process of learning to fly for everyone from the beginning student to the certificated pilot looking to improve their skills. Heavy on the basics of stick and rudder skills, with unscheduled landings on other varied topics like weather and the sheer beauty and joy of flight.Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-16145478564128391972020-08-05T05:00:00.361-04:002020-08-06T05:25:58.254-04:00Godspeed, Goddard<div>Words have lost much of their impact these days. The word "extreme" was one of the first to go. At one time, it meant something serious or overpowering. Then it got taken over by marketers, truncated to "Xtreme" and applied to a flavor of Mountain Dew that absolutely nobody asked for.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Epic" came in to fill the void left with the watering-down of "extreme", but it sadly fell to the hyperbolist hordes as well. It used to mean something like Beowulf and slaying dragons, then it went on to describing something very impressive like pulling off a 1200 on the drop from the helicopter on the drop to snowboard down the Matterhorn, but then in the span of about a week it went from that to celebrating the "epic achievement" of eating an entire bag of Doritos in one sitting. Dude, that's <i>sooo epic!</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>"Passion" used to mean an intense, almost overwhelming desire. Now every unoriginal job seeker has "I'm passionate about synergistic cross-contextual gerbil herding" or some other such nonsense on their résumé. Let's be clear: I'm <i>passionate</i> about my wife; that means I love her intensely and I couldn't live without her. I'm <i>passionate</i> about flying: I love it intensely and I couldn't live without it (mainly because I'd starve, although at this point it might take a year or two). No one is "passionate" about gerbil herding; at best they might be vaguely interested in it and frankly not all that good at it.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The word "legend" gets thrown around in the same way, but in this case, Dick Goddard was an actual legend of the old school meaning. He passed away yesterday at the age of 89. Unless you're from the Cleveland, Ohio area, that probably doesn't mean a lot to you. Around Cleveland, though, he's a <i>legend</i> for many reasons.</div><div><br /></div><div>First, he was a TV meteorologist in Cleveland for over 51 years, making his career longer than anyone—including the Weather Channel. His career was so long that when he was in college, weather satellites didn't even exist! The first successful weather satellite would launch a month before he graduated from Kent State in 1960. By the time he retired in late 2016, he had seen forecasting go from static, laboriously-crafted, hand-drawn paper maps to real-time interactive Ultra-HD animations.</div><div><br /></div><div>Although he and I never met, he was a small ripple in the cosmic current that led to me becoming a pilot. When I was a child, there was no cable TV yet. Cities generally had their own NBC, ABC, and CBS affiliate stations plus a few truly local stations. The network affiliate stations played content provided by their affiliates most of the day, but there were several hours that the local station provided their own programming.</div><div><br /></div><div>This included the local news. The news hour was much less bland, sterilized, and standardized than it is today. Every city had its own specific flavor to its journalism, and the nightly news teams themselves had different characters. TV personalities back then who delivered the news, sports, and weather weren't interchangeable, generic talking heads whose names you don't bother to remember because they'll only be around until someone cheaper graduates from broadcasting school, they were interesting individuals.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you want to see a young George Carlin in a suit and tie give three examples of what I'm talking about (plus several mock commercials), watch this video. You can even see an early Al Sleet, before Carlin added one of his funniest lines ever ("Tonight's forecast: dark. Continued mostly dark tonight, turning to widely scattered light in the morning."):</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3DgXvTU-QPY" width="320" youtube-src-id="3DgXvTU-QPY"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Dick Goddard, even by those standards, had a clear personality. He was a sincere, direct, intelligent soul. Long before animal activism was a thing, at the end of his segment he would sometimes feature dogs, cats, or other animals that were in the local shelter looking for a forever home. (When Ohio recently implemented stronger anti-animal abuse laws, it named the bill "Goddard's Law".)</div><div><br /></div><div>Other times, he would give mini-classes on air during his weather report. Sometimes it would be something as simple as explaining what an Alberta Clipper is while blaming it for the frigid cold to come. Or it could be simply explaining the difference between "partly cloudy" and "partly sunny". (Partly cloudy means more sun than clouds, and vice-versa. Pretty basic stuff, but I thought it was cool technical weather arcana back when I was 10 or so.) He not only loved the weather, he loved making <i>you</i> love it too. (A few years ago, I found a copy of his book <i><a href="https://amzn.to/2DEt5yF" target="_blank">Six Inches of Partly Cloudy: Cleveland's Legendary TV Meteorologist Takes on Everything--and More</a> </i>and devoured it in one day because his enthusiasm is still there.<i>)</i><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>He helped kindle my life-long interest in the weather and a connection with what was going on up in the sky. Observing the atmosphere for so long made me want to swim in it, so it was inevitable that I would become a pilot someday. I didn't know when, and I didn't know how, but I knew that I would.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even though we never met, he was a part of that. I'm sad that we never met because there was a yearly opportunity to do so. He created the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woollybear_Festival" target="_blank">Woollybear Festival</a>, a one-day town fair in Vermilion, a pretty little place only about 15 minutes away from me. Each fall, I said I wanted to go, yet each year, when the day came, I said I'd do it next year instead. Now he won't be there next year except in our hearts and the chance to meet him is gone forever.</div><div><br /></div><div>So do the thing you want to do while you can; see the people you want to spend time with now because there will inevitably come a day when you can't.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'll close with this video that sums up the man and why he is such a legend in only two minutes:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oJ_Jx4quuEU" width="320" youtube-src-id="oJ_Jx4quuEU"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<i>The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct
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WINGS program and a </i><i><i>
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-85353015664514520032020-04-29T05:00:00.000-04:002020-04-29T05:00:03.413-04:00When being "stupid" is the smart thing to do<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">I have accomplished many
things during my COVID-19 time off. The clutter is slowly going away (do I really need that book on Unix written in 1998?), I'm almost done with my project of reading all of <a href="https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html" target="_blank">Warren Buffett's letters to shareholders</a>, and my basement is looking better than ever. Soon I'll be able to get that home gym set up the way I've wanted it for years so I can skip workouts by not bothering to walk downstairs instead of not getting in the car to not drive to the gym.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">However, getting a Ph.D. in epidemiology isn't one of
the things I've done in the last 32 days. I don't expect doctors to tell me how to fly my plane, and I don't
tell doctors how to do their job. As much as I miss flying (I had a dream the other night that we were going to restart service but due to the lower loads were going back to my old aircraft, the Dash-8), and as eager as I am for things to get back to normal, I'm willing to wait until that is safe to do. I know enough to know that I don't know enough to know when that is.<br /><br />As an example of how something that seems simple actually has a lot going on behind the scenes and how those unseen things make a difference, I'd like to take the simple, routine flight we do from Syracuse to Newark.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">It seems easy enough: a quick 169 nm flight southeast:</span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9djuy7fru1yfDs_ewuXujESkbimUjehJrLf8iOLKUxraBUTlYhw9kAF6bZzxeXo_TAfMPOu_c148_nA6h5CyaFC2AKfUoAOzQSF8Z7TbYnDa2rzh7jgp-kdxxWe8v-4Rl8mA26qsDISE/s1600/syr-ewr1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="797" data-original-width="1246" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9djuy7fru1yfDs_ewuXujESkbimUjehJrLf8iOLKUxraBUTlYhw9kAF6bZzxeXo_TAfMPOu_c148_nA6h5CyaFC2AKfUoAOzQSF8Z7TbYnDa2rzh7jgp-kdxxWe8v-4Rl8mA26qsDISE/s320/syr-ewr1.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SYR-EWR as the crow flies, 169 nautical miles.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">However, the way our flight plans are made, we first fly 35 nm south<i>west</i>, then hang a hard left, then go
southeast for about 120 nm, then make a hard right to go south-south<i>west</i>
again. Seems stupid, doesn't it?</span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj76MHVhc2VEonz05rGsDjajVW7GPuJsXe06262o2lCwVTdbDpjsazjMaK1xMafMBAW9JQa5GyCk8uz7f6R6lliHO0JiofW-67OICHH45CUcli7ExcebUHv8p4GI1Ma3mpAru4pOTq8jGg/s1600/syr-ewr2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1252" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj76MHVhc2VEonz05rGsDjajVW7GPuJsXe06262o2lCwVTdbDpjsazjMaK1xMafMBAW9JQa5GyCk8uz7f6R6lliHO0JiofW-67OICHH45CUcli7ExcebUHv8p4GI1Ma3mpAru4pOTq8jGg/s320/syr-ewr2.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SYR-EWR as a drunken crow would fly, 215 nautical miles.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">If you don't take into account the
complexities of getting all the other airplanes lined up into New York's airspace, you'd
think that that's the most idiotic way of getting between those two
points. You might think our dispatcher doesn't know what they're doing and they need to be fired. But the reason we do that is because we fly an orderly, prearranged arrival path that fits into the much bigger ATC system; in this case, it's called the FLOSI 4 RNAV Arrival.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFDqvI6IZRrAcmIN6piLgBbDd-cCaXiwD-CODMqFdWx86bluICTCj4pJRx-24B4eOsW60P26bBKHNnJi2Ef3RRzUeKIMJ8waLeyv72UEe75TDm3SiHrVwuvPuNn0_ZFYnu-RYDZsuJm9U/s1600/flosi4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="908" data-original-width="591" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFDqvI6IZRrAcmIN6piLgBbDd-cCaXiwD-CODMqFdWx86bluICTCj4pJRx-24B4eOsW60P26bBKHNnJi2Ef3RRzUeKIMJ8waLeyv72UEe75TDm3SiHrVwuvPuNn0_ZFYnu-RYDZsuJm9U/s320/flosi4.png" width="208" /></a></div>
<br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">In the bigger system, what seems stupid is really only a way
of making things work the best we can. There are dozens and dozens of airplanes trying to use this little chunk of airspace all at the same time and if everyone did what worked for them without regard for anything else, it would be chaos. The ATC system would fall apart and no one would be able to use it.</span></span><br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x"><br /></span></span>
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">Instead, we have procedures to put all of those ducks in a neat, orderly row. Those stems off the little tree above are almost guaranteed to not be the single most efficient way for <i>any</i> of the airplanes on that path—in fact, it lengthens our SYR flight from 169 nm to 215 nm. We have to go what seems a bit out of our way <i>in order to get there at all</i>. Sometimes, we have to go a bit backwards to go a long way forwards. And sometimes what seems like stupidity is simply understanding at an expert level instead of an amateur level.</span></span><br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x"><br /></span></span>
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x">One of the common themes Warren Buffett refers to in those letters to shareholders referred to above is the idea of remaining within one's <i>circle of competence</i>. He often gets asked why he doesn't invest in x, y, or z, and he just says that he doesn't know enough about those sectors to know whether or not those stocks are good investments. He is also famous for saying that the key to investing isn't to make brilliant decisions, it's to avoid making dumb ones. Remember, this is one of the best investors in history and one of the richest men ever to walk the planet, and even <i>he</i> is willing to admit there are things about investing he doesn't know enough about to have an opinion on.</span></span><br />
<span dir="ltr"><span class="_3l3x"></span></span><br />
Often, the most important thing you can know is how much you don't know. Just like fatigue is surprisingly hard to detect because the same brain that's too tired to make a smart call is the one that is supposed to make that call, not knowing how much you don't know leads to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect" target="_blank">infamous Dunning-Kruger Effect</a>. As Mark Twain once said, it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.<br />
<br />
An old joke goes, what's the difference between a pilot and God? God doesn't think he's a pilot. In this case, I'm just going to twist an old Star Trek quote: Dammit, Jim, I'm a pilot, not a doctor. Stay safe by staying at home until you can stay safe without being at home.<br />
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<i>The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct
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as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's
WINGS program and a </i><i><i>
former FAASafety Team representative</i>. He is on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/LarrytheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy</a>, has a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/LarryTheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel</a>, and is on Twitter as <a href="http://twitter.com/Lairspeed" target="_blank">@Lairspeed</a>.</i><br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-18301556660838990922020-04-08T05:00:00.000-04:002020-04-08T05:00:06.720-04:00How to get better when you can't get betterOne of the memes that went around recently was the pilot working from home:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixF0SPgpHMOQ2ac8CTvdbo0dk5zs50u8Nw0x0mohVpEDsZ1yCZMLY54Um1gRjomWvQzfrfvmg4sUZHIYZeSKNmA3TcotmaIGvz2uSYwQJg-UHbpAufseJd295hBvPzj9YTww4z-A9vOWc/s1600/work-from-home-pilots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="742" data-original-width="735" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixF0SPgpHMOQ2ac8CTvdbo0dk5zs50u8Nw0x0mohVpEDsZ1yCZMLY54Um1gRjomWvQzfrfvmg4sUZHIYZeSKNmA3TcotmaIGvz2uSYwQJg-UHbpAufseJd295hBvPzj9YTww4z-A9vOWc/s320/work-from-home-pilots.jpg" width="316" /></a></div>
<br />
While I can't fly an airplane right now, I am fortunate that I am senior enough at my airline that I was able to avoid getting furloughed. Instead, I'm sitting at home on long-call reserve, getting paid to hurry up and wait. If airline flying picks up, I might get called in to do some flying that gets added back. For April and May, I'd estimate the chance of that happening as about .01%.<br />
<br />
Like many, I've been wildly successful in handling this bounty of extra time to do things and wildly unsuccessful as well. One of the problems with being off for at least two months is that it's so easy to say, "Ehh, I'll just do that tomorrow," because there are so many tomorrows on the calendar now. I've certainly frittered away a lot of time already as "I'll just watch one episode on Hulu" becomes five episodes.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, I have been able to catch up on some of the "I'll get around to that someday" things as well. One of those things is catching up on reading research papers. While reading the scintillatingly-titled "<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0112607" target="_blank">Higher Landing Accuracy in Expert Pilots is Associated with Lower Activity in the Caudate Nucleus</a>", I came across this passage that stood out:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In terms of expertise, there were differences between the two groups in
flight experience and age. As expected, more hours of total flight
experience, overall <i>t</i> (12) = 2.61, <i>p</i><.05 and more hours of flight experience in the past month, <i>t</i> (11) = 2.62, <i>p</i><.001 were associated with higher expertise. In addition level of expertise was associated with younger age, <i>t</i> (18) = −2.25, <i>p</i> = 0.045).</blockquote>
In other words, how many total hours you have and how old you are have approximately the same impact on how well you would do in this study, but what is even more important <i>by a large margin</i> is how many recent flight hours you have.<br />
<br />
This is particularly relevant in a time of social distancing and flight schools/FBOs being closed to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. (If your flight school isn't closed right now, IT SHOULD BE.) It's not exactly Earth-shattering news that your skills get rusty; everyone knows that. What struck me about that passage is how much <i>more</i> of an impact currency had on task performance than any of the three significant factors (total hours, recent hours, and age).<br />
<br />
This is not the place to get into detailed statistical theory, so I'm going to try to make it as simple as possible by comparing only the p-values. There are much more sophisticated ways of analyzing the data, but a p-value is one of the most basic: it attempts to measure the probability that the result came about by dumb luck. In general, less than a 5% chance is considered acceptable; this would be p < .05. The researchers' values for these three were<br />
<ul>
<li>Flight hours last month: p < .001</li>
<li>Age (younger): p < .045</li>
<li>Flight hours total: p < .05</li>
</ul>
By comparing p-values, current flight hours was <i>20x</i> more important than total hours! [Again, if you're looking for a mathematically-rigorous statistical treatment, don't follow my example. I'm a pilot because I'm too dumb to be a statistician. This is just a way to demonstrate the impact.]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
What's important to take from this is that while you're enduring a forced lay-off from flying, you need to be doing things to stay engaged with the cockpit to stave off rustiness. I'm certainly in favor of flight simulators: they are the most active way to practice and therefore will keep your skills sharper for longer.<br />
<br />
In fact, if you use your time right, you can come out on the other side with skills you didn't have before, but in order to do this, you have to use the sim to do more than just replicate what you're doing now. As the saying goes, if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got.<br />
<br />
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses: things they're good at and things they're not good at. It's easy to practice the things you're already good at—after all, they're easy <i>because</i> you're good at them. What you need to do is figure out the things you're not good at and create scenarios in the sim that target those.<br />
<br />
For example, let's say your home field is 5,000 feet long. Chances are you're not very good at short field landings then because you don't have to be. In that case, find a 1500-foot field and practice going into it. Since you're in a sim, there's no worry about bending metal: the only danger is a bruised ego the first time or two. Eventually, you'll think that 1500 feet is more runway than a 172 needs.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bW3PVUddaIQ/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bW3PVUddaIQ?feature=player_embedded&t=5m30s" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
You'll find that the real benefit of this isn't just in being able to land at a short field. After all, in real life, you may still not have a short field near you to land at. However, you'll find that you've become a sharper pilot in other important ways that count every day. Your airspeed control will be much better because you can't add an extra 10 knots for the wife, 10 knots for the kids, 10 knots for the dog, and 10 knots just because. Your ability to gauge without looking at the altimeter whether you're too high or low will improve. Your feel for the relationship between power, pitch, and airspeed will improve. You'll develop better sensitivity for appropriate control/throttle inputs, and so on.<br />
<br />
What's important is that you maintain what you have and use that as a base to build on. If you do it right, once you're able to climb back in the cockpit you'll have even more confidence than you did before!<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-13011940923887679502020-03-25T05:00:00.000-04:002020-03-28T05:37:28.402-04:00Taking the long way due to coronavirusIt's Sunday, March 22, 2020, and I'm fat, dumb, and happy in my seat 33,000 feet in the air. I'm staring aimlessly out the front window, enjoying a nice view of Norfolk and Virginia Beach off to my left as I leave a contrail over the East Coast, doing seven miles a minute from Washington-Dulles to Jacksonville, Florida.<br />
<br />
Suddenly, I'm fat, dumb, and less happy as I hear ATC tell an aircraft that was going the other direction, to LaGuardia, to contact their dispatcher and file an alternate outside of New York Center's airspace. So many controllers had called out sick today that they were going to have to shut down a large section of New York airspace. I heard a phrase I'd never actually heard spoken on the radio before: New York Center was going <i>"ATC zero".</i><br />
<br />
This was a bit of a concern for me, as after we got to Jacksonville, we were going to be flying to Newark (also in NY airspace) half an hour later. One of the few good things about the collapse in air travel this month (on this last four-day trip, I flew less than 100 passengers <i>combined in all four days!</i>) is that fuel is no issue. With almost nobody on board, we can fill the tanks as much as we want and never have to worry about being too heavy.<br />
<br />
So that's just what we did: we took about 30% more fuel than we needed in case we had to hold for a long time or had to go somewhere else. We got lucky: with the exception of a few S-turns to create additional spacing en route, we were able to make it to Newark as scheduled. The reduction in airplanes in the sky in general probably helped—after all, shutting down a lane on the freeway doesn't matter as much if no one is driving anyway.<br />
<br />
After we got to Newark, all we had left was a quick flight up to Albany, NY for the night. Although due to the reduced staffing they were spacing takeoffs 8 minutes apart instead of the normal minute or less, on the way out there was only one aircraft ahead of us in line so we still made it out early. <br />
<br />
However, the next morning, we were going from Albany to Dulles, and we did get impacted directly by the coronavirus-induced ATC staffing issues. A large section of the airspace was shut down: a chunk that we normally fly right through. However, instead of the direct route, we ended up going far to the west, all the way to central Pennsylvania, in order to avoid that closed sector before we turned toward the airport.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZNBweTXCNtOSIF6rxTx6luObdD-8LBwk8wUlhO4MUSwYFSSXxZmjr89_tD9shpbjRX9WaC-taE6HtUdxMzFT-cbg_cXJCUhRiFoxk5xMCQeIlIlWRU0AhEwr4931bxhbB7NpbvGC3aj0/s1600/around_zny.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="837" data-original-width="919" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZNBweTXCNtOSIF6rxTx6luObdD-8LBwk8wUlhO4MUSwYFSSXxZmjr89_tD9shpbjRX9WaC-taE6HtUdxMzFT-cbg_cXJCUhRiFoxk5xMCQeIlIlWRU0AhEwr4931bxhbB7NpbvGC3aj0/s320/around_zny.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taking the long way around NY's airspace.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This is what that same flight looked like a week before, when things were still relatively normal:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvja-vxHQSvH6AgEAr5Kf1EHyv7y4nGNdwzhM4VBnPZlRFjPYvq5Lqcl09_Jmx7ZgHpaBwoe8qcDLkOgGuIBoQ1TNBg9knLGyPwHhMTfuZS6tAL5iXD1I1Os4a4MTEw93yNRQSRpHiMw4/s1600/normal4889.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="839" data-original-width="920" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvja-vxHQSvH6AgEAr5Kf1EHyv7y4nGNdwzhM4VBnPZlRFjPYvq5Lqcl09_Jmx7ZgHpaBwoe8qcDLkOgGuIBoQ1TNBg9knLGyPwHhMTfuZS6tAL5iXD1I1Os4a4MTEw93yNRQSRpHiMw4/s320/normal4889.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just a week earlier, in more normal times.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Fortunately, again, since we were able to load up on gas because we had exactly 4 (yes, <i>four!</i>) passengers on board the entire aircraft, we ended up getting off the gate 10 minutes early and getting to Dulles on time.<br />
<br />
I hope you and yours stay safe and stay in!<br />
<br />
<br />
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WINGS program and a </i><i><i>
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-22014314546651684242020-01-02T12:04:00.001-05:002020-01-02T12:04:58.791-05:00I did it! (Revisiting a childhood favorite game)When I was 12 years old, one of the most impressive simulation games ever to come out for the Commodore 64 was released: <a href="https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Gunship" target="_blank">MicroProse's Gunship</a>. I spent months and months and hundreds of hours flying missions in it, trying to get the game's highest award: the Congressional Medal of Honor. [Yes, I <i>know</i> it's actually just "Medal of Honor". The game refers to it as the Congressional Medal of Honor, so that's how I refer to it in this post.]<br />
<br />
Winning the ultimate medal was actually secondary to just flying it and having fun flying. It was one of the hardest games ever on the Commodore because it wasn't a shoot 'em up; it was an actual simulation. It strove to pack as much realism as possible into a platform that had a 1 MHz processor (approximately 4000 times slower in raw clock speed than just one core of a 4 GHz 8-core processor) and 64 kilobytes (not megabytes, not gigabytes, <i>kilo</i>bytes) of RAM, and it wasn't afraid to be complex and intimidating to learn. The graphics were very, very good for the time (1986), but nowadays the closest competition is Minecraft.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/A8bBV7uzbSs/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A8bBV7uzbSs?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
All those hours playing Gunship turned out to have a major impact on me learning to fly; not just in kindling my interest in it but in invisibly burning piloting concepts into my head without me realizing it. It simulated things like ground effect, translating vertical components of lift into horizontal ones in a bank (meaning if you wanted to lose altitude quickly, you could go into a tight turn), trading altitude for airspeed, and so on.<br />
<br />
I came across a copy of it the other day and figured I'd spend a half hour or so revisiting it just to see if I could remember how to play. At first it was a little rough just remembering all the keys for the controls, but not long in, it came back to me. Although I hadn't played this game in over 30 years, once I got the hang of the controls again, I was actually better at it now than I was then!<br />
<br />
In large part, that is because I have 6000 hours of flight time behind me now, whereas I hadn't even been in a small plane then. That actually helped a lot because my instrument scan is automatic now. It takes so little of my cognitive resources to keep track of what the aircraft is doing now that I was able to devote much more of my mental effort to devising strategies, carrying out assault tactics, and performing evasive maneuvers when those didn't work.<br />
<br />
Way back when, I struggled like hell to get that Medal of Honor. Very few who played it managed to do it, but after hundreds of hours, finally, FINALLY, I managed to become one of the few who did. Of course, not knowing the criteria for receiving it made it even harder to get; I just took the approach of shooting everything that moved and never returning to base with ammo left over.<br />
<br />
(Remember, this was long before the web had a hundred walkthroughs for every game, YouTube had a thousand playthroughs, and there was no Google to get you through the hard parts. Most games didn't even have paper strategy guides—and there was no GameStop or Amazon to buy one from even if there was one. It turns out that there <a href="https://www.flightsimbooks.com/gunship/" target="_blank">actually was a book written about Gunship</a>... which I found out 34 years later when researching Gunship medal criteria!)<br />
<br />
As it turns out, that approach is pretty close to what it takes to get the CMOH anyway, but Richard Sheffield's <a href="https://www.flightsimbooks.com/gunship/10_4_Winning_Medals.php" target="_blank">Gunship Academy</a> lays out the criteria:<br />
<br />
<div class="p">
<i>The question most frequently asked of the game designers at
MicroProse is "What the heck do I have to do to earn the Congressional
Medal of Honor?" Well, it's really quite simple. All you have to do is</i></div>
<i>
</i>
<ul type="bull">
<li><div class="p1">
<i>Score 5000 points</i></div>
</li>
<li><div class="p1">
<i>Complete both missions</i></div>
</li>
<li><div class="p1">
<i>Shoot down at least two Hinds</i></div>
</li>
<li><div class="p1">
<i>Get wounded</i></div>
</li>
<li><div class="p1">
<i>Live and don't get captured</i></div>
</li>
<li><div class="p1">
<i>And do all that in less than 22.5 minutes</i></div>
</li>
</ul>
What I had intended to be only a quick stroll down memory lane turned into me playing several missions in a row. After a few hours, I managed to do something that took me hundreds of hours back then: <i>I actually won the Congressional Medal of Honor again!</i> <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8sYTNhJ7vvSSo4Q3jnFIs0ukPI7GwrJJFGlflBbEhOVABQOwM_c_e2Z7nj045m9RQc07vIiSue4wP_3_3A4VE6VULKLt9tfFcD9GlYMuLH-t7mgqlouX0Wd8HZqU_-FcvatZPZ6LhgUI/s1600/CMOH2sm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Gunship Medal of Honor debrief" border="0" data-original-height="443" data-original-width="697" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8sYTNhJ7vvSSo4Q3jnFIs0ukPI7GwrJJFGlflBbEhOVABQOwM_c_e2Z7nj045m9RQc07vIiSue4wP_3_3A4VE6VULKLt9tfFcD9GlYMuLH-t7mgqlouX0Wd8HZqU_-FcvatZPZ6LhgUI/s320/CMOH2sm.png" title="Gunship Medal of Honor debrief" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The mission that won me my second Congressional Medal of Honor in Gunship, only 33 years or so after the first one.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8K-eKR3_b-F96Ag6yMfyX_2dHn_HL4w5vTVGcuzD8XNLaPrag1l9qAmA4vb-GchoniAcSTOtLBp49MSZfgh9XrSZYT4i00iOqmxYZqxw062-iHWiIvSGZ850DLaJvd6At5kLle6ZnvGA/s1600/CMOH3sm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Gunship Congressional Medal of Honor" border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="710" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8K-eKR3_b-F96Ag6yMfyX_2dHn_HL4w5vTVGcuzD8XNLaPrag1l9qAmA4vb-GchoniAcSTOtLBp49MSZfgh9XrSZYT4i00iOqmxYZqxw062-iHWiIvSGZ850DLaJvd6At5kLle6ZnvGA/s320/CMOH3sm.png" title="The Gunship Congressional Medal of Honor" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The coveted medal in all its 8-bit glory.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Probably one of the reasons I had a hard time getting the medal back then was because I tried to avoid getting into dogfights with the enemy helicopters (the Russian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-24" target="_blank">Mi-24 Hind-D</a>) because their cannon could tear you to pieces quickly and ruin the whole mission. If I encountered one after completing both objectives, I'd run back to base as fast as possible instead of engaging it. I didn't know that bagging a second one was a requirement because, well, no one knew that, least of all me.<br />
<br />
One of the things the list above leaves out is that you have to have won a campaign ribbon from all four theaters first. There is some debate over whether you have to win all the lower medals first. All I can say is that I had a mission where I fulfilled all the criteria and I had all the <i>medals</i>, but I didn't have all the <i>ribbons</i>. (I skipped straight to the fourth theater because the first three were too easy.) I was not awarded the CMOH for that mission, but when I did receive it, it was for a mission with a lower score <i>after</i> I went back and picked up the first three campaign ribbons. You can see what I'm talking about below, where I didn't have the CMOH at 5460 points but did get it at 5190 later:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That's a full salad bar in Gunship.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
That's a nice way to start a new year, and unlike Forrest Gump, I didn't have to get shot in the buttocks!<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-29957294912933944292019-12-26T05:00:00.000-05:002019-12-29T07:27:59.878-05:00A Lesson on ChristmasI hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. My dogs, Orion and Meissa (pronounced "MAY-suh"), certainly did.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhejY180X6Okxcd66emrS7eD0I7Def1S2yZkPoemgliKc5HYZKNUJH_5SA6WEoQKHBIPIAdL53nWZlR0CIN28IjVaqrQP_Zt5jxeOP2_aNrxqkliCqmAVCMceX22TWBbZwQExfaJxNSVQE/s1600/20191208_120252.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhejY180X6Okxcd66emrS7eD0I7Def1S2yZkPoemgliKc5HYZKNUJH_5SA6WEoQKHBIPIAdL53nWZlR0CIN28IjVaqrQP_Zt5jxeOP2_aNrxqkliCqmAVCMceX22TWBbZwQExfaJxNSVQE/s320/20191208_120252.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orion and Meissa. They're as opposite as they look.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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 <a href="https://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2017/02/turn-page-downside-of-being-airline.html" target="_blank">Turn the Page: The Downside of Being an Airline Pilot</a>. Since I wrote that in 2017, we've added Meissa. (Basically, we got our dog a dog.)<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8O-CSP6-vbOYQGSB_OhdYI5jO2tC5O8INiUiZAzRrIoRlvY6Jqkx6Prlnnaa3eMtbLZZufzisTcjjJTRFy9n-FlO7FskxPXbulbaD19XpypiYDHRH95HJrqUC-_nBKDr7kX-1-0_jJg0/s1600/51nnW3Pb%252BOL._SX466_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="299" data-original-width="466" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8O-CSP6-vbOYQGSB_OhdYI5jO2tC5O8INiUiZAzRrIoRlvY6Jqkx6Prlnnaa3eMtbLZZufzisTcjjJTRFy9n-FlO7FskxPXbulbaD19XpypiYDHRH95HJrqUC-_nBKDr7kX-1-0_jJg0/s320/51nnW3Pb%252BOL._SX466_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWTgrIQRvB0m7nfkuxh-95Vl3IOFj55CpbhJXymNpIvhvvt9ZuUUoWN0U1pGMIW4xAmu9XQ2z5e5yiJfM9WnY8hK3fyanvVq1Xjox9e8v2RQLpdx2RZpQ5Fci2qx5XDGclLfMv3OGkg80/s1600/QG6DEbD9Yrp9FGYGZKW9Fg-320-80.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="362" data-original-width="320" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWTgrIQRvB0m7nfkuxh-95Vl3IOFj55CpbhJXymNpIvhvvt9ZuUUoWN0U1pGMIW4xAmu9XQ2z5e5yiJfM9WnY8hK3fyanvVq1Xjox9e8v2RQLpdx2RZpQ5Fci2qx5XDGclLfMv3OGkg80/s320/QG6DEbD9Yrp9FGYGZKW9Fg-320-80.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
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?"<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoqAojbTvLI709NbWUgKLEBOPNo1fgVKG9Qhf764ipfBFLPM7RGUT5CaHKgLAo17rtedrdiAyuan0tDwtdH8ssQ70OHZWo6UjCZAWpZ4Q4PMQJOBm07PBqi6wurQrYtkhua-GjfLwyctg/s1600/ball.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="252" data-original-width="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoqAojbTvLI709NbWUgKLEBOPNo1fgVKG9Qhf764ipfBFLPM7RGUT5CaHKgLAo17rtedrdiAyuan0tDwtdH8ssQ70OHZWo6UjCZAWpZ4Q4PMQJOBm07PBqi6wurQrYtkhua-GjfLwyctg/s1600/ball.PNG" /></a></div>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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!<br />
<br />
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".<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/W0lWsqAwYwY/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W0lWsqAwYwY?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
Another good example like that one is another AOPA ASI case study called "Cross-County Crisis":<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_wsa3vhnowk/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_wsa3vhnowk?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447" target="_blank">Air France 447</a> is an example of my saying, "If what you're doing isn't working, doing more of it isn't going to work either."<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-31738231964469930572019-07-31T05:00:00.000-04:002019-07-31T05:00:11.719-04:00"A much unsung hero of the Apollo Program"In case you missed it (you were living on the moon, you fell into the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole" target="_blank">Kola Superdeep Borehole</a> 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dNlZXso0-I4/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dNlZXso0-I4?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
Although the video doesn't say why the trainer went out of control, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/50-years-ago-armstrong-survives-training-crash" target="_blank">a NASA page about it</a> 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.<br />
<br />
NASA then goes on to quote Armstrong:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"(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.</blockquote>
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."<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-29823609802906166562019-07-17T05:00:00.000-04:002019-07-21T18:05:51.648-04:00FaceApp and the breaking of the OODA loopOne 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2eWdWisE7b4w0KDqt_w-J3n5HK7mjIXOVTziyq-UP85IREryjprhjot6DLV-LKTX0kdJFqx29FOcHNSTPYSSFEkgNsKB7kat6XKSRZarSp-qf90ExtcdVEWhmAB_NXdDzuIB93UxYlBY/s1600/TopGunOld.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="615" data-original-width="454" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2eWdWisE7b4w0KDqt_w-J3n5HK7mjIXOVTziyq-UP85IREryjprhjot6DLV-LKTX0kdJFqx29FOcHNSTPYSSFEkgNsKB7kat6XKSRZarSp-qf90ExtcdVEWhmAB_NXdDzuIB93UxYlBY/s320/TopGunOld.jpg" width="236" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Top Gun meets FaceApp. Credit: no idea</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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.<br />
<br />
One of the more popular psychological models in aviation is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop" target="_blank">OODA loop</a>: 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.<br />
<br />
The important part is that the OODA loop is a <i>loop</i>. That means that once you've acted, you observe what impact your actions had and start the loop again. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(process)" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry for <i>praxis</i></a> breaks down these post-act steps even further:<br />
<ul>
<li>Taking the action</li>
<li>Considering the impacts of the action</li>
<li>Analyzing the results of the action by reflecting upon it</li>
<li>Altering and revising conceptions and planning following reflection</li>
<li>Implementing these plans in further actions</li>
</ul>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
As I said <a href="https://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2019/07/pilots-and-artists.html">in my previous pos</a>t, "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 <a href="https://amzn.to/2K0zyDk" target="_blank">the classic movie Wargames</a> have something in common:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iRsycWRQrc8/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iRsycWRQrc8?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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former FAASafety Team representative</i>. He is on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/LarrytheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy</a>, has a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/LarryTheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel</a>, and is on Twitter as <a href="http://twitter.com/Lairspeed" target="_blank">@Lairspeed</a>.</i><br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-88322917761584397562019-07-03T05:00:00.000-04:002019-07-15T14:54:20.983-04:00Pilots and ArtistsOne 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."<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, this week I came across an article that <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/art-is-good-for-your-brain/" target="_blank">briefly examines the neurobiology of art</a>: 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:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[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."</blockquote>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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."<br />
<br />
<div align="left">
In other words, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, "I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of
petty thing<i>s.</i>" 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.</div>
<br />
<br />
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."<br />
<br />
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as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's
WINGS program and a </i><i><i>
former FAASafety Team representative</i>. He is on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/LarrytheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy</a>, has a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/LarryTheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel</a>, and is on Twitter as <a href="http://twitter.com/Lairspeed" target="_blank">@Lairspeed</a>.</i><br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-87568351813097202002019-06-19T05:00:00.000-04:002019-07-21T20:56:31.582-04:00I'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.<br />
<br />
The question is, "Can I endorse myself for knowledge tests?"<br />
<br />
The answer is, "It depends. And even if so, it depends."<br />
<br />
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 <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=6df15d19f1c05bc579bbcf3981d34193&mc=true&r=PART&n=pt14.2.61#sp14.2.61.h" target="_blank">Part 61 Subpart H</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>§61.195 Flight instructor limitations and qualifications</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
3(i) <span style="font-style: italic;">Prohibition against self-endorsements.</span>
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.</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Things get murkier if you hold a Ground Instructor (either <a href="http://fsims.faa.gov/wdocs/8900.1/v05%20airman%20cert/chapter%2002/05_002_017rev1.htm" target="_blank">Advanced or Basic</a>) certificate. In that case, there is no prohibition under the ground instructor part of the FARs (<a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=6df15d19f1c05bc579bbcf3981d34193&mc=true&r=PART&n=pt14.2.61#sp14.2.61.i" target="_blank">Part 61 Subpart I</a>) against self-endorsement. There's nothing that says you <i>can</i>, but there's nothing that says you <i>can't</i>, either. With the way the United States legal system works, that <i>technically</i> means you can.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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:</div>
<ul>
<li>If you have a BGI, you can't self-endorse for anything except a Sport, Recreational, or Private certificate.</li>
<li>With an AGI, you still can't self-endorse for an instrument written—that requires an IGI.</li>
<li>And if you have only an IGI (i.e., no BGI/AGI), the <i>only</i> thing you can self-endorse for is your instrument written.</li>
</ul>
If you're unclear on the difference between an BGI and an AGI or what you can do as an IGI, <a href="https://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2014/05/bgi-agi-igi-why-o-why.html">the most popular post on this entire blog</a> goes into that.<br />
<br />
As always, if you have questions, I love to hear them. Please ask away!<br />
<br />
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as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's
WINGS program and a </i><i><i>
former FAASafety Team representative</i>. He is on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/LarrytheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy</a>, has a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/LarryTheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel</a>, and is on Twitter as <a href="http://twitter.com/Lairspeed" target="_blank">@Lairspeed</a>.</i><br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-91236957081345957032019-06-05T05:00:00.000-04:002019-07-21T21:45:03.182-04:00POH 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.<br />
<br />
They <i>will</i> 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.<br />
<br />
First, let's expand some initialisms:<br />
<ul>
<li>POH: Pilot's Operating Handbook</li>
<li>AFM: Airplane Flight Manual</li>
<li>AIM: Airplane Information Manual</li>
<li>PIM: Pilot's Information Manual</li>
</ul>
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.<br />
<br />
The ever-trusty Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge (the "P-hack") summarizes it nicely in Chapter 9:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="fontstyle0">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.</span>
</blockquote>
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 <i>only</i> one that satisfies the ARROW requirements. (The POH has the "O" for Operating Limitations contained in it.)<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTCV6MM4z1LYciS-BppJHcJUiFLOTKNp6Ud0Hpr1AMvjoSxsAAf8046HAYxggKlbFZcieW80MeGqRMbAgDOnNNWt0gHWYA53ZePMXcHSsVNoKvdqB8gur2XcLg7hJoBtex47yrLRVpUIE/s1600/arrow_checklist.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="594" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTCV6MM4z1LYciS-BppJHcJUiFLOTKNp6Ud0Hpr1AMvjoSxsAAf8046HAYxggKlbFZcieW80MeGqRMbAgDOnNNWt0gHWYA53ZePMXcHSsVNoKvdqB8gur2XcLg7hJoBtex47yrLRVpUIE/s400/arrow_checklist.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From FAA publication 8083-19a, which <a href="https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/media/faa-h-8083-19a.pdf" target="_blank">you can download for free here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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 <i>not</i> 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 <i>very</i> 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.)<br />
<br />
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".<br />
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Clear as mud now?<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-48860318296845260092019-04-10T05:00:00.000-04:002019-04-10T05:00:12.515-04:00Fifty years makes an out-of-this-world differenceFriday 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 <a href="https://amzn.to/2Vzrrlt" target="_blank">What the Fact?! 365 Strange Days in History</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="fontstyle0">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</span><span class="fontstyle2">, </span><span class="fontstyle0">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.<br /> </span><br />
<span class="fontstyle0">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.</span></blockquote>
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-16829465338587118172019-03-20T05:00:00.000-04:002019-07-24T15:26:34.923-04:00There are worse ways to practiceMy last post was <a href="https://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2019/03/this-is-where-its-probably-going-to.html" target="_blank">a little on the serious side</a>, so this time I'd like to lighten the mood a bit.<br />
<br />
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 <a href="https://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2019/02/x-plane-to-real-plane.html" target="_blank">use flight sims to practice</a>, how to <a href="https://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2016/02/make-practice-perfect-part-1-first-do.html" target="_blank">create efficient practice sessions</a>, how <a href="https://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2014/12/becoming-airline-pilot-series.html" target="_blank">airline pilots practice</a>, and so on. The first video I ever posted on YouTube was a pattern lesson with the glass panel turned off.<br />
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<br />
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?<br />
<br />
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 <a href="http://nowiknow.com/domo-arigato-mr-robutto/" target="_blank">this post from Now I Know</a> in case you want to know what a butt simulator looks like.<br />
<br />
It certainly gives new meaning to "touch and go", doesn't it?<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-29286100100965855122019-03-06T05:00:00.000-05:002019-03-08T01:55:41.002-05:00This 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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 <i>Island in the Sky</i> was set here; and the real-world exploits of one of the most famous names in aviation literature, Ernie Gann.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
Thus the day ends: <i>2/16/2019 N11193 EWR-PQI Total: 1.73 Night: 1.73 Instrument: 0.1 Pax: 23</i><br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-82986448579378135672019-02-06T05:00:00.000-05:002019-04-26T05:45:17.945-04:00X-Plane to Real PlaneOne 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
The first one, <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/general-aviation/2019-01-29/learning-fly-simulated-wings" target="_blank">Learning To Fly on Simulated Wings</a>, 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:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Forelli... soloed in less than 10 hours, which includes two discovery
flights followed by 6.7 hours of focused training in a Piper Archer.</blockquote>
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.<br />
<br />
The second one, <a href="https://www.gleimaviation.com/2019/03/22/from-filmmaking-to-the-flight-deck-an-animators-guide-to-training-in-vr/" target="_blank">From Filmmaking to the Flight Deck: An Animator’s Guide to Training in VR</a>, 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:<br />
<ol>
<li>There’s no drive to the airport — your virtual plane awaits you whenever you have the time to fly.</li>
<li>Your flight time is never canceled due to inclement weather — you can change the weather in X-Plane.</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>You can inexpensively train in a plethora of planes from every era that are never grounded for maintenance.</li>
<li>You are flying in complete safety. </li>
</ol>
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.<br />
<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-87741769670852059092018-12-12T05:00:00.000-05:002019-03-04T13:48:00.088-05:00Not within a thousand yearsMonday will mark the 115th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk. With the passage of time, major breakthroughs like this sometimes seem inevitable. The hard work, sacrifices, and doubts along the way are long gone, wallpapered over by the glow of success.<br />
<br />
While it is an amazing achievement that the Wrights started their aeronautical research in 1896 and managed to make history at Kitty Hawk only seven years later (and this while running a successful bicycle shop at the same time), the outcome wasn't always certain. After all, many bright, hardworking people had spent decades of their lives trying to solve the mystery of flight. Some of them went bankrupt—and those were the lucky ones, since they only lost their fortunes. Others like Otto Lilienthal and Percy Pilcher lost their lives.<br />
<br />
Lilienthal's last words are said to have been "Opfer müssen gemacht werden": <i>Sacrifices must be made</i>. His (and Pilcher's) sacrifice was not in vain, at the Wrights cited both of them as influences on their work.<br />
<br />
The Wrights built on the work of those who had given up so much before them, and in 1900 started their first experiments at Kitty Hawk. Their first year there they learned a large amount about aerodynamics, and found that much of what had been hypothesized at the time was wrong. Nonetheless, they had very promising results in regard to the largest aeronautical problem of the time: aircraft control. They finished that year very encouraged and eager to take their new results back to Dayton to work with before next year's voyage back to North Carolina's sand dunes.<br />
<br />
It seemed as if all was going extremely well. They thought they were on their way to solving the unsolvable problem of flight. Unfortunately, in 1901, they were unable to duplicate their former success. Nothing came easily. Nothing worked. They gave up a month early and trudged back to Dayton dejectedly. The going had gotten tough, and they thought it might be too tough for them. In 1912, Wilbur said of those days:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[W]e doubted that we would ever resume our experiments. Although we had broken the record for distance in gliding, and although Mr. Chanute, who was present at that time, assured us that our results were better than had ever before been attained, yet when we looked at the time and money which we had expended, and considered the progress made and the distance yet to go, we considered our experiments a failure. At that time I made the prediction that men would sometime fly, but that it would not be within our lifetime.</blockquote>
According to Orville, Wilbur was even more hopeless than that, and said simply, "Not within a thousand years would man ever fly."<br />
<br />
As we all know, only two years later they would go down in history. So when you're feeling like you'll never manage to fly, remember that the Wright Brothers themselves thought the same thing too.<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-55373597907959935952018-05-16T05:00:00.000-04:002018-05-16T05:00:04.293-04:00Happy Birthday, DadMy father passed away over 8 years ago. He loved flying with me, and I loved taking him up flying. He died four years before I would fly my first airliner, but I know he would have come out to the airport to see me fly into Cleveland-Hopkins for the first time. (Sadly, my first flight into CLE was also our airline's last flight there in the old Dash-8. It would be over 3 more years before we'd fly into it again, this time as an all-jet airline.)<br />
<br />
I still think of him often. I occasionally get sad when I think about how he never got the chance to see me go from the 2-seat Flight Design light sport airplane we used to poke holes in the sky together in to the captain of a jet airliner. I know he'd be happy and proud, which lessens some of the sadness sometimes.<br />
<br />
This year, Wednesday also happens to fall on what would have been his 71st birthday, so I'm going to do something I almost never do and go back into the archives. I'm re-posting <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2016/06/last-flight-with-my-best-passenger.html">"Last flight with my best passenger"</a> as this week's blog entry. It is the story of an impromptu flight up the Ohio River with him. What was supposed to have been a much shorter flight with him turned out to be a much longer, much more fun experience, but unfortunately (and unbeknownst to us), it would be our last one together.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2016/06/last-flight-with-my-best-passenger.html">You can read it here</a>. See you next Wednesday!<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-38017955944296000962018-04-30T01:59:00.000-04:002018-07-03T02:34:57.225-04:00Richard Collins gone westYesterday, aviation writing legend Richard Collins passed away at the age of 84. In his over five decades as the timekeeper of aviation history, he influenced an almost uncountable number of pilots, myself included. He'll pull into the hangar alongside such other writers as Bob Buck and Wolfgang Langewiesche as someone who had a deep understanding of not just aviation but how to write about aviation.<br />
<br />
Early on in my aviation journey, I read his books <a href="https://amzn.to/2zc0BJE" target="_blank"><i>Flying the Weather Map</i></a> and <a href="https://amzn.to/2NksVN9" target="_blank"><i>The Next Hour: The Most Important Hour in Your Logbook</i></a>. The Sporty's private pilot course had special vignettes by him on certain topics scattered throughout the pile of CDs (yes, we still used CDs way back then!) it came on. I still use some of his videos on weather theory when teaching <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2013/10/learn-to-fly-and-get-college-credit.html" target="_blank">my college aviation courses</a>, as he was able to take weather knowledge and synthesize it into useful technique.<br />
<br />
What makes me saddest about his passing is that because he had been flying since 1952, he was one of the last bridges between "classic" and modern aviation in the GA world. He saw everything from Cubs to Concorde, and was able to use his old experience to inform the new world aviation has been moving into in the 21st century.<br />
<br />
In a world that prizes technological solutions to human problems, his voice was one that reminded us that skill is more important than glass cockpits and magenta lines. His voice was a thread that sewed together timeless aviation common sense in a tapestry that ranged all the way to Wilbur Wright himself, as many of his columns are elaborations on Wright's famous quote, "What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery."<br />
<br />
In an age of highly-sophisticated airplanes and a world of "Direct to - Enter - Enter", we still need voices to remind us that the most important piece of technology in <i>any</i> airplane is installed between the left and right earpieces, with analog outputs of hands and feet at the stick and rudder. The aviation community's greatest loss is that his experience will no longer be there to remind us of the essence of aviation.<br />
<br />
Farewell, Mr. Collins. It is a large void you leave.<br />
<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-40065035539671886642018-04-18T05:00:00.000-04:002018-04-23T18:17:12.540-04:00The Impostor Syndrome<br />
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This month, Southwest's application window was open for new pilots. I'm over half way to my 1000 hours of jet PIC, so I'm getting close
enough to their requirements that I wouldn't be totally wasting their
time. So, for the first time, I applied.<br />
<br />
I remember feeling a mixture of nervousness and excitement when I
applied at my current airline. It was mixed with a "What am I doing applying at an airline? Can
I really do this?"<br />
<br />
When I got hired and went through training, I was sure I shouldn't be there. I was positive I wasn't doing it right and any day they were going to send me home. If you read my series <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2014/12/becoming-airline-pilot-series.html" target="_blank">"Becoming an Airline Pilot"</a> back in 2014, you might remember that it wasn't until over halfway through I dared open my training folder and look at the grades in it.<br />
<br />
I was sure I was one step from failing, and yet when I finally did get the courage to peek, <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2015/02/becoming-airline-pilot-week-4-welcome.html" target="_blank">I was doing just fine!</a><br />
<br />
I have over twice as many hours in the logbook as I did then. I've added an EMB-145 type rating on top of the Dash-8. I passed upgrade with flying colors and I've spent a year in the Captain's seat now. After four years on the job, I'm reaching the point in my career where people start to move on to major carriers. It should be a piece of cake to apply by this point, right?<br />
<br />
Nope. Despite having spent the last several years zooming around the sky at hundreds of MPH in 50,000-pound airplanes and having carried 59,897 passengers 522,369 miles, I felt the same thing this time around as I did when the largest thing I'd ever flown was a 6-seat Beech Baron: "What am I doing applying at a place like Southwest? Who do I think I am?"<br />
<br />
This must mean I'm insecure and lack confidence, right? Well, actually, that rhetorical question was thrown in there to make my wife roll on the floor with laughter. That's probably the absolute <i>last</i> way she'd describe me.<br />
<br />
It's actually a very common phenomenon called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome" target="_blank">"Impostor Syndrome"</a>. It's rarely talked about in aviation because pilots would never admit to something like that. Nonetheless, Wikipedia's article includes a small example of some people who actually have admitted to having felt like an impostor, and it includes a Supreme Court justice, several super-successful actors (like Tom Hanks, for instance), multiple best-selling authors, and some billionaires.<br />
<br />
It's also addressed in <a href="https://amzn.to/2GTSp4h" target="_blank">Barbara Oakley's book A Mind for Numbers</a>, which I raved about two years ago and highly recommend. Although its subtitle is "How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)", I wrote about it several times because it's really a book that is more about <i>learning how to learn</i> than it is learning math and science, which makes it extremely valuable to people who are learning how to fly. The material applies to all subjects and tasks you'll need to learn throughout your lifetime, and is really a book for everyone in that respect.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-Algebra/dp/039916524X/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&qid=1523601332&sr=8-2&keywords=learning+how+to+learn+barbara+oakley&linkCode=li2&tag=keybandrudd-20&linkId=43481c3ddabdec92d205e3960f985ed4" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=039916524X&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=keybandrudd-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=keybandrudd-20&l=li2&o=1&a=039916524X" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
<br />
In my case, I certainly don't suffer from a lack of confidence. I simply have extremely high standards; sometimes to the point of them being unrealistically high standards. I tend to expect more out of myself than is humanly possible, and despite asking for more from myself than what is reasonable, I still am unhappy when I fail to jump over the bar I've set too high. If that's a real flaw, it's one I'm happy to live with, and my next post will go into why that is.<br />
<br />
I don't expect to get a call from Southwest this time around. Not because I don't think I don't deserve one, but simply because I haven't yet checked off all the boxes they like to see. Their total time requirement is only 2500 hours, and I'm almost twice that now, but they do prefer 1000 hours of jet PIC time and I'm not quite 2/3rds of the way there at the moment.<br />
<br />
So even though I don't expect a call, it's not because of the impostor syndrome per se, but because there are still a lot of people out there that have checked all the boxes. Nonetheless, I will still keep applying, because they like to see you applying over and over. To them, it means you have the persistence and real desire to work for them.<br />
<br />
I will keep applying until one day you get to read a series on becoming a 737 pilot! See you next Wednesday!<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-57651045933963326392018-04-04T05:00:00.000-04:002018-04-04T07:13:19.419-04:00The circle of trainingLast week, the FAA issued a <a href="https://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing/2018/media/SE_Topic_18_03.pdf" target="_blank">Safety Enhancement Topic on emergency management handling</a> (PDF file) after engine failure, especially in twins. Here's an excerpt:
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Every pilot needs to prepare for the unexpected. Engine failures and inflight emergencies have a nasty habit of cropping up at the most inopportune times. However, with the right training and preparation, you can be ready for any hazardous situation that comes your way.<br />
<br />
During your initial pilot training, you may recall the layers of learning involved with acquiring and mastering aeronautical skills. You might begin your learning path by <i>memorizing</i> certain facts or details like airspeeds for best rate (V<sub>y</sub>) or angle of climb (V<sub>x</sub>). You would then need to <i>understand</i> the relationship between these speeds in order to best choose which speed might be applicable for your environment. You would then <i>apply</i> that knowledge by actually choosing to fly at V<sub>x</sub> to clear an obstacle on takeoff.<br />
<br />
Finally, through <i>correlation</i> of V<sub>x</sub>/V<sub>y</sub> knowledge with climb performance at high density altitudes, engine cooling, and traffic spotting requirements, a pilot may opt to begin a departure climb at V<sub>x</sub>, transition to V<sub>y</sub> after obstacles are cleared, maintain V<sub>y</sub> until a safe maneuvering altitude is reached, and then transition to cruise climb to improve traffic spotting.<br />
<br />
Correlative learning takes place when students are able to apply previously acquired knowledge to solve new problems.
</blockquote>
It praises Scenario-Based Training, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. I'm a <i>big</i> fan of SBT. In fact, my <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2017/11/flying-mississippi-toc.html" target="_blank">Flying the Mississippi book</a> is <i>designed</i> to be one big scenario in which to learn and/or practice.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, as much as I like SBT, it is not a one-size-fits-all magic cloak. It is extremely powerful if used when appropriate, and horribly inefficient when jammed into places it doesn't fit. This is a place where it probably doesn't fit.<br />
<br />
While the excerpt above sounds pretty and contains 100% of your recommended daily allowance of FAA-approved educational jargon, it doesn't actually address the cause of loss of control accidents in twins. Basically zero accidents are caused by pilots reaching the "correlative" level and not being able to decide whether they should choose Vx or Vy. Those pilots are smoking holes in the ground long before that stage.<br />
<br />
In other words, the last thoughts of a pilot about to die from an engine failure on takeoff aren't<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Hmm, I think I should choose V<sub>x</sub> here due to obstacle clearance requirements. Or was it V<sub>y</sub>? I can't really remember exactly the difference between the two. Perhaps I should split the difference and choose a target airspeed between the two. In any case, it is warmer than standard today, but I'm 800 pounds below max gross weight. That means my V<sub>x</sub> will be lower than normal. Or higher? That's quite the interesting mathematical challenge here. Let me think about it...</i></blockquote>
<br />
Nope. The last thoughts are going to be a LOT more like<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I'm rolling! Why am I rolling!? That roll is making us sink. Why aren't the ailerons leveling us the way they usually do?!? Pull back on the yoke to keep us from sinking so fast!!! Got to pull--[SPLAT]</i></blockquote>
<br />
No scenario-based training is going to help here. What is necessary is a return to memorization. But not the "entry-level" memorization that is the only type the FAA mentions above. This memorization is "mastery-level" memorization, which is a term you won't find in any FAA textbook.<br />
<br />
This level of memorization is also different in that it takes place less on a cognitive plane than a physical one. While ELM (Entry-Level Memorization) is concerned with storing and regurgitating facts and figures, MLM (Mastery-Level Memorization) concerns itself with physical responses.<br />
<br />
This is by no means a new concept. What I'm calling MLM here has been known for decades as "automaticity". In fact, it's not even new to this blog: I referred to automaticity last year in <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2017/07/smart-people-do-stupid-things.html" target="_blank">"Smart people do stupid things in emergencies"</a>.<br />
<br />
This MLM or automaticity is what it will take to reduce the number of accidents caused by loss of control. Pilots aren't dying because they didn't grok a scenario; they are dying because they didn't have the response to an engine failure so ingrained, so physically memorized, that it was automatic.<br />
<br />
So we go full circle, from one form of memorization to another. We go from a mere fact stored in our head to an entire memorized response stored deep in our mental being. One stored so deep it no longer even looks memorized; it simply looks natural. The circle of training goes from the beginner's memorization to understanding to application to correlation... and finally to the master's memorization.<br />
<br />
The master's memorization is a way of understanding without having to understand. It has passed through understanding and become <i>being</i>.<br />
<br />
That sounds very Zen-like, and it is. It is at that point of mastery that it paradoxically becomes difficult to explain to someone else what you are doing because the skill is no longer a set of discrete steps. It has become one single chunk.<br />
<br />
As an example, go and land a plane and think of each step as you're doing it. You'll probably find it extremely awkward and won't make the best landing. It is something you've internalized so much that landing is something you "just do" now. (Or if you're not a pilot yet, try to explain to someone everything you're doing as you drive down the highway.)<br />
<br />
That's why SBT won't fix this issue. Pilots of twins have to go beyond the conscious, awkward response into the unconscious memorized response. In other words, not to practice until they get it right, but to practice until they can't get it wrong.<br />
<br />
The next post will go into what SBT is really good for. See you next Wednesday!<br />
<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-3263465688374076732018-03-21T05:00:00.000-04:002018-03-21T18:44:49.097-04:00You know you've found the right job when...In my former life, I was an IT guy. I liked it, but I can't say I was in love with it. I certainly can't say I ever looked forward to going back to work after a week off. As a pilot, though, I actually do look forward to getting back in the cockpit after a week or so off.<br />
<br />
The decidedly non-traditional schedule of an airline pilot with a good amount of seniority means I get a week or more off every month or two. Consistently, after 5-6 days off, I'm looking forward to going back. Not because I want to get away from the wife, because I have the most wonderful woman in the world. (Right, Shannon?) Not because I like seeing the dog get depressed. Not because I'm bored, because I'm one of those people who is always trying to get 28 hours worth of stuff done every day.<br />
<br />
I look forward to going back because <i>I love what I do</i>.<br />
<br />
I came across <a href="https://airlinecaptainforaday.com/" target="_blank">"Airline Captain For A Day"</a> today and it brought to light another reason I know I've found the perfect job for me. Although every job has its days, I consider myself insanely lucky to have found something that most of the working world unfortunately has never experienced: a job that is fun, intellectually stimulating, and meaningful all at the same time.<br />
<br />
When I looked at the simulators (which cost $589, $628, and $789 an hour for the MD-80, 737-300, and 737-800 respectively), my response was, "Hell yeah... I'd do a V<sub>1</sub> cut [an engine failure at the most critical time during takeoff] in any or all of those!"<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb7xTa2UuMl9z-nV4X4L-gxYID3x9fyR_w7O7QfxLfbPI4259s4e8U70nGCWMM6idBhMsc_3FQXGJ7CVeAOSNqQ-BelB_HwngpG2-kBRUEMuK2155vVYsbipWJw-2C_u9IahwB7p7iAvo/s1600/shut_up_and_take_my_money.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="510" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb7xTa2UuMl9z-nV4X4L-gxYID3x9fyR_w7O7QfxLfbPI4259s4e8U70nGCWMM6idBhMsc_3FQXGJ7CVeAOSNqQ-BelB_HwngpG2-kBRUEMuK2155vVYsbipWJw-2C_u9IahwB7p7iAvo/s320/shut_up_and_take_my_money.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Then I realized what I was saying: that I'd be willing to pay <i>real</i> money to <i>pretend</i> to do what I <i>already</i> do for a living, just in a different kind of airliner. I'm an Airline Captain Every Day, so just three weeks ago, I got paid to spend four hours in the simulator, since that was when I completed my last six-month recurrent session. (And, yes, V<sub>1</sub> cuts and single engine approaches were part of the required tasks.)<br />
<br />
There is absolutely no scenario in which I can see myself back in my IT days saying, "You have simulators that will let me pretend I'm working in a Linux shop instead of a Windows one? Wow! Shut up and take my money!" In fact, the very thought of voluntarily paying to pretend to work in <i>any other field</i> makes me giggle a bit:<br />
<br />
"You mean I can pretend to litigate civil cases instead of criminal ones? Sign me up!"<br />
"You mean I can pretend to perform heart surgery instead of brain surgery? Here's my credit card!"<br />
"You mean I can pretend to run the grill instead of the fryer? Woo hoo!"<br />
<br />
I spent years before finding a field where I'd say, "Shut up and take my money!" and mean it. May you be so lucky! And if you happen to have an extra $500, $600, or $700 lying around, I can put it to good use for you....<br />
<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-24068177653780002772018-02-21T05:00:00.000-05:002019-04-26T05:02:02.932-04:00The blank canvas of the white darknessThis week, the <i>New Yorker</i> published <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness" target="_blank">a long story on an Antarctic journey</a>. Although it took me over an hour to read, it was time well spent. I hadn't realized how long I had been reading until I reached the end.<br />
<br />
I'm drawn to stories about people who make demands of themselves that go beyond the ordinary and into the extraordinary. While the engineer side of me is interested in the how, the psychologist in me wants to know <i>why</i>. There is rarely a how without a why.<br />
<br />
Some of my curiosity about why people go beyond the normal is because as an airline pilot, nothing I do is normal, yet it's the safest normal man has yet found. Nothing is less normal than buckling into a metal tube going 500 MPH at 7 miles above the Earth's surface, relying on machines to cram air into the little metal sausage so we can have something to breathe. Nonetheless, I do it 5 times a day, go to the hotel, get some sleep, and do it several more times the next day. Just as if nothing could be more normal.<br />
<br />
We've made it look so normal that it's news when it <i>doesn't</i> work. Much of that has to do with technology that we take for granted, like incredibly reliable jet engines and GPS navigation which relies on dozens of little satellites whizzing around in space.<br />
<br />
Some of it has to do with advances in understanding human limitations and finding workarounds for them like standard operating procedures and pre-made decisions.<br />
<br />
We know that humans are often very poor decision makers under stress. The only reason humans are better decision makers than computers is because as stupid as we are, computers can't even make <i>stupid</i> decisions yet. That's why my aircraft has a two-inch-thick manual of emergency and abnormal checklists that is required to be in it at all times: when it's important that decisions be correct, it's important to make them ahead of time, away from stress.<br />
<br />
That's why it's so impressive that Ernest Shackleton in his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod_Expedition" target="_blank">Nimrod Expedition of 1907-09</a> made the decision to turn around only 97 miles away from the South Pole. After all the miles trudging painfully through the blinding snow, after two months of misfortune and misery, they were less than a hundred miles away... and he said stop.<br />
<br />
<i>That</i> takes courage to do. It would have been easy to press on, only a few days away from setting foot where no human had done so before; only a few days from becoming an immortalized Figure of History. It would have been easy to be dead, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Falcon_Scott" target="_blank">like R. F. Scott</a>, who lacked the courage to stop.<br />
<br />
About mid-way through the story, the main subject, Henry Worsley, and his two companions reach the place where Shackleton turned around:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
During the next two days, the storm abated, and they covered more
than twenty-five nautical miles. On January 9th, they barrelled ahead
for six hours. Then Worsley took out his G.P.S. and gripped it, as he
put it, "like an old man carefully carrying a cup of tea." As Gow and
Adams anxiously looked on, Worsley shuffled around until the G.P.S.
connected with satellites and coördinates flashed on the screen: 88° 23'
S, 162° E.<br />
<br />
"That’s it!" he yelled, slamming his poles into the ground. "We’ve
made it!" The men looked around, examining the place that had long
consumed their imaginations, and which had lured them nearly to their
demise. All they could see was barren ice—their grail was no more than a
geographical data point. As Adams later put it, "What is Antarctica
other than a blank canvas on which you seek to impose yourself?"<br />
<br />
... Worsley kept thinking about the predicament that Shackleton had faced a
hundred years earlier. Shortly before reaching the ninety-seven-mile
mark, Shackleton had written in his diary, "I cannot think of failure
yet. I must look at the matter sensibly and consider the lives of those
who are with me. I feel that if we go on too far it will be impossible
to get back over this surface, and then all the results will be lost to
the world." He added, "Man can only do his best, and we have arrayed
against us the strongest forces of nature." When he finally made the
decision to retreat, on January 9th, he wrote, "We have shot our bolt."</blockquote>
<br />
A little further on, the team encounters a particularly strong storm that blocks their way forward for a while:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Proper Antarctic storm!" he wrote in his diary, noting that there was
no chance of moving forward that day. The next morning, the gusts felt
strong enough to hurl a small dog; one of the tent poles broke, and he
had to repair it. "A salutary reminder just who is in control around
here," he said of the conditions. "Trespassers will be punished."</blockquote>
In the cockpit, each day I have the privilege to partake of a peaceful yet powerful view, with sunrises and sunsets that no painter can match, rare days where the air is so clear I can see from one side of an entire state to the other, and clouds dancing below me in peculiar formations that have never happened before and never will again. Nonetheless, I and my craft are still trespassers in this air, tolerated only through a mixture of technological ingenuity and a healthy respect for who is really in control. I call it a privilege because I have no <i>right</i> no be here.<br />
<br />
A final thing I found fascinating was Shackleton's "fourth man": a sense of a divine presence accompanying him. As I pointed out in my <a href="https://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2016/09/review-spirit-of-st-louis.html" target="_blank">review of Charles Lindbergh's <i>The Spirit of St. Louis</i></a>, the same thing happened to Lindbergh:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
While I'm staring at the instruments, during an unearthly age of time,
both conscious and asleep, the fuselage behind me becomes filled with
ghostly presences--vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving, riding
weightless with me in the plane. I feel no surprise at their coming...<br />
<br />
These phantoms speak with human voices--friendly, vapor-like shapes,
without substance, able to vanish or appear at will, to pass in and out
through the walls of the fuselage as though no walls were there...<br />
<br />
[These were] familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight,
discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me, giving me messages
of importance unattainable in ordinary life.</blockquote>
Compare this to Worsley's experience on his solo journey to the Antarctic, taken after his previous effort with two companions had been successful:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And so Worsley pressed on, muttering to himself a line from Tennyson’s
poem "Ulysses": "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." Once,
he looked up in the sky and saw, through his frozen goggles, a dazzling
sun halo. On the edge of the circle, there were intense bursts of light,
as if the sun were being splintered into three fiery balls. He knew
that the phenomenon was caused by sunlight being refracted through a
scrim of ice particles. Yet, as he stumbled onward through the void, he
wondered if the light was actually some guiding spirit, like the "fourth
man" that Shackleton had spoken of. Perhaps Worsley, too, had pierced
the "veneer of outside things"—or perhaps his mind was simply
unravelling. His diary entries had become sparer and darker: "So
breathless . . . I am fading . . . hands/fingers are forever shutting
down . . . wonder how long they will last."</blockquote>
I shall not ruin the ending of this powerful story for you. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness" target="_blank">Read it for yourself</a> and you will not regret the time it takes to do so.<br />
<br />
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as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's
WINGS program and a </i><i><i>
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-84615294851307575572017-12-20T05:00:00.000-05:002017-12-22T15:43:55.986-05:00The Aviator's Night Before Christmas'Twas the night before Christmas, and out on the ramp,<br />
Not an airplane was stirring, not even a Champ.<br />
The aircraft were fastened to tie downs with care,<br />
In hopes that come morning, they all would be there.<br />
<br />
The fuel trucks were nestled, all snug in their spots,<br />
With gusts from two-forty at 39 knots.<br />
I slumped at the fuel desk, now finally caught up,<br />
And settled down comfortably, resting my butt.<br />
<br />
When the radio lit up with noise and with chatter,<br />
I turned up the scanner to see what was the matter.<br />
A voice clearly heard over static and snow,<br />
Called for clearance to land at the airport below.<br />
<br />
He barked his transmission so lively and quick,<br />
I'd have sworn that the call sign he used was "St. Nick."<br />
I ran to the panel to turn up the lights,<br />
The better to welcome this magical flight.<br />
<br />
He called his position, no room for denial,<br />
"St. Nicholas One, turnin' left onto final."<br />
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,<br />
But a Rutan-built sleigh, with eight Rotax Reindeer!<br />
<br />
With vectors to final, down the glideslope he came,<br />
As he passed all fixes, he called them by name:<br />
"Now Ringo! Now Tolga! Now Trini and Bacun!<br />
On Comet! On Cupid!" What pills was he takin'?<br />
<br />
While controllers were sittin', and scratchin' their heads,<br />
They phoned to my office, and I heard it with dread,<br />
The message they left was both urgent and dour:<br />
"When Santa pulls in, have him please call the tower."<br />
<br />
He landed like silk, with the sled runners sparking,<br />
Then I heard, "Left at Charlie," and, "Taxi to parking."<br />
He slowed to a taxi, turned off of three-oh,<br />
And stopped on the ramp with a "Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!"<br />
<br />
He stepped out of the sleigh, but before he could talk,<br />
I ran out to meet him with my best set of chocks.<br />
His red helmet and goggles were covered with frost,<br />
And his beard was all blackened from reindeer exhaust.<br />
<br />
His breath smelled like peppermint, gone slightly stale,<br />
And he puffed on a pipe, but he didn't inhale.<br />
His cheeks were all rosy and jiggled like jelly,<br />
His boots were as black as a cropduster's belly.<br />
<br />
He was chubby and plump, in his suit of bright red,<br />
And he asked me to "fill it, with hundred low-lead."<br />
He came dashing in from the snow-covered pump,<br />
I knew he was anxious for drainin' the sump.<br />
<br />
I spoke not a word, but went straight to my work,<br />
And I filled up the sleigh, but I spilled like a jerk.<br />
He came out of the restroom, and sighed in relief,<br />
Then he picked up a phone for a Flight Service brief.<br />
<br />
And I thought as he silently scribed in his log,<br />
These reindeer could land in an eighth-mile fog.<br />
He completed his pre-flight, from the front to the rear,<br />
Then he put on his headset, and I heard him yell, "Clear!"<br />
<br />
And laying a finger on his push-to-talk,<br />
He called up the tower for clearance and squawk.<br />
"Take taxiway Charlie, the southbound direction,<br />
Turn right three-two-zero at pilot's discretion"<br />
<br />
He sped down the runway, the best of the best,<br />
"Your traffic's a Grumman, inbound from the west."<br />
Then I heard him proclaim, as he climbed through the night,<br />
"Merry Christmas to all! I have traffic in sight!"<br />
<br />
<br />
The best of the season to you and yours! See you next year!<br />
<br />
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<br />
<i>The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct
college professor <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2013/10/learn-to-fly-and-get-college-credit.html">teaching aviation ground schools</a>. 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 </i><i><i>
former FAASafety Team representative</i>. He is on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/LarrytheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy</a>, has a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/LarryTheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel</a>, and is on Twitter as <a href="http://twitter.com/Lairspeed" target="_blank">@Lairspeed</a>.</i><br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-74233528420738869702017-11-29T05:00:00.000-05:002018-04-30T16:43:30.837-04:00Flying the Mississippi: Preface<br />
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<br />
Each of the legs in this adventure begins with the basic information about what is coming up in a "briefing strip" that looks like this:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Start time: <br />Starting fuel: %<br />Takeoff runway: <br />Leg length: <br />Distance traveled so far: <br />Distance to go: </b></blockquote>
Here's more about those pieces of information.<br />
<br />
<i>Start time</i>: Flight Simulator X will keep having you start at the same time
over and over. To have the feel of the real passage of time, you will
have to adjust the time manually before your flight. You can either
simply start the next leg at the time the last one ended, look at the
logbook to see the amount of time the last flight took (if you click
"Details..." on a particular entry, it will tell you what time you took
off), or add some custom amount of time to the last flight.<br />
<br />
As an example of that last option, when I land, I usually add 15-30
minutes to the end of the last flight. That's my way of simulating
getting out of the aircraft, walking around and checking out the airport
and its nearby surroundings, and starting back up. If I land between
noon and 1:00 p.m., I'll add 60-90 minutes to simulate going into town
for lunch. If there's something there that I would like to see, I'll
even set the start time for the next leg at 8:00 a.m. the following day
to simulate staying overnight. (I do this, for example, at Little
Falls/Morrison County to simulate visiting the birthplace of Charles
Lindbergh.)<br />
<br />
<i>Starting fuel</i>: If you like more realism, you can keep track of the fuel burned and set the next leg to start with how much you ended with last time. Subtract 1-2% for startup, taxi, and run-up if you prefer starting at the end of the runway. I use a ballpark figure of 2% for every .1 hour in the logbook.<br />
<br />
In Microsoft Flight Simulator X you can use Shift-Z, Shift-Z, Shift-Z (press "Shift-Z" three times) to display the fuel status in percent. If you need to adjust it, open up the "Fuel and Payload" menu from the main start screen.<br />
<br />
<i>Takeoff runway:</i> This is only a suggestion. If you're using no weather (in other words, every day is a clear blue, calm wind, "clear and a million" day), this is usually the runway that will put you closest to getting back to the river the fastest.<br />
<br />
If you are more advanced and are using real weather or conditions you set up yourself, this may not match the runway you would actually use under those conditions. Feel free to change this to match the runway that would be appropriate for your weather conditions.<br />
<br />
<i></i>
<i>Leg length</i>: These are given direct. You'll end up flying
approximately 20% more due to following the terrain, going to airports
that aren't right on the river banks, etc.<br />
<br />
<i>Distance traveled so far</i>: Oh, how far we've come!<br />
<br />
<i>Distance to go</i>: How much is left until we land in the "Big Easy", New Orleans.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Customizing your experience</h3>
<br />
<i>Weather</i><br />
<br />
If you prefer real-world weather, then feel free to use it. Because real world weather will vary from person to person depending on when you may be flying this, I have the weather set on the "Fair Weather" weather theme for all of these flights. This allows for some standardization and predictability throughout the journey, since the runway to use will never change when the wind is always calm.<br />
<br />
In fact, if you want to make a second fly-though or more, I'd highly recommend turning on the real-world weather feature. This will give you experience in making go-no decisions, dealing with weather en route, figuring out which runway to use, and many other factors that real pilots have to consider on every trip, whether it be 15 miles to the $100 hamburger or 1500 miles along the Mississippi.<br />
<br />
<i>FSRecorder</i><br />
<br />
There is an add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator X called <a href="http://www.fs-recorder.net/">FSRecorder</a> that will allow you to record the path your airplane took. It does <i>not</i> record video; it only records your flight track. This is useful if you want to review your flight. It may or may not work with the Steam Edition.<br />
<br />
Other flight simulators have this functionality built in.<br />
<br />
<i>Loading/saving your own flights</i><br />
<br />
If you want to fly this trip seamlessly, you can save your flight at the end of your session. When you come back and load it, everything will be restored to the way it was when you saved it. Your aircraft will be in the same location at the same time of day with the same amount of fuel, etc.<br />
<br />
Although I give suggested times and fuel amounts, these are intended to be a guide and not a set-in-stone rule. It's your trip, so you can and should change these to suit your goals and style. Saving your flights allows you to start off with an exact figure instead of the estimates provided. Whether you save or not has no impact on the overall course of the trip.<br />
<br />
<i>Aircraft</i> <br />
<br />
This flight was designed and flown with the stock Cessna 172 with a plain vanilla installation. I chose this aircraft because it requires no special installation of software or add-ons. You naturally can feel free to use any aircraft you like: there is nothing about this flight that is aircraft-specific, with the exception of some shorter grass fields, which you may want to avoid landing at in a bigger aircraft.<br />
<br />
In fact, in real life, I'd love to do this flight in a Piper Cub, another aircraft that comes with Flight Simulator X. You can go along as slow as an AirCreation Trike Ultralight, build up some multi-engine time in a Beech Baron, fly the river on floats in a Beaver, or even combine the last two by flying it in a Grumman Goose. In fact, if you're one of those people who prefers that the wings be going faster than the rest of the aircraft, you can do this whole journey just fine in a helicopter. If you want to speed up the trip a bit but still get almost all of the fun, the Mooney is a good choice.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYQw5nCY639VQ9orVu2FpohOP_OSa3EuPSwlTQXRNBNu-ba82ZRM9HHcFbXQijSDzS12bQlAfNixv5_yatsLXVYnTLkZQaijgak7RTPC1MR4jwRvC1aD-KLTIHaZXfbmP3tQnGHkwMU9c/s1600/FMI_Lear.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1025" data-original-width="1568" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYQw5nCY639VQ9orVu2FpohOP_OSa3EuPSwlTQXRNBNu-ba82ZRM9HHcFbXQijSDzS12bQlAfNixv5_yatsLXVYnTLkZQaijgak7RTPC1MR4jwRvC1aD-KLTIHaZXfbmP3tQnGHkwMU9c/s320/FMI_Lear.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Learjet can give you the 30,000-foot view at 500 MPH if you're not into "low and slow".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Optional airports</i><br />
<br />
There are several airports that don't add much to the trip, but are included solely to break up the journey into smaller chunks and to give you a chance to add an airport to your logbook. These airports can be skipped with no loss of fun, so if you're into speed-running, I have marked these airports with * in front of their name.<br />
<br />
I have avoided putting lessons or flying tips into these legs, so you won't miss anything important if you choose to skip over them. Instead, in many cases I've put interesting bits of historical or geographical knowledge into those, so you can merely read those segments and still get the experience.<br />
<br />
<i>Time of year</i><br />
<br />
I chose to start my flight in mid-November in order to experience the change in scenery from snowy up north and greener as I progressed southward. Fall is another beautiful time to fly, and I highly recommend starting the trip any time between October 1st and October 20th if you want to enjoy hundreds of miles of changing leaves. It's up to you, and the time of year has no effect in Flight Simulator X besides a change of scenery textures.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIhACS8IUsZvG1ww9XcPxTmxLZwXOqcopGWbgN0cD3QriVEbZaDfh_QD8QmQmR23X07hgYichuInTwHDeYH8GFscx1C3TCD7tZi_yoxE7S8S1SPzf_rahfyzDBYijVUoQ5EN-d8vAVwQ/s1600/FMI_leaves.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="906" data-original-width="1600" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXIhACS8IUsZvG1ww9XcPxTmxLZwXOqcopGWbgN0cD3QriVEbZaDfh_QD8QmQmR23X07hgYichuInTwHDeYH8GFscx1C3TCD7tZi_yoxE7S8S1SPzf_rahfyzDBYijVUoQ5EN-d8vAVwQ/s320/FMI_leaves.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Autumn leaves can make for great scenery along your adventure.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Flight Simulator X downloads the <i>current</i> weather regardless of what date you have selected as the virtual calendar. As noted earlier, I have the weather permanently set to “Fair Weather” during this trip in order to standardize the legs, as it is impossible for me to write in every condition you might have otherwise. However, using real-world weather is a great experience that will give you practice in making go/no-go decisions, figuring out what altitudes and routes you may have to adjust, etc. You might even “get” to experience the feeling of being stuck on the ground for several days in the middle of nowhere waiting for the weather to pass.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Other tips</h3>
<br />
In Flight Simulator X, Shift-Z is extremely useful, especially if you like to use the spot plane view to make it easier to look around and check out the scenery. Pressing Shift-Z once places a small information line at the top left of the screen that gives you your latitude and longitude, altitude, magnetic heading, airspeed, and winds. Pressing Shift-Z again gives you your frame rate, how many Gs you're pulling, and your fuel in percent. Pressing Shift-Z again gives you both of the first two lines at the same time. Pressing Shift-Z again makes them go away, which is useful if you want to take a screen shot without the clutter. Don't worry: you can bring the information right back by pressing Shift-Z again.<br />
<br />
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Early on in the journey, when the river is still small enough to be somewhat difficult to see from the air, don't try to follow every bend; you'll go crazier than a Mark Twain plot. Just stay within a mile or so of it, keeping it in sight. Odds are that if it bends hard to the right, it will probably bend back hard to the left not long after.<br />
<br />
The most efficient course is easier to see by the time you're a couple hundred miles downriver.<br />
If it's too hard to spot the river at the beginning and you're getting frustrated, the journey is just as fun in reverse. Try flying upriver instead, because the mighty Mississippi is easy to spot when it's extremely wide. However, there are some lessons early on about how to use the GPS and equipment, so if you want to fly the "other" way, I suggest reading through from start to finish first.<br />
<br />
I like to fly with the autogen scenery objects cranked up to maximum. That makes finding the river a challenge at the beginning, just like in real life. Even moderately large real rivers are surprisingly hard to see from the air. In real life, it's often easier to see the trees that line the river instead of looking for the river itself. That's not as useful in Microsoft Flight Simulator X.<br />
<br />
For that reason, in the first leg I included a GPS flight plan with custom waypoints you can follow instead of getting lost trying to keep up with the tiny trickle that hasn't become the Mighty Mississippi yet. These waypoints follow the <i>real</i> river, so at times the flight may not match up perfectly with the river. They'll keep you close the whole way, though.<br />
<br />
<i>Optional Airports</i> <br />
<br />
It's your flight simulator and your journey! If you want to fly at 5,000 feet instead of 2,500, have at it! If you don't want to land at every airport (or even hardly any airports), don't! If you just want to fly along with the autopilot on going from airport to airport without even following the river closely, do it! The flight plan follows the river closely enough that you should be able to enjoy it no matter how you decide to do it. That's what flying is all about, isn't it?<br />
<br />
There are many, many small legs, so it's quite possible that you might not want to land at every single airport. I've put them in the flight plan to help the GPS trace the river better, to help you navigate, and as suggested places you can land if you're an airport collector or going for the next “Landings at X airports” badge in Microsoft Flight Simulator X.<br />
<br />
So many places to land does tend to break up the flow, so it would be understandable if you skipped landing at one or several of them. Another advantage of having them close together is that if you only have a few minutes available, you can still squeeze in one more leg.<br />
<br />
I don't taxi in Microsoft Flight Simulator X (after all, it's a <i>flight</i> simulator, not a <i>driving around on the ground</i> simulator), so all the flights start on the runway. I also tend not to follow standard traffic patterns, but make a straight-in on most occasions. Just as I encourage you to make your own modifications to these flights to suit yourself, I do, too. In real life, I'd be listening to the CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) for the airport 10-15 miles out, and I'd know if there was traffic in the pattern, and I'd have a plan to fit myself into the flow of the traffic pattern.<br />
<br />
<i>X-Plane or other flight simulators</i><br />
<br />
One of the major reasons I limited this flight to almost entirely airports that are on a sectional is to make it easy to use X-Plane, FlightGear, or any other major flight simulator with almost no adjustment. The keyboard commands you use and the visuals you see may differ if you're not using Microsoft Flight Simulator X, but the journey will be the same.<br />
<br />
Ready? Let's go!<br />
<br />
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<br />
See the <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2017/11/flying-mississippi-toc.html">Table of Contents here</a>.<br />
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<br />Larry M. Colemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15653080697960549160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5206312708792080007.post-11435590650371784652017-11-15T05:00:00.000-05:002018-04-15T21:43:33.029-04:00Flying the Mississippi: Real-world flight planWhen I fly this in real life, I certainly don't plan on breaking it into almost 70 legs. I will be doing it over five days. That will give me a good balance between amount of flying per day and time to check out the locales.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Day 1: Lake Itasca to Little Falls (KLXL)</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikBfunjXDxhRA__QQkmVHDAM2Lo1TjIr45upvtEqwljNkDGP3AtURQWttI1Go6eCMF5EzWLcAVJmGbu0Dwpn5MavOo39WbNEq1wp3n2tQwGfp1OXhV36pcHXQbVRlDX3k0xdLryWjmfKw/s1600/day1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="968" data-original-width="1459" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikBfunjXDxhRA__QQkmVHDAM2Lo1TjIr45upvtEqwljNkDGP3AtURQWttI1Go6eCMF5EzWLcAVJmGbu0Dwpn5MavOo39WbNEq1wp3n2tQwGfp1OXhV36pcHXQbVRlDX3k0xdLryWjmfKw/s320/day1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Sky Manor (MN86) -> N47 14 04 W95 11 59 -> KBJI -> KPGZ -> 2MN2 -> KAIT -> KBRD -> KLXL<br />
187 nm, 2.1 hours<br />
<br />
Start by flying over the source of the Mighty Mississippi and finish the day in Charles Lindbergh's childhood hometown.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Day 2: Little Falls to Quad Cities (KDVN)</h4>
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KLXL -> KSTC -> KSTP -> KONA -> 7WI0 -> C74 -> KSFY -> KDVN<br />
340 nm, 3.8 hours<br />
<br />
I've never been to the Quad Cities area, and 4 hours in a prop plane is enough for one day's flying. I also would like to check out <a href="https://www.deere.com/en/connect-with-john-deere/visit-john-deere/world-headquarters/">John Deere's headquarters building</a>, since it was designed by the world-famous architect Eero Saarinen. He also designed Washington-Dulles International Airport, which I am in every day at work, and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Day 3: Quad Cities to St. Louis (KCPS)</h4>
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KDVN -> KMUT -> KBRL -> KEOK -> KHAE -> KSET -> KALN -> KCPS<br />
237 nm, 2.6 hours<br />
<br />
Although I've spent several weeks in St. Louis while getting my EMB-145 type rating and during Captain upgrade, there are still many things here left to check out. The first time I was there, I got a bottle of water from where the Missouri River meets the Mississippi.<br />
<br />
<h4>
Day 4: St. Louis to Memphis (M01)</h4>
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KCPS -> KFES -> 12LL -> KCGI -> KCIR -> 0M2 -> 7M4 - M01<br />
244 nm, 2.7 hours<br />
<br />
It's not hard to find a reason to stop in Memphis for a day!<br />
<br />
<h4>
Day 5: Memphis to New Orleans (KNEW)</h4>
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M01 -> KHEE -> 0AR7 -> M32 -> KVKS -> 0R4 -> KHZR -> KREG -> KNEW<br />
391 nm, 4.3 hours<br />
<br />
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<i>The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct
college professor <a href="http://keyboardandrudder.blogspot.com/2013/10/learn-to-fly-and-get-college-credit.html">teaching aviation ground schools</a>. 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 </i><i><i>
former FAASafety Team representative</i>. He is on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/LarrytheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy</a>, has a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/LarryTheFlyingGuy" target="_blank">Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel</a>, and is on Twitter as <a href="http://twitter.com/Lairspeed" target="_blank">@Lairspeed</a>.</i><br />
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