Flight Tests–A Review

A review I posted to Amazon.

I knew I was about to read something most definitely not run-of-the-mill when I read the cover that showed the book was endorsed by an organization known as the Live Cowards Club. Since this is a club for which I will handily pass any and all entrance tests, it tickled the old laugh muscles.

Make no assumptions though, this is a very serious book, just written in a humorous manner: that of showing oneself capable of being a good and safe pilot to an examiner. It is mainly written from a South African point of view (so expect to stumble into words spelled weird like ‘manoeuvre’ ;) ) although the laws of physics holds no matter where you fly. As Davis says, this little book “takes you through each flying exercise and tells you what [the examiner] expects of you.”

Each part of the check ride is examined, from pre-flight inspection to steep turns, to cross-country flying. Each section is filled with tips and the strong voice of a very experienced pilot. In essence, this book will help you get mentally prepared for the test. Here's one from near the front of the book:

“Try to do everything smoothly. Imagine that you have your 90-year-old granny in the back, and its[sic] her first flight ever. Do everything smoothly, even small things like applying carb-heat, changing power settings or selecting flap. Passengers should not be able to notice changes of power and speed and attitude.”

With equal parts mindset framing, expounding on the philosophy of good airmanship and practical flying technique information, this is a book that punches above its weight class. Five highly recommended stars.

Tilton Against Windmills

Frederick Tilton (he should immediately change his name; he’s no “Fred”!) contacted the AOPA and announced that the FAA, after all that bluster and wind, will not be implementing its new sleep apnea policy.

The policy would have required pilots with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40 to be tested, and if needed, treated for obstructive sleep apnea. Instead, in the new year, the agency will open discussions with aviation industry stakeholders to find a way to balance pilots’ and the FAA’s concerns.

Would that this kind of thing occurred more often.

They Call Me Mr. Bombastic

This is the kind of needlessly fluent, pompous language that makes simple concepts overly difficult to understand:

The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] defines Aeronautical Decision-Making as a “Systematic approach to the mental process of evaluating a given set of circumstance[sic] and determining the best course of action.”

This sentence is not one that will flow easily through the brain. There’s guaranteed to be a few mental potholes and speed bumps as this tormented sentence stumbles its way through the eyes and up the brain. “Em, Syste-what now?”

Imagine reading sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph of this convoluted English and bureaucratese? I’m tired just imagining about it. Let’s try editing it down to size for comprehension, why don’t we—bear in mind I’m no editor, I’m just confused:

Here’s the FAA’s again:

Systematic approach to the mental process of evaluating a given set of circumstances and determining the best course of action.

Let’s start cutting out the superfluous words:

Systematic approach to the mental process of evaluating a given set of circumstances and determining the best course of action.

I’m still determined to simplify it a bit further. Circumstances is such a gigantic oaf of a word, isn’t it? How about:

A process of evaluating a situation and determining the best course of action.

I still think I could strip out a few words and still keep the idea intact and less wordy. Let’s try this:

A process of evaluating a situation and determining the best action.

There, how about that? Doesn’t it make a tad more sense? By cutting out the grandiose terms and keeping it simple, anyone indeed can read that sentence and come away with a pretty good idea of what the FAA (should have) meant when whichever drone of a technical writer they employed composed that tortured definition.

I charge $300 an hour, FAA.

Finding The Walls Of A Box Canyon

How do you fly into a mountain on a perfectly clear day? You don't see it, that's how. You look everywhere but where you should be looking; you see everything but what you should be seeing; you do everything but what you should be doing.
You fail to see that fucking mountain.
You don't fly the airplane like a commercial pilot; you fly it like a student or a child or a fool. You fly it like someone who thinks he is lucky to be in Alaska, someone excited to be out there in the wilderness, like a tourist seeing wolves for the very first time.
You never think to look for it, and so you fly right into a mountain that you didn't know was there.
And within a week, your company hires someone else to take your place, and he doesn't know a damn thing about mountains either.
Welcome to the Last Frontier.

(From The Map of My Dead Pilots by Colleen Mondor)

Flying Wild Alaska

Come Fly With Me

This is damned hilarious!

FlyLO

Supersonic Shockwave Phenomena

Red Bull - Akte Blanix II (Connecting flight)

Limping Elephant

Politically, I am no fan of Airbus Industries. There are so many things I don’t agree about the way this conglomeration of government-sponsored companies is run that I simply don’t have the time and space to devote for expansion. Suffice it to say Airbus sucks.

As a pilot, I don’t like Airbuses. I don’t like their design, their avionics, their control systems. Heck, I don’t even like the design of the side stick controller. I especially don’t like the Airbus A380. It’s a waddling oaf of an aircraft that looks like it was designed by a committee of European art school drop-outs—my smarminess doesn’t rule out the fact it probably was designed by European art school drop-outs. Next to the Boeing 747—known as the Queen of the Skies—the Airbus A380 is an arthritic elephant. It’s quite positively f-ugly!

Economically, Airbus have got a problem: no one’s buying this thing. And the few airlines that do have them in their fleets have reported some “problems,” to put it euphemistically. When the A380 first came into the news, I remember someone at Boeing dismissing it—as they naturally would—with the rather prophetic statement that Boeing had tried and failed to find an economically feasible super-jumbo even though they’d designed and built one in the past.

Now it seems Airbus is trying to dig itself out of this jumbo hole in which they’ve dug themselves.

Skydance

 

Wow, just … wow!

Who Needs Runways?

NTSB Accident Animations

Pretty neat collection, although rather morbidly so here.

Colgan 3407:

Cloud Hopping

Captain Fred Woodbridge

In “celebration” of achieving the rank of Captain, British Virtual Airways, I commissioned the following:

Pretty nifty, eh?

GUMPS

Gregory Penglis’ book The Complete Guide to Flight Instruction is one of the best books written about aviation and its training I have ever read. Penglis has a snarky, curmudgeonly style that is fantastic in its dry humor but quite immense knowledge. Reading, you can tell the man came by his knowledge of aviation the hard way.

Here’s his take on the old GUMPS mnemonic:

One might wonder why we still use such a peculiar acronym as “GUMPS” for a final landing check. This is the most bizarre and ludicrous procedure in all of flight training. There you are in a brand new aircraft (to you), with lots of new things to do, going much faster than you are used to flying, coming in for a landing (which is one of the most critical phases of flight), and you are suddenly expected to use new names for the controls as you go groping around the cockpit, when you should be looking out the window and flying the airplane. Does this make sense to anyone, or am I the only one who finds this practice not only strange, but dangerous?

“G” stands for gas. We never gall it gas—we call it fuel. You check the fuel, drain the fuel, check for water in the fuel, and switch tanks with the fuel selector. But on base leg in a high-performance aircraft, it suddenly becomes “gas.” The G could stand for gear. That would make sense as it is often the first control in a power down flow check. No, I’m sorry, the G could not stand for gear, that would be logical and consistent. Of course, whenever you do a GUMPS check, the first word out of your mouth is guaranteed to be “gear.”

“U” stands for undercarriage. This just fractures me. Do we all suddenly take out British citizenship when we fly our first base leg in a high-performance aircraft? Honestly, undercarriage? That word is three syllables too long for use on base.

Of course, now being British, we would have to call the fuel (excuse me, gas), “petrol.” I suppose we could change the acronym to PUMPS for consistency. The only places the British have good names are when they describe the prop pitch.

“M” is for mixture. I recognize that word.
”P” is for prop. I recognize that one, too.
”S” is for systems.

Having a lengthy systems check right before landing is nuts because we now know that any pilot who doesn’t want to grope when he should by flying does all that stuff way out on the prelanding check during descent. Besides, after the prop is checked, no one has the time or inclination to go through the systems. Most students just say “systems” to humor the instructor and hope that it covers the check.

You already checked the fuel, so toss out this nasty word “gas” that we never use. “Undercarriage”—be serious. What we have left are the essentials of “mixture” and “propeller.” What about the gear? Following the crazy order of GUMPS sends your hand in a star pattern around the controls just like the published prelanding checks. You could very well forget the gear as you try to pronounce “undercarriage.” If you are that distracted, you could very well not hear the gear warning horn (or is that undercarriage warning horn?), no matter how loud it is. The stuff you land on should always be called gear, period.

Well for all you folks who learned the GUMPS check, we can modify it to Gear, Mixture, and Prop—“GMP.” You can still pronounce it “gump” and keep the familiar sound of you check with familiar names for the controls and use them in a familiar order, without unnecessary groping. Even on airplanes that change the classic positions for the controls a GMP check with hit the biggies.

Anyway, I’m sure students will be taught the GUMPS check for some time because, like child abuse, these things just get passed down the aviation family. There will come a time when logic, initiative, simplicity, and making the system better will triumph over rote memorization, trying to make the best of bad procedures, and training without any conscious thought or responsibility, but we can make it happen. I still think the GUMPS check came to us from some English mole instructor trying to sabotage our flight training system.

The problem with dumping a useless check like GUMPS is that it is so imprinted on so many pilots’ minds that there will be tremendous resistance to change. Pilots and instructors go through such incredible efforts to learn these inadequate and inferior procedures that even if something better comes along, instructors still want students to suffer as they did. It’s like some archaic fraternity ritual. All us new and improved GMP types will conflict with the old GUMPS instructors who will insist their way is preferable, simply because after doing all the work to learn it, they are used to it. When will we stop adapting ourselves to the procedures and start adapting the procedures to ourselves? For the rest of your life when on base and final, say “gear, mixture, prop” and end your groping. If you forget that, then go back to the old power-up/power-down flow checks. Either way, you will get all the important stuff.

Definitely food for thought.

And So …

I keep apologizing for the dearth of posts as if there are a bunch of subscribers eagerly waiting for my every enlightened word. Pshaw, as if!

Anyway, with Ramalamadingdong taking office next week, I've not only decided not to pay much attention to the news (it's worked wonderfully, my blood pressure is way lower), but I've also decided to write about things that make me happy.

Such as aviation: for now, this consists mainly of flying Microsoft Flight Simulator aircraft over the Atlantic between KORD (Chicago O'Hare), KMIA (Miami), KBOS (Boston), KJFK (guess) on one end and EGLL (London Heathrow) and EGKK (London Gatwick) on the other. Most of these flights I make for a few "virtual airlines", like American Virtual Airlines and British Virtual Airways.

So what does this all mean? Well, I fly both the Level-D Boeing 767-300ER and PMDG Boeing 747-400 and if you aren't a flightsim enthusiast, you will not believe the level of detail (and work!) that goes into doing that. For a flight, there is almost as much time spent pre-flight planning as in the real world, starting with generating a passenger and fuel load document. After this comes route planning.

Flights both ways across the Atlantic fly what is known as North Atlantic Tracks or NATs. These are specific tracks that have been designed by Air Traffic Control on both sides of the Atlantic, the Canadians (called "Gander") and the Brits (called "Shanwick"). The high speeds of the jet stream constantly blowing over the ocean requires careful planning because, as a pilot, you really don't want to be flying with a 125mph headwind! This means that most flights starting in north America leave in the evenings to take advantage of good tailwinds--the other night, I was flying with almost a 200mph tailwind--and most flights the other way from the European continent to north America leave in the mornings when the jet stream has dipped further south.

Preparing the aircraft is another ordeal, but a pleasurable one obviously. There is a checklist that must be followed when loading fuel, clicking all those buttons you may have caught a glimpse of as you passed by the open cockpit door on your way into your last commercial airliner--and that's because all of those buttons are modeled in the simulated aircraft. The level of simulation is incredible and, to the new pilot, somewhat bewildering. It took me some serious reading before I could even start the engines on the Level-D B767.

Here's the bottom-line: there isn't much (beyond the guards and their guns) that can stop me from walking up to a 767 or 747 and starting up the aircraft, taxiing to the runway and taking off! The simulations are that perfectly modeled after the real thing.

I can't wait for the next time I'm in an airliner and the pilots fall ill from seafood poisoning!

Quote of the Day

“Flexible is much too rigid. In aviation, you have to be fluid.”
—Verne Jobst

Pretty good advice for life, no?

Airbus A380 Cockpit

This is incredible!  A full 360-degree panorama of the Airbus behemoth's cockpit.  I still don't like the damned side stick control, but oh boy, look at all those electronics!

Here.

Air Traffic Patterns

Incredible animation to show air traffic patterns over a 24-hour period in the United States.

More here.

Flight Training

  Sam, of Blogging at FL250, is living my dream. Right after I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up, I wanted to be a pilot. Sam will be flying jets for a ‘NewCo’ airline and he's currently going through flight training.

With all of 41 hours controlling a light aircraft myself, reading his latest post about the training hurdles commercial airline pilots have to jump, I can see why he thinks GA (General Aviation) pilots are woefully and perhaps dangerously under-trained.

Here's an interesting excerpt:

After American 587 crashed in November 2001, it was almost five years before there was another major fatal accident (Comair 5191 in August 2006). In the "golden age" of the 1960s there were single years with numerous major accidents. Even in a fairly recent five year period from 1986 to 1990, there were 14 major crashes involving US carriers which killed over 700 people. Since 2000, though, the fatality rate for scheduled Part 121 operations has held steady around .015 per 100,000 flight hours. To put that number in perspective: A kid born today could spend every second of their life on board US airliners in flight and still have only a one in ten chance of being killed in a plane crash by the time they reach age 75.

The same has not held true of general aviation. Although exact statistics are hard to come by because nobody knows exactly how much the GA fleet flies, the NTSB estimates a fatal accident rate of 1.32 per 100,000 flight hours. In other words, for every hour spent flying in General Aviation, you are 88 times more likely to die than on a Part 121 airliner. It's even worse if you look at fatalities per miles flown.

Fascinating.

Flying in Florida was a piece of cake compared to flying in Idaho where there are these really hard things called mountains in the way of everything. I'm a bit scared to fly here so I'll take my time and get really good instruction.

Most student pilots can't wait to become certificated, sometimes boasting to anyone within earshot how quickly after the required minimum of 40 hours they were able to achieve certification. Not for me; this is my life, I'll take my time getting the required experience.

Another thing that struck me reading Sam's post is how many TLAs (three-letter-acronyms) there are in aviation!