I’d rather be flying . . .
“I would rather be in my glider and think about God, than be in church and think about my glider.”
Airmanship Quotes
Chair Flying
I go back to airline flying next month. Been a long time. In my basement I have followed Space Shuttle Commander and test pilot instructor Rick Searfoss’s advice: “For best effect, chair flying even involves moving the hands as if you actually have a stick, throttle, and multiple switches in front of you. I went so far before my first space mission to set up a full-size paper copy of Columbia’s instrument panel in my home office. My kids laughed at Dad and his toy orbiter cockpit, but it aided in my preparation tremendously. Even to the present day, after I’ve flown … Continue reading Chair Flying
Watch the thing fly itself
Concorde or Cub, the thinking is the same: “If everything was going absolutely perfectly, then you could just sit there and watch the thing fly itself across the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound. But all the time you had the think about what you would do if there was some sort of an emergency.” Concorde Captain John Hutchinson. A snippet of his interview with Markus Voelter on the wonderfully in-depth podcast Omega Tau, 18 February 2015. He went on to discuss some of the major implications of losing an engine in supersonic cruise over the Atlantic at 50,000 … Continue reading Watch the thing fly itself
Psychological skills of elite military pilots
Fifteen highly-rated pilots were interviewed at a Royal Canadian Air Force base by university psychology researchers as part of a larger longer project on how master performers differ from those of us that are merely ‘good’. Some of the results were published in 2014 — Examining the Psychological Skills Used by Elite Canadian Military Pilots — and it makes for interesting reading. “Your focus narrows and you’re not thinking about other stuff. I can have outside stresses at home and it won’t affect me … as soon as I get into the plane I don’t think about it anymore until I’m on the ground.” Participant … Continue reading Psychological skills of elite military pilots
10 don’ts from 1939
Published in 1939, Robert Winston’s book Dive Bomber takes us back to the exciting world of 1930’s US Navy aviation. It starts great — “Eighteen dollars an hour. That’s what they wanted for dual instruction at the flying school on Long Island. I had expected flying lessons to be expensive, but I didn’t think they were going to tear such a hole in my pay-check.” — and keeps going. He attributes this list of ten don’ts to any good flight instructor: Don’t try to take off or land down-wind. Don’t fool with the weather. Don’t accept a ’plane for flight … Continue reading 10 don’ts from 1939