Anne McClain has faced down many fears, and is now going to be rewarded with sights that are literally out of this world. She’s been an Army combat helicopter pilot who deployed to Iraq, an instructor pilot and a test pilot. She is currently a NASA astronaut, in the pipeline to fly to Mars. Quote is from an interview in Glamour magazine, Jan 2016, talking about walking out on the launchpad to ride a rocket. And the picture is from her super-cool NASA video bio.
At an airshow I admire the biplanes, the jets, the smoke and the sounds. But the persistence of the pilots to get this good is most amazing.
“I still don’t think there is a winning formula. It’s really just working your butt off.” Mikaela Shiffrin She is the youngest slalom champion in Olympic alpine skiing history. She is also the current world champion in slalom. There is no magic formula for success. The winning formula involves hard work. And sounds a lot like the seven P’s: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Piloting Performance! Both quotes from great article in this month’s The Red Bulletin.
Scott Crossfield — fighter pilot, aeronautical engineer, first person to fly twice the speed of sound and X-15 chief engineering test pilot — quoted in the classic book X-15 Diary released this week. He is also quoted as saying: In all of this business there’s a requirement of intense concentration—if you can train yourself to be self-disciplined. If you close the car door on your finger, your impulse is to put it in your mouth and curse. But you train yourself too wait. It’s part of the profession—to avoid an emotion or a reflex reaction. Clearly a safety warrior at work.
Being a “good stick” is not enough. Good pilots are thinking their way through the air as well as simply moving controls. What comes next in flight is absolutely as important as what is happening right now. Jack J. Pelton EAA CEO, Sport Aviation magazine, Nov 2016 “Being ahead of the plane” they call it. And if you can always answer the question, “what are the next two things,” then you are really mentally ahead—pilot not passenger.
