Flying
I loved flying.
A Cessna 172, lining up along side giant jumbo jets, avoiding wake turbulance, getting clearance from the tower, rolling down the runway, pull back on the yoke, and up we would go, into the eternal sky.
The roar of the engine, the magnitos clicking away, the propeller a blur in front, the cowling blocking the view as we climbed. Scanning the instruments, easing back on the trottle, setting the GPS, executing a turn to avoid the hills, climbing.
And off to an adventure - perhaps a new airport, maybe a pie run to an island, perhaps some high mountain flying, always something new, always something fun to see down below were humans lived out their lives...
My wife was an amazing pilot. She flew an aerobatic plane, high in the clear air, doing fast high-G loops, rolls, hanging upside down from the straps, and laughing. Not for me - but she was fearless!
Well, I had to give up flying when I became ill. But what a privilege to have been able to spend some time in the air.
Up beyond everything, just the two of us, the sun, and the eternal sky.
A brief but heartfelt rant about pilot training
It is my opinion that most pilots are not properly trained for emergencies.
Oh sure, just about any pilot can handle straight and level VFR, or IFR in cloud and turbulence and dark. But relatively few fliers have emergency measures (EMT) training. By EMT I do not mean the get-out-of-this-normal-mess everyone learns, or a few simple attitude (angle to horizon) corrections, but rather training of the sort aerobatic or fighter pilots recieve. As in how to get out of a soon-to-be-fatal failure in pitch black conditions with no power at high G’s sort of EMT.
If in a deep spin with the aircraft accelerating past its tolerance, how many have the training or more importantly, the regular practice skills, to safely pull out? How many really learn to trust and make decisions based on what the instruments are telling them, rather than their own perceptions? It only takes a few seconds to hit ground from a few thousand feet up.
This need for the full range of EMT applies to pilots of large aircraft as well. Although they may be up to speed with procedures and practice in airline simulators... this is not enough. Most airlines do not have real simulators, by which I mean full 3D and centrifuge - the kind military pilots are trained in. A jumbo jet spinning out of control with frozen pito tubes, no air speed indication, in pitch darkness, with high turbulence and rough weather, and alarms going off everywhere cannot be properly mimicked by airline simulators. Instead airlines rely upon procedures. Argh... But it is one thing to know that the throttle should be brought up to maybe 85% full thrust and the nose lowered, but quite another thing to do it in an out of control jumbo jet rapidly loosing altitude. Or to remember to look at the thrust indicators to get an idea of when a stall might occur. Training in fighter jet/aerobatic simulators is what IMHO every passenger jet pilot needs on a regular basis, where all of this and so much more can be properly simulated and practiced.
But that is not going to happen, is it? Because it all costs money and time. So airlines take almost any inexperienced kid with the minimum number of hours, because they do not have to pay her much, or train her past the minimum required. Instead they automate and use a minimum crew. Yet IMHO fully automating large aircraft has considerable potential for disaster. Because pilots no longer fly these planes, the computers do. Which is fine when everything works. But should a real emergency arise, should the computers fail to get the information they need, should the redundancy checks between computers fail, and the pilot has to invoke manual control - then the training in an airline simulator probably is not enough. If the pilot has experience with small private planes practicing and re-practicing EMT, that at least is something. But many do not. And even fewer, almost none, have what I feel is essential - proper training in proper military-style simulators. Rant, rant...
Just my opinion, of course
