art

Make the sky your canvas

By Dave English

Graham Hill is the only driver ever to win the Triple Crown of Motorsport—the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix. Wow! He was the Formula One World Champion twice, with a total of 14 Grand Prix wins. And in his spare time, he liked to paint. Which makes this quote even more meaningful. “I am an artist. The track is my canvas, and the car is the brush.” We should aim to fly like Graham Hill drove. Make the sky our canvas.   (Picture is Graham in a Lotus 49, during the 1968 South African Grand Prix.)

AOPA article: The Art of Airmanship

By Dave English

This is an interesting article: The Art of Airmanship, from AOPA’s Flight Training magazine (Aug 2006). A nice read, but I do have some comments. Like why oh why is the word Art at the start of the title but never mentioned in the article! The author states “Airmanship used to be about basic stick and rudder skills.” I disagree. The earliest use of the word (7th of July, 1859 in the New York Times) mentions resource management, and the basic FAA definition includes “exercise of sound judgment.” The article claims: In the end, airmanship really is about pride-pride in learning as … Continue reading AOPA article: The Art of Airmanship

Learning from seamanship definitions

By Dave English

The preface to the book Seamanship by Peter Kemp starts with two definitions. One from the Oxford English Dictionary: The art or practice of managing a ship at sea. and one from the Encyclopaedia Britannica: The art of sailing, maneuvering, and preserving a ship or boat in all positions and under all reasonable conditions. Notice how they both start. Seamanship is an art. And so is airmanship. Let’s go paint the sky!