{"id":2484,"date":"2020-10-16T09:56:41","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T16:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/?p=2484"},"modified":"2020-10-16T12:32:30","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T19:32:30","slug":"put-your-eyes-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/16\/put-your-eyes-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Put your eyes here"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Overheard from my third-grader’s zoom classroom \u2014 \u201cPut your eye\u2019s here Alex<\/em><\/strong>\u201d. Very clear directions from an experienced elementary school teacher. A teacher who knows if you’re not looking at the words, you’re not reading the assignment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So simple. But very powerful for him, and me. Because last night I read in the excellent 2019 book Controlling Risk: Thirty Techniques for Operating Excellence<\/a>, by five-time Shuttle commander Jim Wetherbee, of the same idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he was a Navy A-7 pilot there were several crashes caused by computer limitations that forced pilots to manually enter navigation coordinates while flying close to the ground. The Navy made a flight rule requiring keyboard entries were not to be made while banking at low-level. However it wasn’t enough for this future chief astronaut:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t satisfied with the new rule. The conversations I had with pilots at the time indicated most pilots understood and accepted this new rule. I thought the rule missed the mark and provided insufficient protection to me at 450 knots, two hundred feet above the ground, a few heartbeats away from no more heartbeats. Distraction duration was much more important as a contributing factor than simply being in a turn. Surely, the turn exacerbated the tendency to become disoriented, but I could have flown into the ground just as quickly with my wings level if I were distracted for more than a few seconds \u2026 Mountains don\u2019t care if we are turning or wings level. To kill us, the mountain only needs us to be distracted for a short period of time.<\/p>

My solution was to self-impose an additional limitation when using the computer keyboard. I never looked down longer than the time it took to type three keystrokes before pausing to look up and verify my velocity vector.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Three keystrokes. Then put your eyes outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the ASK-21 sailplane last month, the instructor checking me out from the back seat said he knew when I was looking down at the speedbrakes, because we turned left. (The speed brake handle is indeed on the left.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Airbus, our airline has a call-out for the First Officer when he or she is looking down programming the FMS or other computer work: \u201cHeads Down\u201d. It alerts the Captain to make sure their eyes are fully outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our focus is limited. Years of meditation can teach us how to control attention. But for flying there is a quicker fix. The third-grade teacher reminded me \u2014 put your eyes here<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overheard from my third-grader’s zoom classroom \u2014 \u201cPut your eye\u2019s here Alex\u201d. Very clear directions from an experienced elementary school teacher. A teacher who knows if you’re not looking at the words, you’re not reading the assignment. So simple. But very powerful for him, and me. Because last night I read in the excellent 2019 book Controlling Risk: Thirty Techniques for Operating Excellence, by five-time Shuttle commander Jim Wetherbee, of the same idea. When he was a Navy A-7 pilot there were several crashes caused by computer limitations that forced pilots to manually enter navigation coordinates while flying close to … Continue reading Put your eyes here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[76,57,164],"class_list":["post-2484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-attention","tag-safety","tag-space-ops"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2484"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2492,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions\/2492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}