Time is a river
Pilots work with time. On-time. Speed = distance/time. We must manage our own inner time as well. From slow times to supersonic.
one with
In the wholeheartedness of concentration
Concentration, time, work, art. Lots of time and lots of work. But it’s worth it. You will experience what others never see, never know. (quote from her 1997 essay collection Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry)
Listen to your plane.
Former NASA chief astronaut and USAF test pilot Charlie Precourt has a good article in the July edition of EAA’s Sport Aviation magazine. It’s on the normalization of deviance. That’s something we learnt about from studying the Space Shuttle accidents. And something we can apply every time we go flying. Listen to your plane. Don’t let standards slip. Don’t normalize deviance. (Picture is damaged TPS tiles on the Space Shuttle Endeavor, NASA S118-E-06229)
Are you a low-gain pilot?
Reading the (excellent) new book Into the Black, about the flight test history of the Space Shuttle, I was intrigued by this line: “Engle was a low-gain pilot. Like Charles Lindbergh or Chuck Yeager, he barely moved the stick, anticipating the need to do so and making small, necessary corrections in plenty of time. His inputs were smooth and progressive, never snatching at the controls.” Rowland White, Into the Black. The author is talking about Joe Engle, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. He was scheduled to land on the Moon, a dream dashed by budget cuts, but ended … Continue reading Are you a low-gain pilot?
It remains a puzzle
How to land? Last night, in the dark of 16L, everything looked perfect. I gently bought the A320 into a nice flare, and was rewarded with an OK, but harder than I wanted, landing. It was safe. Many would say it was good. But I was disgruntled. I can do better. Often the final touch-down remains a puzzle to me. Today I watched some early 1970’s US TV. Strongly influenced by Bruce Lee, the show Kung Fu featured a fictional monk trained at the Shaolin Temple in China who wandered around the American Wild West kicking bad guy butt. This … Continue reading It remains a puzzle