STS-135

I never did see a Shuttle launch.  The closest I ever got to it was two years ago while on family vacation in Orlando.  It was a rocket launch, and not a heavy rocket either.  The name escapes me, but it was the standard send-a-satellite-up every month or so launch that's special for tourists but not Florida residents.

Orlando is a ways away from the Cape, and so we had contented ourselves to watching the launch on NASA TV as Eli slept.  It was a night launch too, so it was about 11:00 or so when there was a frantic (and rather loud) knock on our condo door.

My dad didn't wait for me to open the door.  "Jase!  Quick!  You can SEE it!  You can SEE it!"

So there we were, making way too much racket for that late at night, watching as the plume of barely-visible smoke rose into the night sky on it's way to a near-earth orbit.

But the Space Shuttle program, for my entire life, was NASA's bread and butter.  The crowing achievement of the agency, as well as the nation.  My entire generation grew up watching Shuttle launches, and having astronauts as heroes.  It was a piece of America, and for a kid who grew up around airplanes, it became almost a part of the landscape, as normal as going to the airport, or hearing an airplane overhead.  It was so much a part of our lives that we didn't hardly think it was a big deal sometimes.

I'm told that all the classrooms in my school had the TV on when the Challenger went down.  I don't remember watching it, but I do remember I was on the playground and all the other kids were talking about it.

I remember feeling sick when the Columbia came apart, I remember watching the glowing pieces fall on live TV and following the recovery efforts, and the shock and the fear.

And now the chapter is closed, apparently without the next one being written.  Yesterday, the Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely, completing STS-135.

135 flights into space, distributed between five different orbiters is, even with the loss of two, a spectacular human achievement.  We should be proud of those brave men and women who worked hard and sacrificed much to push the boundaries of human exploration.

Naturally, this is a bittersweet moment for our nation.  On one hand, for the first time since 1961, NASA will not have the capability to send an astronaut into space.  This is a humbling, perhaps even humiliating fact for many Americans.  There is, as there should be, a large amount of pride in being the premier nation in space exploration.  Since we do not have a replacement program, have we wasted the talent and sacrifice of NASA thus far?  Have we squandered the bravery and dedication of those who have given their lives in pursuit of space?  Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and fellow Michigander shuttle astronaut Jerry Linenger have all shared their disagreement with the decision to end the Shuttle.  Linenger, in a recent interview, said,

"The headline should have been, 'United States cancels manned spaceflight program. Unable to get a human being, a US citizen, into space for the first time since 1961. We hope that in five years we are able to build a capsule that we built in 1962.' That's what (the headline) should have read, but the spin is just unbelievable."

On the other hand, another brutal reality:  though a spectacular achievement, the Shuttle isn't very practical as a space vehicle.  Rockets are far less glamorous, but far less expensive to build and launch.

Also, as any good pilot or mechanic knows, no amount of upgrading and repairing will make an airframe last forever.  With the extreme stresses placed upon the orbiters, they will not last as long as some aircraft do, and most aircraft have useful lives of somewhere around 15-20 years.  So it's old technology, and the system is showing it's age, and further missions will only increase the danger of catastrophic failure.  As much as it pains me to say it, better to quit while ahead.

I would like to think that this will merely be the intermission before the second act.  The orbiting capsules that paved the way for the moon shots that paved the way for the Shuttle and the ISS were a spectacular opener, and as we watch the curtain come down on the "Space Bus", let us recapture the imagination and ingenuity that NASA fostered and grew during the 1960's.

Linenger would do well to remember that although the U.S. government lacks the capability of manned space flight, the spirit of innovation and creation is now embodied, at least partially, in private enterprises, many of which will share the heavy lifting of manned space flight in the years to come.  Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Scaled Composites are three such companies who are gladly taking up the mantle that NASA has placed in front of them.

It may seem a step back to some, to cut our space program back to where it was in the early 1960's, but we need to remember what happened in 1969.  From virtually nothing in 1961, to landing on the moon eight short years later.


Today, as we prepare to send the Atlantis the short distance to it's final home, let us imagine where the curtain will open for the second act.


I vote for the moon.


jj

Sunday Quote 22110

A poem I found while surfing the web recently:

IMPRESSIONS OF A PILOT

Flight is freedom in its purest form,
To dance with the clouds which follow a storm;
To roll and glide, to wheel and spin,
To feel the joy that swells within;


To leave the earth with its troubles and fly,
And know the warmth of a clear spring sky;
Then back to earth at the end of a day,
Released from the tensions which melted away.


Should my end come while I am in flight,
Whether brightest day or darkest night;
Spare me your pity and shrug off the pain,
Secure in the knowledge that I'd do it again;


For each of us is created to die,
And within me I know,
I was born to fly.

— Gary Claude Stoker

jj

The Logbook: .7-2.0 hours

This is the second in my Logbook series, chronicling my journey from earth-bound neanderthal to the much more evolved Homo Pilotus. You can read the first entry here.

Four days after my introduction flight, I was back at it. I arrived at the airport just a tad before my scheduled time, ready to hop in and go.

Sunday Quote 21410

It's a strange tension we feel when we fly.  Tense and relaxed at the same time, alert, and yet strangely aloof, consummate, coolly professional and safe, yet risking our lives every single time we go up.  Charles Lindbergh said it better:

"I may be flying a complicated airplane, rushing through space, but in this cabin I'm surrounded by simplicity and thoughts set free of time. How detached the intimate things around me seem from the great world down below. How strange is this combination of proximity and separation. That ground — seconds away — thousands of miles away. This air, stirring mildly around me. That air, rushing by with the speed of a tornado, an inch beyond. These minute details in my cockpit. The grandeur of the world outside. The nearness of death. The longness of life."

Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis


jj

Why do We do This?

The Hughes H-1 racer is a beautiful machine. It was originally conceived and built by Howard Hughes and his mechanic Glenn Odekirk in 1935. Several technologies used on the aircraft were groundbreaking, including flush rivets that did not protrude out from the aircraft skin, and retractable landing gear. The engine was a top of the line radial engine, the Pratt&Whitney R-1535, capable of producing 1,000 horsepower. When it was completed, with Hughes himself at the controls, it broke two speed records: the land-plane speed record (352 mph), and the trans-continental speed record. Hughes flew from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, and 25 seconds, for an average speed of 322 mph.

The Logbook: 0.0-0.7 hours

This is the first in a series of posts chronicling my journey from earth-bound Neanderthal to Homo Pilotus. I hope you all enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoyed doing it!

Every pilot owns a logbook.

I was taught, by previous examples as well as articles and books, to write as much information into the logbook as you can possibly fit.

Though serving mostly as a legal record of aviation accomplishments and experience, a logbook is more than that: once the actual flight fades from experience to memory, the logbook becomes the only record of the flight.

When my Bride and I were planning our wedding, we discussed the flower situation. Our conclusion was to purchase silk flowers.

We reasoned that in many years, long after the ceremony and the reception, long after the real flowers had wilted and died, the things that would be left from that time would be the pictures.

And when we looked at the pictures, after those many years, it would not matter much whether or not our flowers were real. What would matter was the pictures. Honestly, you can't even tell the flowers weren't real anyway.

So as I went through flight school, I wrote as much as I could about the flight, weather conditions, what I practiced, what my instructor and I did, where I went. Because after some long years, all that would be left from that time would by my logbook.

Ernest Gann wrote an entire book based mostly on his logbook notes and other notes of his many hours aloft. It's called Fate is the Hunter, and it's well worth reading, even if you're not all psychotic for airplanes.

For what it's worth, here is my pithy, nearly empty logbook, laid out flight by flight. 68.2 hours of my life, in mostly hour and a half chunks.

The first flight in my logbook was one of the shortest, at .7 hours. I had called Adam, my flight instructor, the previous week, and said that I wanted to learn how to fly. He took all my information, and scheduled me for an introductory flight.

When I showed up at the field, imagine my surprise when he told me to climb in the left seat.

"Really?"

"Well, that is where you fly it from." he said. "You said you wanted to learn to fly."

Adam had to pick something up in Grand Haven, so it worked out that he took me along for the ride.

It was a clear, calm day, perfect for spring and perfect for flying. Adam spent the time quizzing me on my aviation experience and history. I told him that I had grown up around airplanes, and that my Dad had taken me up quite a few times as a child. But then I told him to assume that I knew nothing about airplanes, and teach me accordingly. He assured me that he does that anyway.

When we landed in Grand Haven, Adam took care of whatever errand he was on, while I looked around in the airport lounge. I had been there a few times as a child, so seeing the building was almost like seeing an old friend. Not much changes quickly at airports, and Grand Haven was no exception. About the only thing really different was a weather computer on the desk in the flight planning room. Even the pictures on the wall were the same, or at least as I remembered them.

It was time to go back now, and Adam graciously let me actually handle the plane more on the way back. I got to call out positions on the radio, and Adam taught me to always call out near the radio towers on GVSU's campus. The towers are close enough to Riverview Airport that every pilot who flies there regularly knows exactly where they are, and can use their position to know where you are. It would become a sort of mantra for me over the next summer: "Riverview air traffic, November One Three Five Three Uniform off the towers, inbound..."

My first landing was fairly decent, although I could feel Adam's feet on the rudder pedals fighting with my inputs, so I don't know how much was me and how much was him.

When we went inside, Adam showed me how to properly fill out my logbook, and gave me advice often read and repeated, "Fill every available space with notes. You'll want to remember this."

He promised to call me and bug me until I scheduled my next flight, but he didn't have to, because as soon as I got home, I did schedule it.



wingnut

Dispatches From the Line MK.VII

With the imminent arrival of cold and snow here in Michigan, I thought it appropriate to resurrect an old series with a look into some of the "finer" points of working outside in a Michigan Winter.

On Winter at the Airport.

I've never been a huge fan of ice and snow. I would choose the hottest temperatures on record in Michigan any day over anything below 40 degrees. I'll take flip flops over shoes or boots any time of the year.

Yet I have found that there is something deep and satisfying about working in the cold, and have felt that for most of my life.

Perhaps it is the knowledge that not many people would willingly go out in such conditions, yet I do. There is the sense that I have answered a question which many do not even ask: I have been tested against the very worst that Michigan has to offer, and have come through relatively unscathed.

When I first started at the airport, I was brought on specifically to assist part time with winter operations. Obviously weather always has a direct impact on any flight operations, yet winter has special conditions that require special attention. I began my aviation career 60 feet above the ramp, open to the snow and the blowing cold, covered in steaming hot glycol, in a bucket just barely big enough for one person. The deice season was upon us, and I found myself in the thick of the snow and cold.

The work was challenging and physical, and I enjoyed it immensely. I still look back on de-ice operations with a mixture of disdain and fondness I can never quite articulate.

I suppose it's mostly because winter always seems to be the season we love to hate. We hate the cold cars, the icy roads, the slush, the salt, the shoveling.

On the flip side of the coin, there is not much more peaceful than the softly falling snow, or much more quiet and reserved as the calm of a clear winter night. The cold air energizes us as it fills our lungs. We can see clearer and breathe deeper.

The always loud and chaotic airport is somehow calmed and hushed by the snow. Even my thick work boots make no noise on the way out to my fuel truck.

Many years ago, Mike and I would share cigarettes and coffee outside as the snow fell around us. It was cold, way too cold for intelligent people to be outside, but we still burned our mouths on the coffee and froze our fingers around our cigarettes. When we would go back in, we had sometimes close to an inch of snow on our heads and shoulders.

I look back on the late nights spent putting airplanes in the hangar. Most times we would start around 8 or 9PM, but some nights we wouldn't be able to start until after midnight. Everyone is tired, nobody feels like being there, but we're there anyway, because it's our job. We look scruffy with all our layers on, like the shop-worn and weather-worn blue collar knuckle draggers we are. Phil never wears gloves, no matter how cold it is. A Carhartt jacket and maybe some overalls is all he wears for the cold. Jeremy has to shave twice a day, but for the winter he grows his massive beard out. It is red and glorious. Clint is wearing a ski mask and goggles with his cold weather gear. I don't know why he's wearing the goggles, but the mask is because Clint probably couldn't grow a beard if he drank Rogaine. Andy's goatee has grown past his collar, and nobody has said anything yet. We're taking bets on when they do.

Then there's me, with all my winter gear on, including my scarf, which is wrapped around the top of my head and across my face, covering everything except my eyes, which are covered by my ski goggles. The correct name for my scarf is a shemagh, or keffiyeh. It might be a bit off-putting to see a person working at an airport wearing something like that, but I have to say, it's probably the best piece of cold-weather gear I have. It's warmer than you think it would be, I can use it as a scarf, or head wrap, or total head cover, or as a hat. Besides that, after winter is over, it goes into my paintball gear box and is used as a towel, sweatband, and neck protection.

Winter forces us to deal with Creation on a personal basis. It challenges us, complicating even the most mundane of activities. It's no longer simply a drive to work. It's a challenge to stay on the road and avoid other drivers. And that's after the driveway is clear to a point where the car can get out of the garage. When one works outside, simple tasks are made harder by the weather. Cold, stiff fingers are hard to move through stiff, frozen gloves. Thick, heavy boots fight through drifts, and a ten-minute walk easily turns into twenty. Machines break, engines don't run well, hangar doors freeze shut.

It is hard to work outside in the winter. But I think the biggest challenge is to accept this season as well as the others, and look forward to the day when we can, once again, wear our flip flops.


wingnut

Yellow Baby Bears

I have aviation in my blood.

I am a pilot.

My dad is a pilot.

My grandfather was a pilot.

In addition to having his PPL, my dad has been an A&P mechanic for his entire career.

So in my home growing up, there was always talk about airplanes. We went to airshows all the time. I tagged along with dad to work on a few occasions, always fascinated with these flying machines.

One of the first books I remember reading was Chuck Yeager's autobiography. Yeager was a WWII fighter pilot, and went on to become a very accomplished and well-known test pilot. He is best known for being the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Another book that I read early on was Jungle Pilot, the story of Nate Saint, one of the first missionary pilots, who was killed with his fellow missionaries by a tribe that they were trying to reach with the Gospel.

My grandfather actually owned an airplane for a time. It was a Piper Cub. That airplane was one of the first airplanes that started the boom in general aviation, because it was cheap and easy to fly. Many were built for service in World War Two, and after the war were bought up and used for flight schools and many other uses. Many many pilots first got their wings in a Piper Cub.

Piper Cubs were traditionally painted a bright yellow, and my grandfather's was no exception. I imagine it was a beautiful sight, glowing in the bright sun. I imagine how fun it was to ride in the front seat, staring out at the world below. It wasn't a fast airplane, but that really wasn't the point.

I never got to ride with Grandpa J.  He sold his Cub before I was around.

But my dad has always had a soft spot for little yellow slow-poke airplanes. He had a Piper T-shirt that he would wear constantly, the same bright yellow color as the airplane itself, with a little teddy-bear-like logo on the front, proudly displaying the name Piper.

So he passed on his soft spot for little yellow slow-poke airplanes to me. Whenever I see one, I need to go look at it. It doesn't matter what other airplanes are around me, I go look at the little yellow one. When I see one, or when I get near to it, a voice deep within me says, "This is flying. Forget all that other stuff. This is where it's at."

Low and slow, seeing the world go by below you. So slow you can have the windows down. You could even take the doors off, like a Jeep, if you want. It wouldn't matter much. It sure couldn't slow you down any! Cars are zipping along on the highway, going faster than you are, but you're still seeing more than they ever could.

This is where it's at.

I figure that I'll pass along this love of little yellow slow-poke airplanes to my son. I've already taught him to look to the sky when we hear airplanes fly overhead, in the landing pattern for Riverview.

In a way, I think I already have, without much even trying.

Yesterday, my mother was over at our house watching Eli while we were at work. Shan called me, and said that she had to tell me something.

Mom had put a video in for Eli to watch during lunch, and at the very beginning, there was a scene with an airplane.

It was a Stearman, a big military training biplane that was used, like the Piper Cub, during WWII. After the war, it followed a similar path, with many being sold as surplus and used for a myriad of different purposes. Again, like the Cub, the Stearman carried many pilots aloft for their first flights.

So Eli is watching this airplane, and he starts making noise. Excited noise. I think it was an Aha! moment for him. He quickly got up, ran to his toy box, and began digging around. My mom thought he was going to fall in he was digging so deep.

When he finally emerged, he had in his hand a cheap toy that we had bought for him, I think before he was even born. It was an airplane, molded in red and yellow plastic.

He proudly carried the airplane back to where he was sitting, and proceeded to watch the video, holding on to his toy airplane. He kept looking up at the screen, and then back down at his toy. He flipped the toy upside down and looked at the yellow underside, and then back at the screen to look at the yellow airplane in the video.

I laughed when I heard the story, and thought, "Well, it's the beginning of the end. He's gonna fly now, he has no choice in the matter."

Later that afternoon, after I had come home from work, I put in a video for me to watch as I did chores around the house. Eli didn't pay much attention to it, he was busy doing his own chores, including pulling all the clean Tupperware out of the kitchen cabinets, trying to help me load the dishwasher, and reorganizing his toys across the living room floor.

The video I put in was One Six Right, a documentary on general aviation, through the history and legacy surrounding Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles. The airport is very busy, and supports a thriving community of pilots and aircraft owners, with a range of aircraft from the biggest and fastest, to the smallest and the slowest. All these different people and airplanes come together out of their love of aviation.

It's a wonderfully produced video, and if you don't want to fly after watching it, there's something seriously wrong with you.

Like most DVDs, it has a start menu, with different choices you can select. As these choices are displayed, a loop of various footage from the film plays in the background.

The video ended, and Shan was home now, and we ate dinner, with the music from the DVD filling the house. After dinner, Shan was on the computer while I was clearing the dishes, and Eli was watching the DVD menu screen, with it's looping footage.

Every once in a while, while playing and watching the DVD, Eli would start laughing and screaming and being very loud. It was only every few minutes, and then he would go back to whatever he was doing. Then back with the yelling and whooping. Then quiet again, with the music and the footage still playing.

After a few times through this, we noticed a pattern. Eli would only yell and scream and laugh at one particular part in this footage.

So we watched the footage playing on the menu, and sure enough, there were a few shots of a little yellow slow-poke airplane on the screen.

It was a Piper Cub.


wingnut

Anticipation.

I walk across the ramp to the row of broken-down hangars. The wind whips past me, cutting through even my thick winter coat and scarf, and sending chills down my spine.

The snow piles left by the plow trucks have frozen, thawed, and refrozen into mountain ranges of ice, that still stand as tall as a man where they were hastily pushed aside last week.

I step, and nearly slip and fall, on a puddle, frozen solid by the brutal cold sweeping down from the arctic. The cold I can contend with, it's the stiff breeze that makes this Michigan winter day intolerable.

The shining sun in the cloudless sky is merely enhancing the freezing temperatures, casting it's harsh light without the familiar warmth of summer. I open the door to the unlit hangar and step inside, removing my sunglasses as I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

She comes into view, a regal silhouette of years past. She deserves better than a dusty, run-down hangar. She has only been here a few months, yet I can see even in the dim light the layer of dust covering her bright paint. She has not been flown in a good long while, not even moved, her engine sitting silently waiting for her magnetos to be turned on, for her starter to be turned.

Yet even in this state of disuse and dusty neglect, she sits proudly, her stout nose pointed skyward, her smooth, classic lines defying the passing of years.

As I open the hangar doors for her, I remember when she first came to us. All of us at the airport came by to see her, to spend time staring and touching and dreaming. We walked around her, imagining the sound of the spinning propeller, the throaty rumble of the engines, the scent of exhaust and burnt oil. I stood there long after everyone else had moved on, and then sat in the cockpit for a while, just looking.

I looked out over the wing, and imagined seeing my home field, Riverview Airport, gliding beneath me. I look to the front of the airplane, and imagine the massive wood propeller pulling the airframe effortlessly through the West Michigan summer. But summer is a long way away from today.

The hangar is open now, the first sunlight she has seen in probably three months. The brightness of it seems to awaken her, her paint now gleaming even under the dust, the varnish on her propeller blinding with it's reflection. She seems, in my mind, to stir a bit, then stretch, as if her landing gear is stiff from disuse, like a limb fallen asleep.

There are buyers coming. Perhaps they will provide her with the home she deserves. The fact that they expressed enough interest to drive to the airport on this excessively cold day holds at least a small promise for her.

She was built for the air, not the ground. Every inch of her strives to be rid of gravity. I walk toward her, and reach out my hand to gently touch her wing. I lightly tap my fingers on the wing's surface, listening to the hollow, drum-like sound of the stretched fabric. Much of her is merely a wooden skeleton, covered in fabric that is stretched tight and then painted. Craftsmen, perhaps as many as ten or twenty, have slaved over every inch of this airplane, shaving and planing wooden ribs into shape, covering and stretching the fabric. There is some sheet metal on the airframe as well, no doubt bent and riveted and welded with the same craftsman's care as the fabric and wood.

She was built for the air, and every inch of her displays craftsmanship and artistry fit for any museum wall. It saddens me that a piece of art such as this can be reduced to a commodity, bought, sold, and traded on a whim of those who would merely collect it.

No, she was built for the air, and deserves to be flown. She deserves to be flown, to be guided by a caring pilot, and herself guide her pilot towards many unknown horizons.

Perhaps this may be the day she has anticipated! Perhaps these owners will bring her someplace warm, someplace with blue skies not filled with threatening clouds or freezing wind!

Perhaps she will finally be able to dance with the birds, to feel the breeze once again against her windscreen!

Her anticipation spills over into me, as I look toward the warmer days when I will be finally able to once again mingle with the clouds.

For we are both wintering now in a dusty, unused hangar. The dust covering her beautiful paint is the dust that is covering my flight bag.

The oil on the floor beneath her telling of long days spent in the same spot is the brand new sectional map that sits pristine and unopened in my kneeboard.

I am covered with dust. I am rusty, in need of a good, strong scrubbing.

But yet, like the beautiful aircraft I stand next to, I hold my head high, knowing that someday, soon, I will be able to frolic once more with the birds. I, like her, will return to the sky.


wingnut

Sacred Moments, or Nothing Will be the Same

I'm about halfway through the downwind leg for runway 14, pegged right on the pattern altitude at 1600 feet MSL when it hit me: I'm completely alone in this airplane. My instructor, an experienced pilot and teacher, was not there to backstop me. He was not there to talk me through a landing. He was not there to make sure I didn't forget anything in my mental checklist.

There comes a time in any student pilot's training that the instructor must stay on the ground, and allow the student to fly the aircraft without him. It is a momentous occasion in any student's training, and will be remembered for the rest of his or her life. The first solo flight is something that is remembered, celebrated, and looked forward to by all students. The hard work, the study, the endless hours aloft with the instructor, everything comes to a head on this one occasion.

For me, that moment had come less than five minutes before, when my instructor climbed out of his seat. I taxied the airplane back onto the ramp after a particularly grueling hour of practice with him. He had not said much all the way back from the practice area, merely saying, "Take me home. I'm done." He was polite like that.

So we flew in silence, him thinking God knows what, me questioning myself and my less than stellar performance. When we neared the field, I steeled myself for the onslaught that my tired, sloppy landing was sure to bring. Instead, he made me land twice before actually taxiing to the ramp. After the last landing, as we left the runway, he said, "Yep. I'm done. But you're not."

I knew instantly what was going to happen, even as I fished around in the backseat for my logbook. A few signatures and he was gone, walking back into the building as I gathered my thoughts for a minute. The engine was still running, and I gave it just a bit of throttle to begin moving.

The takeoff is burned into my mind. The runway stretching before me, the roar of the engine, the blur of the instrument panel as the airframe vibrates with the added power. I hear my own voice on the radio, but it seems detached from me, as if it's some other pilot on the frequency. The airplane leaps into the sky with my instructor's 150 pounds gone, and in no time I am at pattern altitude, on the downwind leg, watching the runway pass to my left, and looking at the empty seat next to me.

It is a significant moment for me. Looking back on it now, I can see that it was, in a way, the beginning of a new life: I have left the earth, in a machine controlled only by me. No one else, no computer, no cruise control, no radio control: just me and the machine, manipulating the laws of physics. I will never again be a slave to the ground. The weight of the moment was tremendous!

We all have moments like that in our lives. We all have moments that we know will change us forever. My pastor talked about his in his book. He volunteered to lead a worship service at a summer camp he was working, and was struck with the holiness of the moment. He recognized that this moment was special, that God was somehow very near to him then. He knew he wouldn't be the same afterwards.

I like to call these Sacred Moments. Moments where the veil that divides Heaven and Earth is pulled back, and we catch just a glimpse of God's amazingly huge Story, and our unique role within that story. Sometimes, during these moments, we can't help but feel His weight, His significance during the moment. Other times, the glance is more fleeting, and we don't realize until later what was really going on. These Sacred Moments can be good, but they can also be painfully terrible.

I remember having to speak at a youth retreat on the topic of being single. It was extremely awkward to give that speech, because I was going to be open and honest about how my heart was recently broken by a girl, and because my current girlfriend was attending the retreat as well. How do you give a talk on being single when you're not? It was just an awkward situation all around. But I gave the talk, and while I was talking, there was a guy sitting in the back just staring at me. I mean staring. His eyes were wide open, and his jaw hung slack as he watched my every move. I felt like I was from Mars the way he was watching me.

After my talk was done, and we had been dismissed, he came up to talk to me. He asked me if I had felt anything while I was talking. I said I felt kind of warm, but I'm shy and I was probably blushing. I asked him why that weird question. He said that while I was speaking, he saw an aura around me, bright white light all around. At one point, it looked like an angel had his hands on my shoulders. That's why he couldn't stop staring at me. There was a massive blue and white angel standing behind me. Even as I talked to him afterwards, he said he could still see it, blue and white and dancing above my head.

I'm smart enough not to think he was crazy. I had known him for quite a while, we had worked together on these retreats before. I knew he wasn't lying or making anything up. He really did see it, and it blew him away, because he had never seen one before. It was a beautiful Sacred Moment for both of us.

Sacred Moments can also be painful, like a certain Sunday morning when Shan and I were late for church. I hate being late, but something compelled us to get up and go. Something pushed us to go to church. That Sunday was the first day we actually faced the pain and brokenness of our miscarriages, and it was a horrendous, gut-wrenching, painful thing to do, to step into our wound like that. But I knew, and Shan knew, that God led us there, and was with us the entire time. It was a Sacred Moment.

When we hear stories of our Biblical heroes, we seldom make the connection to our own Sacred Moments. We tell ourselves that that was different. It's the Bible, obviously God is moving. But we're not living in a Bible story, we tell ourselves. Things like that don't happen today. We convince ourselves that God doesn't do that anymore. But we're reading these Bible stories with the benefit of hindsight. Like I said earlier, sometimes only when we look back can we see what God was doing in that moment. So for the writers, writing down the story after the event, some time has passed where the moment can be looked upon and considered, and God can be found.

But what did the people in those stories feel during the story? What did Moses feel on the way home after hearing God speak from a burning bush? When Jacob woke up the next morning after wrestling with the angel, what was going through his mind? When the disciples saw their first miracle, what were they thinking?

Were they overwhelmed with the weight of the moment? Were they in awe at the significance of what had just happened?

Did they feel the same way I felt when I was flying alone for the first time?


wingnut

Dispatches From the Line Mk.IV

The Little Mermaid

We have a client of ours who rents space in our hangar for his own personal airplane. Up until recently, he owned a Cessna Grand Caravan on amphibious floats. It was really cool, but he only used it for flying his family back and forth from their second home up on Lake Charlevoix. He decided that with fuel prices going the way they were, he couldn't justify using such a large airplane just as a back and forth type thing. So he purchased a converted deHavalind Beaver with floats to replace his Caravan. The Beaver is slightly smaller, less passenger and cargo space, but with a larger wing and the same engine as the Caravan. That means it has about the same characteristics that the Caravan has, as far as speed and useful weight go. The fact that it is a smaller aircraft means that it uses about half as much fuel as the Caravan, so it is much cheaper to operate.

Anyway, he took delivery of his new baby, and to our surprise, when it showed up on our ramp for the first time, it had art drawn on it.

Back in World War Two, aircrews would decorate their bombers and fighters with pictures of pretty much anything they thought of. Naturally, with so many young men away from hearth and home and lacking female companionship, most of the aircraft were adorned with pictures of girlfriends back home, or Hollywood starlets, or girls from the "gentlemen's" magazines in various states of undress. Say what you want about indecency, this "Nose Art" brought a tiny bit of much-needed personal identity and security to the unflinchingly violent and brutal world of military aviation.

Apparently, the tradition of personalizing aircraft in this manner is still alive and well today, for although it was painted on the tail, our client's old deHavalind had a mermaid on it that would rival the most intricate Nose Art from WWII. Except that the artist apparently forgot seashells or starfish or coconut halves or pasties. The mermaid sits proudly on the tail of the floatplane, displaying what humanity she has for all to see.

When our shock had faded into disbelief, we began making wisecracks about Walt Disney and mermaids and floatplanes until one of our number (I swear it wasn't me!) ended the conversation, and all lingering hope of decency, when he said, "We should name this plane Areola!"


wingnut

Dispatches from the Line Mk.III

Speaking of Wind...


I am reminded of a story that took place quite a few years ago. Michigan summers can get brutal, and this day was all that and then some. Working outside on black pavement did not help out at all, either, so there we were, slogging through the oppressive heat as best we could, drinking gallons and gallons of water just to lose it all through our pores.

We knew it was going to storm. We had been lazily watching the weather on the computer, watching the system move across Wisconsin. We had seen this kind of thing before, and really didn't think much of it right away.

It got weird when we got a call from one of our employees who lived in Holland. He was calling to warn us about the violent storms heading our way. He was actually in his basement, and had lost power.

We then looked closer the radar loop we had, and decided that it would be prudent to start rolling up the windows on all our vehicles, perhaps close the hangar doors before the storm hit. I was on the ramp, outside, walking to one of our trucks to roll the windows up when I saw it coming.

The wind picked up more than I have ever seen it pick up. It went from dead still to gusting probably close to 25-30 mph, nearly instantaneously. I felt stinging sand blast me as I ran to the truck in a vain attempt to close the windows before the rain came. I happened to glance up in time to see the rain running us down from across the ramp. Usually you can kinda see where the rain is, and you can watch it approach. But this was a rain wall. I have not seen one before or since. This was an angry, gray, violent, nearly solid wall of precipitation. I could not see buildings on the other side of it. As I watched, the rest of the airport and our ramp disappeared behind the curtain of water.

I was instantly soaked from head to toe, and I hadn't even made it to the truck yet. I finally did, laughing that it was probably pointless now anyway, and ran to help close the hangar doors.

On my way there, my supervisor yelled above the wind and rain that there was an aircraft out on the ramp that was not tied down, and could I go tie it down please. So I turned around and began running against the wind to tie down this airplane.

The wind was still gusting violently, and the rain was making it nearly impossible to see anything. As I neared the aircraft, which was a fairly large aircraft that weighs nearly 5,000 pounds empty, the wind gusted strong enough to turn the aircraft towards me! It jumped over the chocks in front of the wheels, and began to roll towards me.

I turned around and ran the other way. The last thing I wanted to do was to get run over by an empty airplane!

We went out later and measured, and this big airplane had moved just over ten feet from where we had parked it, as well as turned 90 degrees from the direction we had parked it in.



wingnut

Winds of Change

In the Bible, and later Christian tradition, the Holy Spirit is often compared to wind. A mighty rushing wind prepared Elijah to be in the presence of God while on Mt Horeb. Likewise, the sound of a mighty rushing wind filled the house of the apostles when the Holy Spirit was sent to them on Pentecost.

We carry that idea forward still today. We often use wind as a metaphor for God: We cannot see the wind, but we can see what it does, just like we cannot see God, but we can see what God does.

We are fascinated by the mysterious power of wind. We sing about it, we write about it, we talk about it. We study it and the weather patterns that cause it and are moved along by it. We know a great deal about it. We can tell you why the wind blows, why there are areas of different air pressure, and how the high pressure areas send wind to the lower pressure areas, and we can tell you that this mechanism is responsible for our weather patterns. We can tell you that for some reason, way up high in the sky, there is a "highway" of wind current, faster by far than the air around it, and that this current pulls along different weather systems.

But all of this knowledge is different that actually being in the wind. We've seen the guys on the Weather Channel getting knocked over by the wind, we've felt a cold, brutal wind blow down from the frozen Canadian wilderness, we've felt the oven-like wind through the Grand Canyon. We have also felt the calm, gentle breeze of a calm, gentle summer day. In the ancient Greek language, breath was the same word as wind, and we have also felt the close breath of our spouse sleeping next to us. Experiencing wind is something different that knowing all the information about wind.

For pilots, weather takes on an urgency it doesn't have on the ground. We study the weather, we check again and again the wind speed, we watch like hawks anything flapping in the breeze. For flying is wholly dependant on the weather. If the wind is too strong, I cannot fly my airplane well, perhaps not at all. If the wind is blowing in a certain direction, I will need to take off and land on a runway aligned with the wind. Even when airborne, I need to check the wind, monitor the wind, and make sure that I fly accordingly. The wind can blow me wildly off course, and I need to make constant adjustments to ensure that I end up where I want to be.

When I was learning to fly, I was taught about crosswinds. Crosswinds are generally any wind that is blowing across the path of the aircraft. My instructor took me up to about three thousand feet, and made me line up on a road that was going north and south. I was to hold the aircraft straight north along this road for as long as I could. So I pointed the nose of the airplane straight north, and followed the road. Immediately, I could see that we were drifting. I was not able to stay with the road. I was flying straight north, but the wind was blowing from the west, and blowing me to the west with it. What I needed to to, in order to stay along that north-south road, was to point the airplane into the wind slightly, to compensate for the crossing effect it had on the airplane.

God is like the wind. We can learn many facts about God, we can study theology and philosophy much like we study meteorology and weather. We can discuss endlessly the theological nuances and subtleties in different religions and ideas.

But all of this is different than experiencing God. Experiencing God is something that cannot nearly be described. It is a deeply moving experience that transcends rational thought, much the same way as learning about wind in school is vastly different than standing outside your hotel in Miami as Hurricane Whomever comes ashore.

What we fail to consider most often is what we will do with the experience. When I talk about wind as a pilot, I talk about what I'm going to do about it. Wind demands action of a pilot. When I experience a crosswind, I have to use different techniques than the ones I use when there is no crosswind. I have to point my airplane in a different direction to get to my destination. I have to land differently than I would otherwise.

We don't talk about God this way either. We talk about experiencing God, but usually the conversation just lingers there, as if the experience is the end goal. But that is not the case. When we experience God, we are asked to act. In the beginning of the Book of Acts, Jesus' earthly ministry has just ended, in a brutal and hope-crushing way. His disciples are gathered in Jerusalem, and are wondering what to do now. It seems as though the "rulers and powers" that Paul would speak of in Ephesians have won. The Rabbi is dead, and the leaders of society are concerned with flushing out the rest of his radical followers. Then something happens. The apostles hear a mighty rushing wind. They experience God, and are driven to action.

Learning about God is one thing.

Experiencing Him is completely different.

But the experience alone is not the goal. Just like a pilot flying in a crosswind, if we experience God and do not act on it, we will be blown off course.

wingnut

The Freedom of Flight

One of the beautiful things about flying is the freedom gained in the air. It won't take you long to search out a week's worth of aviation quotes to read, and nearly all of them will mention in some way the freedom of the skies. The obvious ways are no roads, less traffic, and, for the most part, point-to-point travel to your destination. The quotes you will find, however, will not mention these pedestrian concerns.

The obvious physical freedoms speak to something deeper, more elusive. This is the stuff of quotes. This deeper freedom cannot be found in the window seat on an airliner. This freedom can sit in only a few select seats at the front of the aircraft. One can fly somewhere, but true freedom means piloting your aircraft. Have you ever ridden somewhere in a car, and then later not been able to figure out how to get home? You don't know because you didn't drive.

Likewise, you have not really flown until you have felt the rudder pedals under your feet, until the control yoke has laid lightly in your hand. Until you have felt the slipstream fight against your control inputs, you haven't been flying.

This freedom of flight is found only when pilot and airplane come together. A pilot must become the airplane, using his intellect and judgement and physical skills to bring about the desired results. An airplane must become the pilot: the physical embodiment of the pilot's will. Many words have been put to paper in attempts to explain this curious phenomenon, but most fall short, as do mine. There is nothing to do but experience it for yourself.

One of the most vivid glimpses I have witnessed in my own experience is when I was in flight school. My first instructor was pretty mean, and usually taught through negative reinforcement. He would mock me and laugh at me until I got it right. One day, we were in Grand Haven, and we were getting ready to fly back to Jenison. We were running a bit late due to some maintenance on the aircraft, and he was getting impatient. I reached for the checklist, and began running through it in preparation for departure. He said that I was taking too long, and proceeded to go through the checklist, without the aid of the actual list. He knew the airplane that well, that he was able to complete all the necessary checks in as much time as it has taken you to read this blog post.

He was the airplane. In a way that I could only hope to dream about, he was the airplane. He knew exactly where every switch, every button, every dial was. He could look at a glance, and tell exactly where the needles were on the instruments. He could also, in that glance, tell if they were in the correct place for takeoff. Oil pressure, exhaust temperature, altimeter, engine RPMs, heading indicator, magnetic compass, radios on the right frequency, fuel feeding from both tanks, lights, transponder on and broadcasting the correct code. All in a single glance. When airborne, he could bring the plane into any maneuver as smooth as changing lanes in a car. He willed it, and the airplane did it. Effortless.

This freedom is a direct result of the discipline that is required to fly. Of course, to get licensed, one needs to complete the required training and practice. But after the license, a pilot must constantly discipline himself against laziness, complacency, fatigue, and a whole army of other human and other factors that conspire to bring the flight to ruin. There are many old adages in aviation, but one sticks out as my personal favorite: "Never let the airplane take you somewhere your mind hasn't been already."

In order to experience freedom in the air, the pilot must always be thinking ahead, yet always focused on the moment. There is no room for the argument you had with your boss, or the disagreement with your wife, or bills, or fixing the car, or doctor bills, or any of that. When you are flying, you are flying. Nothing else.

The only way to experience the freedom of flight is to give yourself over completely to the airplane and the experience of the moment. To lose yourself, and become the airplane. To lose the airplane, and truly live.

wingnut

Wings and prayers and prayers and wings...

For those that do not know, I have a crashed airplane in my hangar right now, waiting to be sold to a junk dealer.

If you have followed the local news for Grand Rapids Michigan today, you would know that there was an incident involving a medical helicopter on the hospital roof.

I would be willing to guess that there have been an increase in aviation prayers emanating from West Michigan this past month.

That and it's probably not a good time to talk to my wife about resuming flight school...

I was just in the hangar again today, and I just had to walk around the wrecked airplane again. It's probably a weekly occurance for me, just to walk around the wreckage and marvel at the design, and how it operated during the crash. It really is fascinating how aircraft are designed.

Obviously, they're not designed primarily for getting into crashes, but like race cars, there is a fair amount of consideration in the design allowing for the stresses of a crash.

As I walk around the aircraft, I see things that I didn't see before. I can see that the propeller blades are all bent backwards, meaning that the propeller was spinning when the aircraft hit the ground. But two of them are bent more than the third, telling me that the engine was not producing power at the time of impact.

The huge, gaping hole in the side of the aircraft is from the wing ripping off and tearing a hole in it. I then look at the wing itself, and see where impacted a tree. You can see from the way the metal is ripped that it probably stayed in the tree, and that's why it ripped off the rest of the aircraft. It must have been a pretty formidable tree too, because the damage to the wing is probably two feet across.

I can see that both landing gear are bent outwards, indicating that the plane hit with a fair amount of force. Landing gear are designed to absorb much of the impact of a normal landing, and then some, so for them to be bent out is something rather impressive.

I can also see a buckle in the airframe directly forward of the tail, telling me that when the airplane hit, the weight of the tail actually bent the body of the airplane.

I look towards the front of the airplane, and I can see where the nose gear was. It collapsed in the crash, and that's why the propeller blades are bent. I can also see that the metal framework that holds the front of the airplane together and holds the engine in place is bent as well.

I can see that the cargo pods slung underneath the airplane are crushed, and full of grass and mud. The mud is quite far up the body of the airplane, telling me that wherever it came down, the ground was pretty soft, soft enough that a car or truck probably would have gotten stuck.

This aircraft experienced a massive amount of force when it hit, that much is obvious.

When we take all these clues and put them together, the crash becomes more and more violent than might be suggested otherwise. It was a brutal, metal-twisting, ground-plowing, whiplash-inducing moment.

But small details tell me that this pilot, and this airplane, both performed flawlessly considering the circumstances.

For instance, in emergency training classes, pilots are taught, somewhat counterintuitively, that in the event of a crash landing, you aim for obstacles. Not how you would think though. This does not mean aim right at the biggest tree you see in front of you. The idea is that if you can aim the aircraft to hit some obstacles, then the energy will be dissipated into the obstacle, and not into you, or the passengers. For example, if you can manage to rip a wing off the airframe, that will slow you down enough that the ultimate impact will be less traumatic. Studies have shown that in the event of a serious crash landing, if the aircraft comes to a complete stop in less than seven feet, then the forces exerted on any humans in the aircraft will be so great as to cause usually fatal internal injuries.

But if the pilot can dissipate that energy over a longer stretch of ground, then the crash will most likely be survivable. This pilot hit a tree right dead center in the middle of the wing, and ripped it off the rest of the airplane. That means that a lot of energy was absorbed by the wing and the tree, and not the pilot.

Another small detail about the airplane is the seats. Aviation seats in most aircraft are designed to absorb some of the force of the impact in the event of a crash landing. The idea is the same, the dissipation of energy before it gets translated into the human occupant. In this particular aircraft, the seats are designed with a curved, "C" shape support bar. In the event of a crash landing, this support bar, with the rest of the seat structure, will collapse slightly, absorbing the energy so that the pilot's spine doesn't have to.

Here's the awesome part: The seats weren't damaged.

That means that the pilot was skilled enough to pick a spot that would give him a relatively safe landing, taking all these factors into account, and it also means that the aircraft's design allowed the energy of the crash to be absorbed by key parts of the airframe, instead of the cockpit area, and by extension, the pilot. All this heap of crumpled metal means that the force of the impact was dissipated in ways that were not ultimately harmful to the human occupant.

I was talking to a mechanic that was helping with the investigation, and he said that the pilot didn't even have a sore spot or bruise from his shoulder harness.

That is impressive.


wingnut

Dispatches from the Line Mk.II

A close encounter of the scary kind.

A few years back now, I had just gotten transferred at work to a different building. This building was where the company kept all of it's charter aircraft fleet. It was a bit of a different experience, instead of having many different aircraft and pilots always in and out on their business in Grand Rapids, I got a chance to get to know the crew and the aircraft, since they were actually based in my building.

It was enjoyable to get to know some of the pilots, many of whom are still around, and many of whom are not, but I still run into from time to time. Since at the time the charter business was just starting to get going, we would usually have some time to sit and talk and hang out with the pilots as they would come back. Sometimes, they would have left over catering, and we would sit around a half-eaten fruit and cheese tray, talking about where they went, and how awful this "rich people food" tasted.

One night, the weather wasn't the greatest in Milwaukee, where one of my airplanes had to be. There had been a front moving through, and had left the airport wet, rainy, and foggy. The airplane made it back, and I had taken care of the passengers and saw them on their way, so I was eager to talk to the pilots to see how their day went. Besides, I had noticed that the passengers had barely touched their catering, and Flight Line Rule Number One is: Always eat free food.

As I walked into the kitchen, Jim, one of the pilots, was sitting on the little sofa we had in there, with a rather tall and full glass of whiskey that we keep aboard the aircraft. Incidentally, if ever you read someones name in these Dispatches, its fake. I have to protect the innocent...and the guilty.

Anyway, Jim was there, with his Dewar's tumbler full, and his hands were shaking a bit. Clearly, something didn't go quite as planned. I asked him what happened.

Jim shook his head. It seems that as they were leaving Milwaukee, the weather was starting to get a little bit worse, not enough to delay them significantly, but enough that there was some trouble with other airport traffic. There were some diverted flights that were attempting to leave, and some arrivals that were trying to make it in before the weather got even worse. All in all, a pretty hectic time, especially for the air traffic controllers. It is obviously their job to control all the arrivals and departures, and so they were stretched just a bit trying to make everything run smoothly.

Jim and his copilot were taxiing to the runway for takeoff, and the fog was getting thicker, so that they could barely make out the lights for the runway in the distance. They were in constant contact with the tower, and the tower was taking care of all the other arrivals. I don't remember the exact details, but Jim was cleared for takeoff, which means that they can taxi from the taxiway onto the runway, and the runway is considered their space until they are clear. As Jim taxied onto the end of the runway, he had to turn the aircraft to line up with the runway. The aircraft was lined up now, and Jim's hand was on the throttle levers, ready to increase power for takeoff.

Suddenly, out of the fog, another aircraft came in for a landing on the same runway! Jim and his copilot caught just a glimpse of the underside of the other aircraft, gear down, flaps down, twenty feet above them, before the other aircraft aborted their landing and disappeared back into the night sky.

Ernest K Gann, an aviation author, said that Fate is the Hunter. Never is that more true than in an aircraft.


wingnut

Dispatches From the Line Mk.I

A short funny story.

The Federal Aviation Administration is the bureaucracy in charge of overseeing flight-related issues in the United States. With any governmental organization, there is bound to be red tape, redundant paperwork, and too many lawyers and too many consultants. It is a ponderous organization, with a reputation equal to that of the Secretary of State as far as customer (dis)satisfaction is concerned.

There are some who are cognizant of this reputation, and are nearly apologetic about it, like the gentleman that administered my color vision test. There are others who are unapologetic, understanding that these cowboys with airplanes will attempt anything to get around the rules, and it is their job to stop them. There are still others who approach it as a job, nothing more than doing their small part to keep the skies safe for the millions of people who travel them.

Part of this safety is the ramp check. There are required papers that are needed in the aircraft at all times when the aircraft is flying. It is, obviously, the pilot's job to ensure that all required paperwork is on the aircraft. To ensure compliance, the FAA will conduct ramp checks, where they send an agent out to the local airport, and this agent will inspect aircraft as they come in.

One of the pilots flying for us was subjected to a ramp check. There was nothing out of the ordinary with the papers, and the check lasted perhaps ten minutes. As the inspector was leaving, he handed over his business card to the pilot, and said, with obvious Freudian psychology,

"My name is such-and-such. If you ever need a problem, give me a call!"

Apparently he didn't catch his slip, leaving our pilot wondering if he had meant what he said the whole flight back to Grand Rapids.


wingnut

Idiotic Editorial

I would expect something this full of logical faux pas from a high school paper. Not from one of the leading news dailies in the country.

The USA Today last Wednesday (the 13th) gave their opinion of H.R. 2881, the FAA funding bill that has been proposed recently. The funding plan, commonly called "user fees", would enact a pay-for-use tax on some services rendered by the FAA, including flight into some controlled airspace, and arrivals and departures at some of the major airports in the United States. The general aviation community, composed of all aviation not military or airlines, is strongly opposed to this new funding program, on the basis that the current funding system, if used properly, is more than good enough for the maintainence, upkeep, and modernization of the air traffic control system.

The general aviation community believes this new funding program to be unfair towards general aviation, and giving breaks to the airlines that they don't necessarily deserve.

The USA Today opinion is to give airline passengers a break, apparently believing that this new funding system would automatically fix the problems that the airlines have encountered as of late.

I wrote to the editor, this is what I said:


"I am writing to question your position on aviation user fees put forth in the February 13 edition. Far from making any intelligent case for user fees, your editors chose instead to repeat, nearly verbatim, the poor excuse for arguments that the airlines have been cramming down our throats recently. With a profit margin of only around 1%, airlines (and their passengers) are far from "subsidizing" us "high fliers" in our corporate jets and private aircraft. I work for a company that provides fractional aircraft ownership programs for its clients. These clients, in addition to their share of the aircraft, are responsible to pay for every flight hour they are using the aircraft. The price per flight hour is nearly $2,000; more, I think, than anyone has paid at the ticket counter recently. I would urge the editors to re-examine their position, rather than swallow uncritically the excuses from an industry defending their unwillingness to do the hard work of streamlining that needs to be done."


The article begins by explaining the delays and cancellations, which did reach an all-time high last year. While this statistic is deplorable and unfortunate, to lay blame on the airlines for all the missed events as the article does is stretching things quite a bit, in my opinion. Things happen, and passengers on any airline understand that there is some elements of travel that are beyond anyone's control. That being the case, most intelligent people "pad" their vacations and trips with extra days to compensate for this element of the unknown.

The article then attempts to blame these delays and cancellations on the broken system. I am not so naive to imagine that the air traffic system does not need modernaization, however, as I said in the beginning of this post, the current funding system only needs minor tweaks to be able to meet the demands of upkeep and modernization, as well at the future growth of the industry. And a quick note on that, who would you guess is going to be responsible for a large majority of that growth?

And, contrary to what the writer may want you to think, modernizing the entire air traffic control system is not as easy as putting a GPS navigation system on your dashboard and heading down the highway. Most aircraft in the air now have GPS on board, by the way. Most aircraft now have at least the option of traffic avoidance systems which can track nearby aircraft and warn of an impending collision, or at the very least, alert the pilot to other aircraft. I digress.

The article goes on to make the argument that this is a Republican problem, laying blame at the feet of the current administration, and the House Transportation Committee. In fact, far from being a governmental problem, it is much more complex. The article is correct in stating that some of the blame lies in the government's not being willing or able to explore viable alternatives to the funding system, but I would say that an equal share of the blame could be given to the airlines, who continue to use more and more smaller jets, as opposed to fewer larger jets, and as a result, increase congestion at their major hubs.

The statistics given in the next paragraph are proof of that. General aviation was responsible for only 16% of the air traffic control expenses in 2005. That means that the airlines are responsible for 84% of the cost of our airports and air traffic control systems.

And this whole argument is a bit of a red herring anyway, since the congestion at the major hubs, with the resultant delays and cancellations (a major airline argument for user fees) would not be solved by changing the funding mechanism through user fees anyway. The problem of congestion is a problem of too many aircraft in one place, and we will not solve that by making general aviation pay more into the system.

The user fee system being suggested would charge a fee for every arrival and departure for non-airline aircraft at certain airports. Currently, it would be limited to the main airports in the busiest Class B airspace, Chicago O'Hare, Atlanta, LAX, New York, Detroit, etc. As the article states, it is a small fee, easily absorbed (on first glance) by the "high fliers". But as a private pilot, and an employee of a business that operates general aviation aircraft, I am a member of the general aviation community. And I take exception to being called a "high flier". That term denotes somewhat of a "jet set" attitude, and the writer makes it clear the assumption that he is operating from is one where general aviation is merely a bunch of rich people who don't need that money anyway.

Clearly, there those people around. But they are not the majority of general aviation at all. I certainly could find a use for more money. I haven't flown in months because I have to pay to fly, and right now I have other obligations for that money.

And besides, that whole class warfare attitude has no place in this debate, or any debate, for that matter.

While I agree that there needs to be some sort of action to guarantee funding for the needed upgrading and maintenance of the air traffic control system, I do not think that general aviation user fees are the answer. They are merely a short-term solution suggested by the airline industry to prevent them from having to majorly overhaul their business model as they should. The majority of the burden for air traffic control comes from the airlines. In fact, the airline industry is the reason we have the air traffic system that we do in the first place. Therefore, my opinion is that the airlines should carry the majority of the burden for funding it's upkeep and maintenance.

Heres the crappy article, if you want to read it at all.


wingnut

Flying through Thanksgiving

Well, with Thanksgiving weekend over, and Black Friday past us, I have a few things to be thankful for.

First, my wife. For everything she does for me, even though I don't deserve it, including the fact that she completed all our Christmas shopping already, allowing us to sit and laugh at the shoppers last Friday from our breakfast across the street at Bob Evans.

Second, my son. Who will be here shortly. Who will be getting his first taste of paintball this Saturday. From the sidelines, of course.

Thirdly, all my bones remained in their original packaging, and their original shape, during our Thanksgiving Day football game. Most of my muscles did as well.

Fourth(ly?), our house, which is large enough to raise a family, yet small enough that a few hours of dedicated work will catch us up on the neglected housework from the past month or so. Which we also did on Friday.

Fifth(ly?), Flying. And Monty Python. And YouTube. You need to watch the whole clip.


wingnut

Aviation Rants

Please allow me today to be a bit pedantic. As most of you know, I enjoy aviation. I enjoy flying, I enjoy watching airplanes, I enjoy reading about airplanes (and pilots). Every once in a while, I also enjoy working around airplanes.

I was at work the other night, and as is my custom, I brought my paper work to the other facility on my way to top off my fuel truck. While over there, I noticed some pictures on the wall. Now this past summer, we have been going through a rather lengthy remodeling process, updating our FBO facility (finally). So there has been painting, repainting, remodelling of the bathrooms, new furniture, new HD Plasma widescreens (four!), new desks and workstations, and the re-organization of the work areas.

Anyway, these pictures I saw were newly hung in the newly painted and newly carpeted hallway. There were quite a few, chronicling the history of the airport, and local aviation and history. There was a boat on Reeds Lake, for instance, and a photo from the '20s displaying old hangar buildings and a ramp area.

A few of the pictures had airplanes on them, as would be expected. One was of the first furniture delivery by air from Grand Rapids, another one was some local military figures standing next to an airplane, and the third was a gentleman sitting in his aircraft, all smiles for the camera.

The pictures were nicely matted and framed, all in all a wonderful compliment to local aviation, something that should be expected when one enters a facility on an airport. At least in my mind, anyway.

But.

But, and this is a massive but,

The captions were wrong.

I could understand this if this were, say, in a doctor's office. Or perhaps a company that was close to the airport, but not directly involved in aviation, say, the management offices of the Airport Business Park, or something like that. If Applebees opened up a neighborhood grill right next door to the airport, I would expect that the captions might not exactly be 100% correct.

But I work at the airport. My company is in the aviation industry. How did they mess this up?

In the picture of the man sitting in his cockpit, the aircraft is labeled as an Aerocoupe. First off, it's not Aerocoupe, it's Ercoupe. It is a rather unconventional spelling, and I would normally have overlooked this common error, but the name of the aircraft was painted on the side of said aircraft, plainly visible in the picture!
Now, they did get the picture from the Grand Rapids Library picture archives, and it's mislabeled there as well...but still...with all of our combined experience with aviation, there has to be somebody that knows this stuff?? Surely I can't be the only one?? Even if the person doing this project hasn't spent their whole lives around aviation, did they even look at the picture??

The next picture I take issue with for a couple of reasons. First off, consistency. If you are going to specifically name one aircraft, you probably should attempt to specifically name all the aircraft. The caption on this picture read "Miss Grand Rapids". It was billed as the first shipment by air of furniture from Grand Rapids. This picture was also taken from the library archives, although this picture was labeled in more detail in the archives than on the caption. In the archives, it was labeled as a Ford-Stout monoplane. I could have handled that in the caption.

However, in my life-long continuing quest to put too much effort into trivial circumstances, I did a quick Internet search for Ford produced aircraft. It took less than five minutes for me to find the answer I was looking for. William B. Stout designed and built the aircraft in 1924, and called it the 2-AT (it was his second design for Air Transport). The United States Postal Service purchased two of them for airmail routes. Four of them were purchased by the Ford Motor Company for private company use. In 1925, Ford Motor Company purchased Stout's company, and continued to build the aircraft as Ford-Stout 2-AT, which they also called the "Tin Goose", and sometimes "Air Pullman".
The second reason I took issue with this picture is the fact that it is celebrating the cargo in the caption, not the aircraft. I should mention that the cargo and circumstances of the flight are, again, clearly visible on a banner in the foreground of the picture. This is just a minor quibble, and again, I feel like the point of the picture is the airplane, not the cargo. The cargo, and the circumstances, are integral to the moment, and therefore the picture, but give due credit to the reason the picture is important to us at the airport.

The last picture is labeled simply as a "Training Plane". There are two men standing in front of it, in military uniform. This caption I take issue with because, again, it is not consistent. Let's try to properly name all aircraft, not just the one that is grossly misspelled. The aircraft pictured is, in my mind, one of the most important aircraft of the 20th century.
And it's darned close to the number one spot in that list. The aircraft is a Boeing PT-17 Stearman. Again, can we look at the picture? The name is listed right on the aircraft, clearly visible in the picture. And when you take the time to list by name the two majors standing in front of the plane, why not take the time to properly name the aircraft, which is, again, the reason the picture is important (or should be) to us at the airport.

For those of us who work in aviation, it is not simply something that is neat to watch every once in a while. We make our living by aviation. Aviation is the reason that we have jobs, and those jobs are the reason we can afford housing, health care, transportation, and entertainment. For someone to not take even a passing interest in this demeans the whole process.

We say that we strive for perfection in our customer service, in our professionalism, and our work ethic. My company is big into customer service. How professional would it be for one of our customers to walk by those pictures and read the captions, misspellings and omitted details?

My guess is that he would maybe think twice about letting us service his aircraft. If they don't care about those pictures, do they really care about my airplane out on the ramp?

My rant is over. Until someone mentions Hollywood...

Oh, and before I forget, even though they are watermarked, these pictures are property of the Grand Rapids Public Library. Just in case somebody wants to get me in trouble.


wingnut