We'll See

Winston Churchill is famous for many things, and one of those things was his quick wit. One of my favorite examples came after his defeat as Prime Minister following World War II. (Despite leading England from The Battle of Britain, Their Finest Hour, to eventual Victory in Europe, he was thanked for his efforts with rejection.) In the dumps, his wife apparently tried to cheer him up with a typically British, “Come on Winston. Chin up and all that. Might even be a blessing in disguise.”

He is alleged to have replied, “In which case, it is very cleverly disguised.”

I’ve had one of those “very cleverly disguised” moments with my proposed new book. After struggling for a couple of years with what exactly I wanted to write about (see my last post, “After Oshkosh"), and, having finally come up with an idea and a rough outline, I then had to decide if I really wanted to intrude upon a retirement schedule that I have grown very fond of (the best part of which is not having much of a schedule at all). I, of course, decided that I did want to—as much as I enjoy retirement I also know I need projects and a book is a good project—so I emailed my publisher with a quick summary and asked him if it sounded like something he was interested in. He promptly emailed me back saying that they weren’t doing any new aviation books, that they just couldn’t get shelf space for them anymore at the national retail level (read Barnes & Noble and Borders), and he hoped I could place it elsewhere. So, as the Brits like to say, “And Bob’s your uncle.” That’s that.

My retirement schedule is still intact, and as Mrs. Winston Churchill said, “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.” We’ll see. It’s still pretty cleverly disguised at this point.

After Oshkosh

I have taken a bit of a vacation from doing regular posts since my week in Oshkosh this summer. There isn’t any specific reason for that, I just had other things to do and was still sort of absorbing the experiences of Oshkosh. I also began to feel that I may have told enough ATA stories: the stories could go on for a long time, but the important ones—the ones with, what seem to me anyway, important lessons—I think have been told.

One of my first thoughts in starting this blog was that I hoped some of the articles and stories would make their way into a book. I had an idea that I might write a book in which each chapter started with a story that would set the tone and background for the subject that followed. But I found that the stories took on a life of their own and were too long to serve as introductions to chapters; I also didn’t think they warranted a book of their own. I still wanted to do a book, but I couldn’t get a good idea of what I wanted to do or how to structure it.

Then, as usually happens, a book idea came to me once I had let go of the previous idea and after the experience of Oshkosh, a part of aviation I had been away from for many years. It was centered on the idea of adapting professional aviation standards to general aviation. I sort of touched on the issue in the post “Pro-Am,” where I talked about the differences between general aviation and professional aviation, and, in a way, it is something I have been thinking about since my very first book, written back in 1983 and now out of print, Fly Like a Pro.

I‘ve got a starting outline, and how that happened is an interesting story in itself. I had tried, back before going to Oshkosh and before I had a clear idea of where I wanted to go with the book, to make up an outline, or at least a list of topics, and had really struggled with it: no coherence, just a bunch of different ideas, some that could become chapters, others that were just thoughts, and I couldn’t even get a consistent writing style in listing them. I put it away, thinking it was a start and could be improved on later after I had thought about it more.

When the idea did click in my head to specifically focus on professional standards and general aviation, I didn’t even go back to that first outline. I just sat down with a notepad and a pencil, and within 30 minutes had a pretty good outline. A good start anyway, consistent in style with each idea for a chapter of about equal importance, and fairly complete. I have thought about a few additional ideas and it still needs a lot of fleshing out before I can submit it as a proposal to my publisher, but the hard part is done. (That experience of struggling when trying to make a dead end idea work versus everything falling into place once on the right path, is so common, it is kind of a lesson in itself: When it’s right, it works, when it isn’t, it doesn’t. And you can’t force it, you have to step back and hope you can get back on a path that makes sense.)

I also quit doing regular posts partly because I think I finally got down, shortly before leaving for Oshkosh, what I think the most important lessons were from my flying career, and I have, in fact, listed those three posts on the right hand side in a section titled “Credo.” So I have a sense that I have done what I wanted to do with this blog, and probably won’t be doing any more posts on a regular basis.

If you’re used to checking here to see if I there is anything new, I thank you and I apologize for not having done anything lately to justify your interest. It’s probably not going to get any better. If my proposal is accepted, I will be tied up writing on a daily basis for six to nine months and probably won’t do any posts. The next thing I need to think about is whether I really want to do that. But I probably will.

Oshkosh, Saturday and Sunday

Saturday was another good day. Sunday has been a bit of a let down.

Saturday was good for lots of reasons--good weather, a productive hour and a half at the Authors' Corner, another great airshow and lots more walking around--but Saturday was also good because Tom Jacobs, an ATA First Officer and International pilot who used to fly with me a lot on the Hawaiian turns, showed up at the Authors' Corner, with his father, an aeronautical engineer. And I also meet up with another old friend from ATA, Bill Leeds, Lt. Col. AF (Ret.) and a fellow L-1011 and later 757 captain in San Francisco. Bill had major heart surgery three years ago and was looking great. Also, funny and charming as ever. It was great to catch up with these old friends and introduce them to my family.

Sunday was a let down because Sunday seems to be "Get out of town" day. I got to the airport just after 9am, and probably half of the aircraft were gone already, and most of the rest left before the airshow which started early, 2pm. It was still a nice way to finish up--no crowds with a nice cool breeze. I walked all the way down to the end of runway 36 and discovered a separate area for ultralights with its own grass strip. Even on the last day you can find new things.

The highlight of the airshow today was the Aeroshell three ship acrobatic team of T-6s'. (The T-6, or SNJ for the Navy, "Harvard" for Canada, was the most common primary trainer in WWII and there are still a lot around.) These guys were real pros and I always find acrobatics with more than one aircraft so much more interesting than single ship demonstratinons. The single ships can do more extreme maneuvers because they don't have to worry about aircraft around them, but I find them to be a little repetitious after a while. But three aircraft doing complex formation flying is always thrilling.

The photo about shows the team diving straight down into a three way split at the bottom. Pretty impressive.

Oshkosh, Friday

We got a late start Friday (birthday party the night before plus some people still on California time), but made up for it after that. I gave the new arrivals an orientation tour--the show is so big, you hardly know where to start otherwise. Most of us toured a restored Piedmont Airlines DC-3 (photo above) which was flown in by the Carolina Air Museum. They asked for a dollar donation, "To help pay for the 800 gallons of gas we'll need to get back." A really nice restoration.

Then we picked our spots for the air show which was highlighted by a limited demonstration flight of the F-22 Raptor, the newest air superiority fighter. The F-22 does everything the F-15 does, except faster, slower, tighter, and stealthier. The demonstration was limited because Oshkosh doesn't have a big enough "box"--protected airspace--for a full demo, but it was still very impressive. On takeoff, it points straight up for two thousand feet or so, until it comes to what seems like a complete stop, then, incredibly, pitches straight ahead to level flight and accelerates away, a sort of upside down L pattern. If you don't know airplanes, it's kind of a "so what." If you do, you can't believe your eyes.

Then there was a "Warbirds on Review" show, a series of fly-bys and overhead formation passes for every kind of warbird, from L-19 Birddogs to B-24 bombers, with lots of ground pyrotechnics to simulate an airfield under attack. Very impressive. All the kids watched with their hands over their ears, but I noticed that during an kind of lull in the action, they all had little model airplanes in their hands which they ran around with shooting their brothers' and sisters' airplanes down.

The only hitch in the day was a line of thunderstorms that went through that, fortunately, missed the airfield but threatened to cancel the show. I even saw some nasty looking stuff coming out of the bottom of one, scratchy patches of clouds swirling in circles, but nothing developed. When we got back to the house though, the outdoor umbrella was on the ground and turned out to have a broken strut. The neighbor said there was only one big gust, but it was enough to launch it 15 feet or so. So I owe the owner a new umbrella. It was worth it.

Oshkosh, Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday was an off day--Rusty and I played golf with another friend, Ron Galbraith, a retired Denver Center controller and Master Certified Flight Instructor. (There are only 600 MCFIs' in the country, versus something like 90,000 CFIs'.) He is also a 4 handicap golfer (that's very, very good) and was very patient with us.

Thursday started off with the Master Instructors' Breakfast, which I was lucky enough to attend as Rusty's (see "Prelude to Oshkosh) guest. The Acting FAA Administrator, Bobby Sturgell, talked and handed out some awards, as did Hal Shever, founder and CEO of Sporty's Pilot Shop and an Aviation Hall of Fame honoree. Sporty's is a major sponsor of EAA.

After that I checked out the retail exhibitors--four huge hangars full--wandered around the outdoor exhibitors, which are mostly aircraft manufacturers, and then went to Authors' Corner. There was more traffic today, and I sold a few books. An ATA pilot, Loren Madison, stopped by and reminded me of a trip we did together on the 1011 to Edinburgh and what a good time we had. He also caught me up on some people we knew in common at ATA's. So all in all that was a very successful hour and a quarter.

Thursday was also my wife's birthday and we had a great time that evening with both daughters here, Hilary and Nicole, Hilary's boyfriend Matt, and Rusty. Thursday was the best day so far.

Oshkosh, Tuesday

Tuesday was another great day, but hotter and stickier (but with a cold front forecast). My talk (Air Navigation, Past, Present, Future) went well, although it wasn't as well attended as last year. But then again, everything seems to be a little bit down from last year--aircraft, visitors, campers--I assume due to the high cost of gasoline. Still, the slide show worked, no one walked out, and I was pleased with how it went.

The Author's Corner that followed was less exciting. Author's Corner is essentially a section set aside in several of the different sales venues for authors to sit and meet people interested in their book, sign copies, and make some sales. I was assigned the 400pm to 515 pm slot on a hot afternoon with an airshow going on. I got exactly zero visitors unless you want to count the one guy who thought I was an employee and wanted to know if we had a certain book he was looking for (not mine). I have two more times assigned this week, better times, I hope on cooler days, and I hope with better results.

My wife and I have walked many miles looking at aircraft of all sorts. The photo above is my favorite so far, a perfectly restored Twin Beech, circa 1946, an important year for me as well as this aircraft.

Oshkosh, Monday

Oshkosh opened on a perfect day, sunny, good visibility, temperature in the low '80's with dry air and a nice breeze out of the northeast. It still got hot, but then again, it is summer.

This is a huge event for this area, of course, and while everyone knows about it out here, they don't call it "Oshkosh," because Oshkosh is where they live. They call it "EAA," which they know is the huge organization behind it. The EAA calls it "AirVenture 2008." I kind of like "Oshkosh," because that is what everyone in aviation calls it, you just can't do that here or they look at you with a funny look that says something like, "What do you mean "You're here for Oshkosh?" You're in Oshkosh!"

Opening day traditionally begins with the arrival of several fleets of "warbirds"--restored military trainers and fighters. The photo above was typical of their arrival.

Prelude to Oshkosh

I’ve been taking a break from posts for awhile for several reasons, but probably the main reason is that the last two posts, “The Test” and “The Way”, represented fairly major efforts and I sort of wanted to sit on them for awhile before I did anything new. Also, “Oshkosh” (more properly, “AirVenture 2008”), is coming up in just over a week, and I want to wait for that to begin anything substantial. My talk is ready, with, I hope, foolproof illustrations on a Picasa Gift disk, which I learned includes the Picasa software so it can be used on any computer. (Picasa is a free download from Google and works great.) I will also be promoting my navigation book at the Author’s Corner on three separate occasions. If you’re there, I hope you will come by; I will happy to personalize and sign any purchase. (Part of the proceeds go to EAA, a non-profit organization, so you will be helping them as well as me, a little bit more of a feel good sort of thing than a regular bookstore purchase.) My wife and daughters will be there along with one of my oldest friends, Rusty Sachs, a Marine Corp Viet Nam vet chopper jock with a Purple Heart to show for it. Rusty retired recently as the head of NAFI (National Association of Flight Instructors), a component of EAA. It should be a fabulous week and I hope to make regular posts with photos. (Last year's event provided many of the photos used on previous posts, including this one).

For more information on the event, including daily schedules (every afternoon features an air show, for instance), go to www.airventure.org.

The Way

The question is this: Can we say, in just a few words, what it is that makes a good pilot? A quick review.

First, we know it isn’t luck. Luck—the random, the chaotic, the unpredictable—is always there, in aviation as in anything, but for good pilots randomness is just part of the fun, part of what makes it interesting. Good luck has nothing to do with what it takes to be a good pilot, and bad luck has nothing to do with being a not-so-good pilot. It’s not luck. (See “Are you feeling lucky, punk?”)

Second, what, more than anything else, distinguishes a good pilot from a not-so-good pilot? Simple: The good ones make it look easy; the not-so-good ones make it look hard. (See “The Test.”)

So the question boils down to this: How do the good ones make it look easy? And I think the key to answering that question lies not in how the good ones make it look easy, but in how the not-so-good ones make it look hard: It’s easy to make it look hard, just act real busy all the time without actually doing anything. But it’s very hard to make it look easy. And there’s the rub: The hard way is the easy way. Let me try to explain what I mean.

Mark Barnard was a very good friend of mine at ATA. I first met him when he taught my navigation class and later, when I upgraded to 727 Captain, he taught general operations, otherwise known as “Charm School.” (“Charm School” is where an experienced Captain tries to tell new Captains how to stay out of trouble.) He impressed me both times not just with his knowledge, but also with his wit and intelligence. He eventually went on to be the Chief Pilot for the L-1011, a position that suited him perfectly because he loved the 1011, was on a first name basis with most of the 1011 engineers at Lockheed, and was probably the most knowledgeable person outside of Lockheed on that airplane. He and I, along with another friend and Check Airman, John Stahl, were in Indianapolis working on a major revision to the L-1011 operations manual on September 11, 2001. I ended up doing a rescue mission when flying resumed, but in street clothes because I hadn’t taken a uniform. No one seemed to mind. We never finished the revision. So we have a little history.

Mark used to say that his father, an Indiana farmer with little education, was one of the smartest people he ever knew. He quoted his father a lot, and one of his better sayings was, “If you don’t have time to do it right, you sure don’t have time to do it wrong.” It was funny and smart at the same time, which made it easy to remember. It was also another way of saying, “The hard way is the easy way.”

This wasn’t a lesson that came to me naturally. I’m not very good with tools. I don’t know why. My father is, my brother Dean was, but I’m not. A lot has to do with my impatience and some has to do with laziness. (An FAA inspector once told me that the goal of all pilots was to have the most amount of fun with the least amount of effort. Not too far from the truth, actually.) I’m much more likely to reach in the kitchen drawer and grab a table knife to tighten the screw on the pot handle than I am to go to the basement where I keep my tools and get a screwdriver. And I’ll do this knowing that the best that can come out of it is that the pot handle will still have to be retightened a week later, and the worst that can come out of it is that I will ruin the knife, wreck the slot in the screw, and have to either throw the pot out or spend some money getting somebody who knows what he’s doing to fix it. The hard way to fix it, for me, is to take the time to go get the screwdriver—the right one, the one that fits, even if that means going back to the toolbox again—and do it right the first time, because that seems to take extra effort. But the hard way ends up being the easy way.

How does this apply to aviation, to being a good pilot? The answer is probably not the one anyone wants to hear, but here it is anyway: There is no easy way to be a good pilot. No one is born a pilot. It has to be learned, and no one learns anything without an effort, and no one retains the skills and knowledge without practice and review. Flight planning and preflights, weather briefings and weight and balance do not happen by themselves. There are no short cuts, no easy ways, “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear, Act I, Scene 1.) The good ones make it look easy because they have worked hard to be good pilots. They are never content to reach a certain minimally acceptable level and then quit. The good ones read, they think, they never have aviation too far from their minds. As a practical matter, they know that being a good pilot takes time—both time to learn and time to do it right.

This means they don’t just check the destination weather and forecast; they get a full briefing. This means they don’t just open the hangar doors, drag the airplane out and fly away; they do a complete preflight including powering up the panel and checking the flight instruments and aircraft systems. It means, if they are VFR-only pilots, that they don’t just stick a Garmin on the panel and launch, hoping for the best; they prepare a dead reckoning log with VOR cross checks to back up their GPS. If they are instrument-rated, they file IFR for every serious cross country—anytime the object is to get somewhere, as opposed to just flying around to have fun—because they know that is the sound and sensible way to do it and the best way to stay current and confidant in their instrument skills. They also prepare a flight log and keep a running tally of times and fuel enroute, and when the trend is negative they have a Plan B. It means they sometimes file to destinations that are further away from where they want to go, but that have good approach facilities and long runways. It also means that when they do try to fly to small airports with limited approaches and facilities, they don’t keep trying when the first attempt doesn’t work; they divert to their alternate, an alternate that does have good approaches, good facilities, and much better weather forecast. They land, and that’s that—no drama, no scares, no worries.

In means, in short, that good pilots do what they have been trained and taught to do, not what is easy to do. I can’t list everything a good pilot should do—that’s what flight training is for. I can only tell you that that is what you must do if you want to make it look easy. Good flying should be boring—the exciting part is having a flight go off smoothly and without a hitch, even if you’re the only one who knows how much work it took. The hard way is the easy way. All the rest is just, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.)

Edited by Nicole Clausing

The Test

Back in the early ’70s, shortly after I was released from active duty as a tank platoon leader, I found myself in a graduate-level course in English at the University of Michigan. (In cockpit conversations, stories like this usually begin with, “In a previous life….”) How that happened, and why, and where it went from there, is not terribly important. What is important is something I learned in that course, something that had very little to do with the study of English per se, but an awful lot to do with life in general.

The course itself was a comparison of the works of Henry James and Mark Twain, two 19^th century authors about as far apart as the Army was from graduate school. Both were master story tellers, but where Twain’s stories were full of action on the surface but with much more complex and even sinister currents underneath, James’s were enormously subtle, even, at times, tedious, on the surface, but with powerful, slow moving currents underneath. Twain was far easier and more enjoyable to read, to me anyway, and to most of the other students in the class, while James was a bit of a struggle—his slow-paced, somewhat archaic character studies didn’t appeal to our need for action and drama.

The professor knew this—I’m sure he dealt with it each time he taught the course—and he was ready with a defense of James. He asked the question, “How do you know when someone is really good at something—better than almost anyone else? Not just good at writing novels, but anything: baseball, music, art, acting, raising kids—anything.” That was quite a question. I don’t know what we said; whatever it was we clearly didn’t have the time to come up with a well thought-out answer, so he answered it for us.

“I think,” he said, “We know when someone has done something exceptionally well when he, or she, makes it look easy. The outfielder, for instance, who always seems to be standing right where the ball is hit makes it look easy. The outfielder who needs to make a spectacular diving run to catch the ball makes it look like he is good, and he is to an extent, but the better player is the one who was standing there already. And the same applies to writers, Henry James, in this case. It seems like nothing actually happens in his stories, but in fact we are mislead because he makes something that is actually very difficult, a story that centers on character, not action, seem so easy. We are tempted, with James, to think that nothing is going on, just as we are tempted to think that the outfielder who is always in position is just lucky. But, in fact, both are actually making something very difficult look easy, and they are able to do that because both are so good at what they do.”

That class was a long time ago, so I’m not quoting his exact words, but that is more or less what I remember, and I remember it well because it was, I thought, a tremendously significant insight. It applies, of course, to aviation as well: The good ones make it look easy, the not-so-good ones make it look hard. The good pilots always seem to have easy, even boring flights; up and down, the same old thing every day. Once in awhile a curve ball gets thrown, a long line of thunderstorms has to be circumvented, an aircraft system malfunctions, a medical emergency occurs, but the good ones seem to just take care of the problem and move on. The not-so-good ones bark orders, change their minds, focus on a small part of the problem and let the big part get worse and often compound the problem before finally solving it. Their flights are seldom uneventful and are usually full of drama. Ironically, often they, and sometimes others, think that they are the good ones, taking charge, making decisions, barking orders, and that the ones who make it look easy are just lucky or lazy.

There are, of course, times when every pilot needs to get busy, take charge, and, if not bark, at least issue some orders. Making it look easy is not the same as doing nothing, and making it look hard doesn’t mean it isn’t actually sometimes hard. Just as it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between a sales pitch and good information, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between making it look easy and being easy, and making it look hard and being hard. But it usually doesn’t take very long to figure it out. The lazy pilot will get in trouble at some point—his, or her unwillingness to do what is required will eventually result in a small problem becoming a bigger problem. And the pilot who lacks the ability or the willingness to make the solution look easy will always make it look hard, even when it isn’t. Sometimes, he or she may even want to make it look hard to show to fellow crewmembers what a terrific pilot he or she is, afraid that no one will notice otherwise.

So what I learned in that English course almost forty years ago stuck with me and has formed the basis for what I call The Test: Are you making it look easy, or are you making it look hard? If you’re not making it look easy, as easy as it can be anyway, then you’re on the wrong path.

The Test itself is simple—a question you can ask yourself to see how you are doing. Getting on the right path is the hard part, and that will be the subject I will take up in the next post, to be called The Way.

Edited by Nicole Clausing

Plans for Oshkosh Continued

I meant to include in my last post, "Plans for Oshkosh," that I also plan on doing a daily post during AirVenture2008, which runs from July 28 to August 3. I hope to focus each day on a different aspect of the event---one day might be the warbirds flight line and another the exhibitors' hall, for instance--and each will probably include something that I found significant that day. It will also be an excuse to post some photos. What it won't be is a recap of events. You have to be there for that.

Plans for Oshkosh

I have rented a house for the week of AirVenture 2008 (“Oshkosh”). It has several bedrooms and is on a tributary of Lake Winnebago. Lacking an airplane and needing a car, my wife, Emmy, and I will be driving to Oshkosh. I am hoping that my daughters can be there at least part of the week, and will be inviting a few of my very best pilot friends and their wives as well, the exact number depending upon my daughters’ plans. So it should be not just a great week at Oshkosh, but a nice summer vacation as well.

I will be giving a presentation sometime during the week—the schedule hasn’t been published yet—on the subject of air navigation, past, present, and future. I will also be participating in the Authors’ Corner, promoting my navigation book. I’m really looking forward to the week. If you have ever thought about going to Oshkosh, I strongly encourage you to make plans to do so this year (see www.airventure.org). I guarantee you won’t regret it, in fact the only thing you will regret is that you waited so long. If you do go and see me at either the presentation or at the Authors’ Corner, please introduce yourself to me as a blog reader. I would like to get to know the people at the receiving end of this transmission.

"Are You Feeling Lucky, Punk?"

There is a website that attempts to rank the best all time movie lines, and, amazingly, Dirty Harry’s question to the fugitive he has on the ground, with a gun within reach, after asking the “punk” if he thinks he has any rounds left in his 44 magnum, isn’t number one. It fact, it was more like 48, just ahead of, “Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?” (Reservoir Dogs), which was good, but would hardly rank on my top 100. I would have put “Are you feeling lucky, punk?” right up near the top. In fact, my biggest problem would be which came first, that, or “Make my day.” But “Are you feeling lucky” gets the nod here, because this post is about the role luck plays in aviation, indeed, in life.

Lee Trevino supposedly said, “Yah, there’s a lot of luck in golf, but the more I practice, the better my luck.” There’s a lot of luck in aviation, too, and the same rule applies. Not always, of course, otherwise we wouldn’t call it luck, we’d call it karma, but hard work does seem to put the odds more in your favor.

I had some bad luck early in my career at ATA, really nothing I could do much about, but after having finally made it to L-1011 captain, I found out less than a year later that I was going to be bounced back to the 727—the victim of another round of cutbacks, a perennially favorite of airline management. There’s nothing wrong with the 727, but it was a smaller, older airplane, it meant a pay cut, some retraining, and it meant having to go back to commuting—there were no 727 slots in Boston, my preferred base. But I did it, and less than a year or so later, management decided that the problem wasn’t too many 1011 captains after all, it was not enough (another perennial favorite of management, changing their minds without ever admitting their mistake, but at least it worked in my favor this time). The result was that I again found myself down in Miami (where ATA kept its 1011 simulator), to get a quick check out on the 1011 after a year away.

The check airman was Tom Hopp (see “Turns”), which I was happy about because I always had a good experience with Tom’s training and checks. I was paired up with a copilot who was also coming back to the 1011, but, unfortunately for him, he was coming back to the 1011 as a copilot because he had “busted”, or failed, his six month check as a 727 captain. There probably was more to the story than that, it usually takes more than a single bust to get dropped back to copilot from captain, but that wasn’t my business. What was my business was that I was paired up with a sim partner who was, understandably, not happy to be there.

The first day was a warm up and refresher, which Tom started off in the briefing room by trying to set a relaxed, no pressure tone, first telling my partner how sorry he was the way things turned out, but that it was just a little bump in the road, and to give it his best and he’d be pack in the left seat in no time. We then had a little chit chat about what we were going to do that day and the next, and he then started going over the various maneuvers to be covered, with questions thrown in as appropriate—a common (and, I think, very good) way to work into “oral questions” without making it seem like a test. At that point in my career I had been through several of these little question and answer sessions with Tom, and hadn’t always gotten all the answers right but had been smart enough to make notes afterwards and had a pretty good little file on his “orals”—which I’m sure Tom knew, and was probably something he wanted you to do. I knew for sure he didn’t want you to come back a year later and still not know the answers to the questions he had asked you a year before. So Tom started by asking my partner all the questions first, and it became pretty clear pretty quick that he hadn’t studied at all and had only the vaguest memory of 1011 systems. He had a particularly bad habit of starting each answer with, “I’m going to say...” He might as well have said, “I have no idea—but I’ll make a guess and maybe I’ll get lucky.” Each time my partner didn’t know the answer, Tom would turn to me and they were all questions I had gotten previously, so I pretty much knew all the answers, but each time it got a little more awkward.

Finally Tom said, “You know, Brian [not his real name, of course], there is no good reason that Clausing here is the only one in the room who knows the answers to my questions, because I’ve been working with Clausing for a long time and I know he’s not all that sharp.” (I took that as a left handed compliment—that I was good enough to take a jab from Tom—but with Tom you never really knew for sure.) “So,” he continued, “I’m not going to ask any more questions right now, but when you come in here tomorrow, I’ll expect you to have some answers.”

Poor kid, I thought. He’s going to be up all night.

So we moved on to the simulator, and as you can probably guess it didn’t go all that well either. There were lots of excuses and complaints—“The simulator’s messed up”—“The visuals are no good”—Tom even offered to climb into his seat “to see what the problem was”—which put an end to most of the complaining, and when it was over we headed back to the briefing room. A very quiet walk down a very sterile corridor, the kind of walk where all you hear are footsteps on linoleum.

I didn’t know what was going to come next, I had never been in that sort of situation before. Tom started with words to the effect that that didn’t go very well, and if we all were going to get through this checkout we needed to spend a whole lot less time blaming the simulator and a whole lot more time concentrating on the maneuvers. Then he paused for a moment and said, “Brian, have you ever had the experience where you got your bid for the next month [your bid is your schedule and the name of the other pilot you were going to be paired up with for that month], and you found out you were going to be flying with Captain Blackcloud, and you just knew it was going to be a long month—that everything little thing always seemed to go against this guy, lots of little problems and hassles, nothing ever seemed to go smoothly, the weather was always bad for this guy, his airplanes always broke, his passengers always had problems, he just had the worst luck in the world and you just wished you’d bid another line?”

And Brian said, “Sure, happens a lot.”

And then Tom said, “And then the next month you get your bid and you find out that you’re going to be flying with Captain Sunshine, and you just know it’s going to be a great month, this guy just has the best luck in the world, everything always seems to go along just fine without any big problems or hassles when you fly with him, and you wish you could fly with him very month.”

And Brian said, “Yah, sometimes that happens too.”

And then Tom said, “You know what, Brian? It’s not luck.”

That was almost 20 years ago and I have spent the rest of my career trying to figure out what it is if it isn’t luck. Because what “it” is is the essence of what it takes to be a good pilot, maybe the essence of what it takes to be good at anything.

Tom had some of the answers, things like anticipating problems, reacting but not over reacting, listening, looking around, and, mainly, fixing small problems quickly before they became big problems. It was all good advice but nothing revolutionary and nothing you could say in just a few words: “This is it. This is what being a good pilot is, this is why some guys seem to have all the luck and others none.”

As a check airman I used to spend a lot of time watching the good ones, the Captain Sunshines, the ones who seemed to be completely in charge and at ease, trying to figure out what it was that told me right away they knew what they were doing, and, conversely, what it was that told me right away that the not so good ones weren’t completely at ease or in charge. And I’d like to say that I finally figured it out, but I can’t. The best I have been able to come up with are two little ideas. One is a sort of standard, or test, a very general idea to help determine whether you are headed in the right direction or not. The second is a sort of “mantra,” an easily remembered phrase, or saying, to help in getting that standard right. These two ideas are all I really know about being a pilot that is worth anything, and each will take a little bit of explaining. The first idea will be the subject of a later post, to be called “The Test.” The second will be the subject of a further post, to be called “The Way.”

Turns

Regular readers of this blog may remember that in “Pro Am” (Archives, January, 2008) I said that one of the things a general aviation pilot has going for him or her that an airline pilot does not, is that the general aviation pilot never, “has to fly with a difficult copilot, one that is argumentative, combative, competitive, lazy, uncooperative, or unresponsive.” If you’ve never flown in a professional cockpit (a two pilot cockpit), you might think that that statement was a bit petty, perhaps overreaching. How often could that be a problem? And the answer is, quite often. They put human beings in cockpits for a reason, and the price paid is a considerable amount of pushing and pulling between two individuals with strong opinions and often strong egos. The captain has to listen to his copilot—good CRM (Crew Resources Management) demands it—but he still must maintain his authority: there can only be one captain. The copilot has to defer to the captain when questions of technique arise, but must be forceful when he or she feels that safety is being jeopardized. In between is a gray area of cosmic dimension. In the best of worlds, each gives a little when there are differences, and reasonableness prevails, like in any partnership. But at times, reasonableness does not prevail, and a stronger stand has to be taken.

Tom Hopp was one of several pilots, check airmen, and simulator instructors that ATA was lucky enough to get from Eastern Airlines after those pilots were unlucky enough to see their strike fail. I remember once riding jump seat on an L-1011 with Tom Hopp as captain. His copilot was being difficult at nearly every turn, insisting on doing things his way, dragging his heels with Tom’s requests, and at times simply ignoring him; in short, he was “argumentative, combative, competitive, lazy, uncooperative, [and, at times,] unresponsive.” I knew Tom had a lot of patience, but I also knew we were headed for some kind of a show down, I just didn’t know what kind.

Tom put up with it for the whole flight, which fortunately was not a long one, saying things like, “Well, I know that’s one way to do it, but this time I really do want to do it this way.” When the flight was over, though, after all the checklists were done and everyone had started to pack up his stuff, Tom got up, closed and then locked the cockpit door. That’s never a good sign. He said to the copilot, “Do you know why I’m in this seat [the captain’s] and you’re in that seat [the copilot’s]?” It was a rhetorical question, he wasn’t supposed to answer, and, he didn’t, the first smart thing he had done all day.

Tom said, “It’s not because I’m such a great pilot and you’re not, and it’s not because I’m more deserving than you are, or luckier, or anything else. There is only one reason I’m in this seat and you’re not, and that is because it’s my turn. That’s all—it’s my turn. And someday it will be your turn. And when it’s your turn, you can run the cockpit the way you want to, but as long as it is still my turn we’re going to run it the way I want to. Okay?” Another rhetorical question, and again, no answer. But he got the message.

We all understand the concept of “having a turn,” because from infancy we are taught to take turns, to wait our turn, to be fair about whose turn it is, and so on. It’s a fundamental of the socializing our elders teach us, something that keeps us from descending to savagery and chaos with each generation. I’ve been thinking a lot about “turns” since I retired, because in the simplest sense, retirement meant my turn was up, it was someone else’s turn, and it helped me understand the change: I wasn’t a captain up until then because I was the best of the bunch, it was simply my turn; and I didn’t have to quit being a captain because I wasn’t any good anymore, it was just that my turn was up.

Kids understand turns very well, because they have to deal with taking turns every day, from sunrise to sunset. I was reminded of this by my Italian teacher. We were discussing the verb “toccare”, which means “to touch,” but is also used idiomatically to mean to take a turn: “tocca a te,” means “your turn,” tocca a me” means “my turn.” (I don’t know why Italians call a “turn” a “touch”—there are a lot of things about Italian I don’t understand—maybe it comes from chess. I don’t really know why we call it a “turn” either—who turns?—but we do. Language is funny. ) In fact, kids understand the concept of taking turns so well they shorten the phrases to “tocca-me, tocca-te,” in Italian, just as English speaking kids say, “My turn,” or “Your turn.”

So the concept of taking turns begins in childhood and the pain and sadness of having your turn be over is universal. But there is something worse than having your turn be over, that is having it taken from you. On April 3, 2008, ATA ceased operations. On that day ATA pilots didn’t have their turn come to an end, their turn was gone: They went to bed that night as ATA pilots, and they woke up the next morning unemployed. That is a wrenching change and one that is much worse than simply having your turn come to an end. So I feel very lucky that, whatever feelings of sadness I had as I walked away from my airplane for the last time (see “Last Flight”, Archives 2007), I was able to see my turn through to its end.

This will be a difficult time for all those ATA pilots who lost their jobs, but almost all will survive, land on their feet, and come out the other side with something that gives them satisfaction and security. And I hope that someday they all have the somewhat sad satisfaction of seeing their turns come to an end.

For the record, the picture at the top is what it looks like when you walk away from an airplane for the last time. Bangor, Maine, September 24, 2006.

ATA

I just found out that ATA Airlines will cease operations today, April 3, 2008. This is a very sad day for me. You can read a formal announcement, with an explanation for how this all came about, at www.atairlines.com, then scroll down to Press Release, under Media.

Oshkosh

I’m making plans for AirVenture2008, or “Oshkosh,” as it is more commonly known, to be held this year from July 28 to August 3. I went to Oshkosh last year at the invitation of my old buddy from high school, Rusty Sachs, who, at the time, was Director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI). (NAFI is a part of EAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association. EAA is the sponsor of AirVenture.) Several of my previous blog entries were based on that visit (“Catania,” for one) as where many of the photos. I was also one of many presenters there, and the talk I gave can be found under Articles (right hand column, second group). It was called “CPR for DR: Breathing Life into Dead Reckoning.”

I have agreed to be a presenter again this year, and my topic will be “Air Navigation, Past, Present, and Future.” I hope it goes better than last year. Probably the best part of my talk last year was the title, and the rest was downhill. I was nervous about talking for almost a full hour without a prepared text, but the result was, I am afraid, pretty boring. It’s hard to read a talk outdoors, with temperatures in the 80’s, at 2 in the afternoon after everyone has had lunch and is feeling a little sleepy, and not be boring. It didn’t help a bit that I couldn’t get the installed AV system to work and my backup, my own laptop, didn’t work either. (Actually, I think it did, I just didn’t know what button to push to direct the output to a remote screen instead of the computer’s. And there wasn’t enough time to trouble shoot it.) So I had to do without illustrations, a real disaster. I’ll be much better prepared this time and will make sure I find time to check it all out ahead of time.

But there was one really good thing that happened. At the end I said I would hang around a little bit if anyone wanted to talk to me, and a few did, nice, patient people that most AirVenture participants are. Then, after almost everyone else had gone, a young man came up to me and said, “Did you write Fly Like a Pro?” And I said, “Yes, yes I did. That was my first book, in fact.”

He said, “That book is the reason I am in aviation now. I read it and it made my want to be a pilot.”

I was overwhelmed. I really didn’t know what to say except “Thank you, that’s really great to hear. That’s what every author wants to hear.”

And then he left. Made my day. I hope he comes back and gives me another chance.

Weren't Listening

I was talking to a friend years ago, a friend who happens to also be the owner/pilot of a Cessna 421, about some flying experience I had had, something involving the L-1011, and the story involved the flight director (FD). I’ve long since forgotten the details of the story, but I’ve never forgotten his response, because he said, “Do you use that flight director thing often?”

I was puzzled and even a little astonished by his question. I used it all the time—every 1011 pilot does. Not having a flight director—flying on “raw data” (basic altitude, airspeed, pitch, roll, rate of climb, and nav position data) is practically an abnormal situation for a 1011. A 1011 pilot— any turbine aircraft pilot, really—will almost certainly fly a couple of raw data approaches in initial training, and a raw data approach is sometimes one of the discretionary items for review in annual training, but normally, meaning 99.9% of the time, flying a jet aircraft means flying using flight director commands. So the question puzzled me, because it showed that he clearly didn’t understand how valuable they were.

So I said, “Well, yah, almost all the time. Why? Don’t you have a flight director in your 421?”

And he said, “Yah, but I never use it. What does it do for you?”

Since then I’ve noticed that he is not at all alone. Most general aviation pilots have no idea what a flight director does, and if they have one never use it. Most seem to think that it just tells you what you know already, so what’s the point, and it kind of gets in the way of seeing the artificial horizon. I’ve noticed also, checking out ads for aircraft for sale, that very minor equipment options often get a big splash: “Rosen sun visors!”, while the existence of a flight director is often relegated to almost an after thought—Bendix Three Axis Autopilot/FD. Most aircraft ads also show cockpit panel pictures, but the pictures almost never show the flight director in view, as if no one cares about something as inconsequential as that. But the fact is, a flight director not only makes flying jet aircraft easy, it can make flying any aircraft easy, especially on approach in instrument conditions.

So what does a flight director do for you? A flight director is a computer that knows what you want to do because you have told it so using panel selectors and buttons, just like you do for the autopilot: maintain an altitude, fly a given heading, track a VOR radial, fly to a waypoint, intercept and fly a localizer and glide slope. It then looks at all the relevant flight data to determine what you need to do at any given instant to achieve those outcomes, and it directs that requirement to a command bar (or bars: more on the two main types of flight directors later) that, if followed by the pilot flying, will accomplish those ends. If, for instance, you have selected Altitude Hold for 8000 feet, and it sees that you are actually at 8025 feet, it will command a slight pitch down. To follow the command you pitch the aircraft down until the aircraft symbol on the artificial horizon matches the flight director command bar. As the aircraft corrects back to 8000 feet, the command bar will move back up slightly, you match that by pitching up slightly, and as long as you continue to match the aircraft symbol with the command bar, you will stay at 8000.

So how is that different from simply doing your normal job as a pilot to maintain an assigned altitude? If you see you are at 8025 feet and are assigned 8000 feet, all you have to do is pitch down slightly with a little forward pressure on the yoke, and wait for the altitude to correct, then release the pressure. What did the flight director do that you wouldn’t do anyway? And the simple answer is, done perfectly, nothing. But the flight director makes it easy. The flight director has all the available flight data in one place, in its computer. It doesn’t have to rely on a scan of all the data the way a good instrument pilot flying by raw data does. It also has a computer generated profile to accomplish the goal as efficiently and smoothly as possible. The flight director knows exactly how much forward pressure is required, and it knows when to start releasing that pressure to perfectly recapture the altitude (or the localizer, or the heading, or any other flight profile). And it knows that if you are off by 100 feet that that will take a bigger pitch change then a 25 foot deviation, and an earlier change in pitch to recapture. The flight director takes all the guess work out, puts everything you need to know in one place, and makes flying smoother and more efficient.

Where the flight director really comes into its own is on approach. If it only served to make smooth corrections to altitude and heading it probably wouldn’t make much sense, but when you are dealing with a very dynamic environment, that’s when putting all this information into a single instrument that tells you exactly what to do makes sense. Think about what happens on a typical instrument approach: first come several altitude, airspeed, and heading changes as you descend and position yourself for the approach (or the heading changes could be tracking changes if you are doing a non precision approach or are in a non radar environment ). Both descending and speed changes require power adjustments. Engine parameters have to be monitored to avoid temperature shocking the engine (assuming a reciprocating engine). Tracking changes, frequency selections, turning fuel pumps on or off, opening cowl flaps, all involve looking away from the primary flight instruments. Descent and landing checklists have to be accomplished. Outside temperatures may have to be checked if it is cold enough for icing to be a factor, and, if it’s hot, convective activity may be a factor. And with all this going on, an intermediate approach course has to be intercepted and, for a precision approach, a glide slope intercepted and for a non precision approach step down points have to be identified and descents begun. It is just a very busy time. Anything that can be done to reduce that workload is a good thing, and that’s what the flight director does because it takes the scanning part out: everything you need to know to fly the approach is shown right in front of you on not only a single instrument, but on the most important one, the artificial horizon, directly in front of you. (The artificial horizon is often called the attitude direction indicator [ADI] on turbine aircraft, and the electronic “glass” version is called an EADI. The picture above is 757/767 EADI.) Wander a little off course while reaching over to change frequencies? When you look back there it is right in front of you: a command bar telling you to bank a little to the left. Didn’t catch the glide slope coming down—you looked down to open the cowl flaps? Command bar shows a pitch down. The flight director doesn’t eliminate the need to scan—the smart pilot is always keeping his or her eyes moving—but it makes the scan much less critical, a backup rather than the primary focus. With a flight director the right thing to do is always right in front of you in the form of flight director commands.

We been saying “command bar” but there are actually two types of flight directors, one that uses a single cue, or command bar, and one that uses two. (The one shown is a double cue command.) The single cue is sometimes called a “bat wing” cue because it looks a little like a wing: to command a fly up the wing goes up, to fly left it tilts left, and to fly up and left it moves up and tilts left. All the pilot has to do is maneuver the aircraft to keep the airplane symbol snugged up against the “bat wing” to execute the selected command.

The second type is sometimes called a “cross hairs” cue because the two cues look like cross hairs on a rifle scope: one vertical bar and one horizontal bar. To command a turn to the left, the vertical bar moves left: The pilot banks left, into the command bar, and when the bank is correct the vertical bar will return to center. Same thing for pitch: Bar goes up, pilot pitches up to match the bar. To command both a left turn and a climb, the vertical bar goes left of center, the horizontal bar moves up from center, and the pilot aims at the point where the two cross: left of center and up from center. So instead of matching the aircraft to a bat wing, the pilot puts the aircraft where the two bars cross—“in the sights.” The main advantage to the bat wing is that it is intuitive and easy—a kid could do it, just tell him or her to keep the aircraft symbol as close to the bat wing as possible without covering it. The main advantage to the double cue is that it is more precise: you can put the aircraft symbol exactly on the cross hairs, whereas with the bat wing there is always either a little bit of a gap between the symbol and the wing, or an overlap. It is still very precise, but not quite as precise.

Prior to going to work for ATA, my only experience with the two cue system was a few hours as a copilot on a Cessna 421, which happened to have that type installed. (Which was also how I knew that my friend’s 421 almost certainly had a FD as well, but I wasn’t sure what kind.) I didn’t use it much because I didn’t really understand how it worked then either and no one else I was flying with at the time seemed to know much about it, or if they did have any desire to show me. Training on it was non existent and trying to figure it out myself wasn’t easy either because it wasn’t intuitive the way a bat wing flight director was. After the 421 I went on to Citations and Falcons, all of which had bat wing flight directors. They were easy to figure out and I used them a lot. Eventually, years later, I ended up at a now non existent charter airline in Boston called Five Star Airlines as an 1011 copilot. The Five Star 1011s came from TWA and had bat wing flight directors as well. So, as far as I knew at that point, the double cue flight director was an earlier technology that had been completely replaced by the “newer” bat wing type command bar and the fact that I still didn’t really know how they worked didn’t seem to matter much because I would probably never see one again. I was wrong, and I was headed for trouble.

The Five Star job was maybe the best job I ever had, so of course it didn’t last. Less than a year later I found myself unemployed and that’s when I went to work for ATA, then known as American Trans Air. I really would have been happy with almost any flying job at that point, but ATA was attractive because it was a lot like Five Star, only bigger, and they had 1011s as well and a base in Boston which was important because that was close to where I was living. What they didn’t have, as I discovered on my first day in ground school, were bat wing flight directors—ATA used the “old” double cue, cross hair type. Great, I thought. On top of having to start at the bottom with another airline, I have to figure out how to use this ridiculous cross hair flight director and act like I knew how to do it all along.

I got through initial indoctrination and 1011 ground school, and several weeks later I found myself, along with my sim partner (who also came from Five Star, Andre Paillex, and who is also now retired and still a great friend), sitting in a briefing room in Miami about to go into the sim for the first four hours of 1011 flight training using a type of flight director that I had almost no experience with.

The sim instructor was a legendary, retired Delta captain named Clark Willard. Clark had so many ratings he had to have several extensions put on his “ticket”—it unfolded like a road map. But he been flying airplanes and instructing in airplanes and simulators for a long time, and, after finding out that we had virtually no experience with the double cue flight director, he tried to put us at ease. He told us that he was going to explain the secret to using it, and, if we did just like he said, we wouldn’t have any problems at all. He said to just forget about snugging up to the bat wing and forget about when and why the needle on this new thing goes left or right or up or down or what it means when it stops moving or when it starts back, and just remember one thing: Put the center of the airplane symbol, which was a dot right in the middle of the aircraft symbol (it’s a square in the flight director shown above—same thing), right on top of the cross hairs—where the vertical and horizontal bars cross. “If they move, you move. Just keep the dot on the cross hairs. That’s all you have to know about this thing. You do that and everything will be just all right.”

Sounded real simple. So we went into “The Box”—the simulator—for our first session. The first session is simple, of course, no abnormals or emergencies, you start with a normal takeoff, some straight and level, speed changes, some turns to headings, some air work—steep turns, stalls, the usual stuff everybody does in any new airplane. We took turns flying, Andre and I, swapping seats so we did all of our flying from the right seat, the seat we were headed for, and we eventually worked our way back to the pattern for vectors to final for a couple of ILS approaches in VFR conditions. I remembered what Clark had said about keeping the dot on the cross hairs and it worked out pretty well, I thought, particularly on the ILS approaches. As soon as the localizer course came alive, actually, before that—the 1011 flight director was smart enough to know it was approaching the localizer course even before the needle came alive—the vertical bar would shift left moving the cross hairs, the aiming point, to the left. We banked to the left to put the airplane dot on the cross hairs and as long as we kept the dot on the cross, tracking the localizer was a piece of cake. When the glide slope came alive we went to flaps 22 at two dots above, gear down a dot above, and then landing flaps at glide slope intercept—the standard approach configuration profile for the 1011. At glide slope intercept the horizontal bar dropped down, moving the cross hairs down, and again putting the dot on the cross started us down the glide slope and all we had to do to adjust for deviations high or low was keep the dot on the cross hairs. It worked great, and I was very relieved to know that adjusting to this new type of flight director wasn’t going to be such a big problem.

So at the end of our first four hours of flight training we found ourselves back in the briefing room, where I fully expected to be told what a great job we had done on our first session, and how he didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t just whip right on through the syllabus without any real problems, and how pleased he was to be working with professionals. (I had a little speech all made up for him, just in case he needed it.) Instead he said absolutely nothing. He sat across the table just looking at us for awhile, and finally he said, “Well, I guess you men weren’t listening when I said, ‘Just put the dot on the cross hairs.’ This is what I meant.” He got up and went to the wall board, one of those white, plastic things that you draw or write on with a felt tip pen that squeaks a lot, and drew a great big circle. He then drew a single vertical line straight down through that circle, and a horizontal line across it. He stood and looked at it for a second, and then he said, “So this circle is the dot. And these lines are the cross hairs. Notice how, when I do that, the cross hairs divide the dot into four quarters, each equal in size. That’s what I mean by ‘Put the dot on the cross hairs'.”

I looked at Andre and he had a very diplomatic, neutral look on his face, but I was thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” This is going to be a long couple of weeks of training. As a practical matter, even if you could put the dot exactly over the cross hairs, the actual cross hairs virtually obliterated the dot—covered it up—unlike his great big circle with two thin lines across it. There weren’t “four quarters, each equal in size,” there was maybe just little bits of the dot just visible underneath the vertical and horizontal bars. We knew he was exaggerating for effect, but it still seemed a little ridiculous.

But I have to say, the lesson took. The next day I didn’t just “put the dot on the cross hairs,” I tried my best to divide that dot into four equal sections. And darn if I didn’t start shooting some pretty good approaches to minimums, the kind where, exactly at decision height, you hear, “Runway” (the standard call out by the pilot not flying when the runway or runway lights have been picked up visually), and you look up and there it is right directly in front of you: approach lights, runway end markings, centerline lights, and big rectangular landing zone markings. Pretty neat. “Don’t touch a thing until you hear ‘50 feet’, you’re doing just fine.” At 200 feet it’s very important that that runway be right in front of you because you can’t be very far off the center line or at all high or low and still make a safe landing that close in. It has to be right there in front of you, and I learned that if I kept that dot on the cross hairs so that it divides the dot into four equal parts, that’s where it would be.

So that’s why I was so puzzled by my friends question about whether I ever used that flight director thing or not. I’m sure there are people who can fly a perfect ILS approach every time without using a flight director, but I’m not one of them. Raw data approaches are still fun, and everyone should practice them now and then to maintain proficiency in case you have to do one, but the flight director takes all the sweat out of it regardless of what type you use. (But I am a total convert to the cross hair system, and it seems to me that that type is now the more common one, at least at the airline level.) I can’t imagine not using one if I have one, and if you have one but have never really figured out what it was for, go find yourself an instructor with some real world experience with flight directors (not all flight instructors have that experience—I didn’t when I was one), or a corporate jet or airline pilot who will fly with you, and go out on a good day and start playing around with it. It could change your life.

A final thought, if you’re still with me:

What’s the relationship between the flight director and the autopilot? Don’t they both do the same thing? And the simple answer is, yes, they do: the same commands can be selected for each and each has the same data inputs, but the autopilot uses that information to actually fly the required profile while the flight director shows you what to do to fly it yourself. In complex installations, each has its own computer and receives its own data inputs, computes its own solutions, and one directs those solutions to the autopilot servos and the other to the flight director command bars. If the flight director and the autopilot are both engaged, and if they both arrive at the same solution, the flight director will mirror what the autopilot is doing: they will agree and the autopilot will appear to keep either the aircraft symbol snugged up against the bat wing or the dot over the cross hairs. If they disagree, the flight director will command something different and that may be the first good clue that a malfunction is imminent. Each serves as a check on the other, which is why when you have two separate systems, which you usually do at the turbine level, the flight director is normally displayed even when the aircraft is controlled by the autopilot. For simple installations, where both are controlled by a single computer, the display is a redundancy when on autopilot, but it is still good to engage it in case the autopilot drops off. Assuming the reason for the disconnect is limited to the autopilot, like reaching a trim limit, and not something common to both the autopilot and the flight director, the flight director will continue to provide guidance for hand flying, which is a very good thing to have when an autopilot suddenly and unexpectedly disconnects. There is just no end to all the good things a flight director can do for you.

KDTW

Airports are like little cities in many ways. Actually, big airports are like little cities, and little airports are more like villages, but in each case they represent microcosms of the cities they serve. In the case of major airports that means they come complete with hotels, restaurants, banks, stores, and an enormous underground, behind the scenes world that is almost organic in the way it maintains the life of the airport.

Airport names usually parallel the city they serve and also often include the name of someone honored: Washington National Airport, for instance, one of the oldest and most historic airports in the country, was recently renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. (There are many who still call it simply “Washington National,” for many different reasons.) Airports also have familiar three character identifiers: DCA for Reagan National, for instance, BOS for Boston, SFO for San Francisco. Smaller airports don’t get the full three letter treatment but are assigned three character codes: The airport where I began my career in aviation, LaFleur Airport, Northampton, Massachusetts, is 7B2. (It was renamed simply Northampton Airport after Larry LaFleur sold it, but the identifier is still 7B2.)

Major airports also have a four letter ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) identifier, an internationally standardized method of identifying major airports. (Or sort of standardized, anyway. As usual in aviation matters, the United States, partially for historical reasons, and partially because we’re just so big and tend to get our way, usually does things a little differently.) The ICAO standard divides the world into regions: Northern Europe is a region, for instance, southern Europe, called Lower Europe, another. Then within each region there are countries, and within each country are airports. The first letter in the ICAO system represents the region, E for Northern Europe, L for Lower Europe, for instance, and the second letter represents the country: G for Great Britain, D for Deutschland, I for Ireland. The problem of having two countries that begin with the same letter is solved by putting them in separate regions: Ireland, Italy and Iceland all get I’s, but Ireland is in the E region, Italy is in the L region, and Iceland is in the B region. Thus Irish airport identifiers all begin with EI ,Italian with LI, and Icelandic with BI.

The last two letters stand for the city, which means that if we assume all 26 letters are available, then 26 times 26 equals 676, and that is the maximum number of airport identifiers available in each country. Thus Shannon Airport becomes EINN, Rome Fiumicino is LIRF, LFPG is Paris Charles DeGaulle, and EDDF is Frankfurt International. With a little bit of familiarity with international airports and some creative guesswork, you can often figure out the airports from the identifiers alone: LIRA means Lower Europe, specifically Italy, and RA is for Rome’s Ciampino Airport (Roma, in Italian, hence RA.) LEMD is also Lower Europe, but the country is Spain (the E in LEMD is for Espana; the names of the countries are in the language of that country), and the city is Madrid. Okay, maybe it takes a lot of familiarity and guesswork, but there is a system.

North America has a somewhat different system. North America is divided into three regions, Canada with a C, Mexico with an M, and the United States with a K. (I’m sure there’s a reason for the K, maybe even a good one, but it doesn’t jump right out at me.) What we also got was not having to use the region, country, two letter airport system, but instead got to add the common three letter identifier to the K. Thus Washington National, DCA, became KDCA, Los Angeles KLAX, Detroit KDTW, and so on. And KDTW is where our story comes in.

If airports are actually small cities themselves, then it stands to reason that life’s comings and goings also happen there, just as they do elsewhere. And not always for the better. One particular incident stands out in my mind, one that made clear to me that airports are more than just places for airplanes to takeoff and land. I had just gotten back to Detroit, my base at the time (full name Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, KDTW), after having done a “Vegas Turn.” I was riding the employee parking bus, useful also for connecting between terminals—I was on my way to another terminal to get a jump seat ride home. The bus stopped at the main entrance to the Northwest terminal and I saw a bunch of Northwest flight attendants standing outside at the curb as we pulled up, waiting for the bus. I also saw a middle aged, very nicely dressed woman standing there with two other women standing on either side of her, sort of supporting her. The woman in the middle had her hands to her face and was staring somewhat upward, off into space, with a look on her face that was hard to identify, something between confusion and concentration.

The doors opened to the bus, the Northwest flight attendants got on, lots of noise, bags being dragged up the steps, scrambling for seats, shouts of recognition from other Northwest flight attendants already on the bus, and in the midst of all this commotion one of the flight attendants who had just gotten on said, “Did you see that woman on the curb back there? She just found out her son had been killed.”

Then it got real quiet. In an instant we all went from thinking about the day behind us and getting home, to a realization of what we had just witnessed. And I knew I would never again see the entrance to that terminal without seeing that woman’s face.

Big Sky, Montana

I just got back from another week of skiing with my buddies from back east, this time at Big Sky, Montana. (It should be called Big Mountain, Montana, see picture above.) Virtually nothing related to aviation occurred on this trip, unlike the previous one to Snowbird (see “Amazing”, December 12, 2007), except I did see a Socata TBM 850 taxiing at Bozeman Airport, the aircraft pictured in the previous blog “Pro Am”, and, more importantly, I now have a digital camera, a Canon G9, which I took on this trip, facilitating considerably my ability to include pictures. (Virtually all of the previous photos were taken with a Leica M6, a great camera, but film only, which means that I have to have the photos scanned and converted to digital. It works, but it is slow, costs money, and the result is a big step removed from original quality. The direct to digital obviously has many advantages when doing a blog.)

The main reason I wanted to blog something about this trip, aviation related or otherwise, is because of a really funny thing that happened at the airport waiting to go back to San Francisco. Two of my buddies were waiting for an earlier flight to New York, and one of them, Dan, called home to say he was on his way and got his nine year daughter, Dana, on the phone. After the usual chit-chat, Dan said, “It sounds like you picked up a cough while I was gone.”

“No,” she said, “the kitchen’s on fire.”

“The kitchen’s on fire?

“Yah, mommy burned something in the microwave and now the microwave is on fire.”

“Well, maybe you ought to get out of the house!”

“Okay, dad, see you when you get home.”

I guess it wasn’t really a bad fire, but they may need a new microwave. Good nerves on Dana. May make a good pilot someday.

Pro Am

I like to play golf, but I’m terrible and never seem to get any better. Which means I’m always hitting balls out of bounds, or in water hazards, or into the woods. It’s frustrating not only because it means extra strokes every time I do that, but looking for golf balls is a real drag.

When I watch the pros play, they don’t do that of course, or at any rate, they don’t do that very often, and when they do there are usually lots of people around, people who see where their ball went, and sometimes even people who stop the ball from going any further, keeping a bad shot from becoming a horrible shot.

The pros also have some other things going for them that I don’t have (besides actual talent and a lot of experience): they have caddies to help carrying all their stuff, to tell them the exact yardage to anything on the course, and to act as coaches and help with putts. In addition, if a pro has a question about the rules there is an official with every party to answer their question and keep them out of further trouble. Shoot, I could probably break 90 most of the time if I had everything going for me that they do for them.

Of course, I have some things going for me that they don’t. For one thing, I don’t need to worry about the rules much, except in serious tournament play, because the way I play no one really cares how I score it. I also don’t have any TV cameras aimed at me, no is about to take my picture during my backswing, and no one yells, “You da Man!” as I pose, watching my drive soar hundreds of yards down the fairway. Knowing exact yardages isn’t too important either, because I can’t hit the ball an exact yardage anyway. So we each have some things going for us that the other doesn’t—we’re playing two very different versions of golf.

And I got to wondering if the same thing doesn’t apply to aviation, because when I look back at my professional career, and forward to maybe flying just for fun and personal transportation, I am aware of how much help I had as a professional—how much I had going for me thanks to others—and how much tougher the general aviation pilot’s job is. But, then again, the non-professional pilot also has some things going for him or her too. So I decided to try to make up a list for each, a list of what each has going for him that the other doesn’t (which also means “going for her,” but I just can’t bring myself to say “him or her” every time).

My list is not meant to be complete or detailed, just an overview. I put it out there for your comments and responses, which I would very much like to get, both to improve and fill out the list, but also to get your opinions: is this or that item really an advantage, or just a difference, or irrelevant or whatever..

Here's my list:

What an airline pilot has going for him or her that a general aviation pilot doesn’t:*

He knows he’s legal in terms of training, flight physical, and currency, because someone else is watching it for him.

He knows his airplane is legal and airworthy—all certificates are in plain view and maintenance has signed off on it in the logbook.

He has help—a copilot, possibly a flight engineer or international officer—with preflight inspections, W&B, cockpit prep, takeoff computations, copying ATISs and clearances, taxi routings, maintaining a flight log, approach monitoring, problem solving and checklists.

He knows he has a good flight plan that virtually guarantees a safe outcome that someone else (a dispatcher) has prepared and taken equal responsibility for.

He has the most current facilities information in the form of complete NOTAMS.

He knows he can make a safe takeoff, even after an engine failure.

He knows he can reach and land at a safe airport if he loses an engine, and he knows he can go around on the remaining engine or engines at any point prior to touchdown, if necessary.

He knows he can handle virtually any systems abnormality or malfunction enroute.

He knows he has the performance and equipment to handle, or the information to avoid, adverse weather—snow, ice, icing, thunderstorms, low visibilities, turbulence.

He has almost instantaneous access to outside, expert help—company operations, engineering, legal.

He knows his flight is being monitored and that he will be notified if anything significant changes enroute—destination or alternate weather, delays, facility outages, severe turbulence or icing reports, customs problems, curfew problems—anything that might adversely affect the safe outcome of the flight as planned.

He has another set of eyes and ears to catch his little mistakes before they become big mistakes.

What a general aviation pilot has going for him or her that an airline pilot does not:

He only has to comply with Parts 61 and 91 of the FARs.

No one is looking over his shoulder and second guessing him, neither in the cockpit nor from the outside.

He never has to keep an eye on a weak copilot and decide when he needs to instruct or intervene and he never has to fly with a difficult copilot, one that is argumentative, combative, competitive, lazy, uncooperative, or unresponsive.

He doesn’t have to coordinate with a cabin crew and he doesn’t have to make passenger announcements.

He can take as much fuel as he wants, and usually does by filling the tanks.

He has complete freedom to choose where he flies, when he flies, by which rules, and along which routes to an airport of his choice.

He doesn’t have a schedule to keep, which means there is no pressure to arrive on time.

The more time, money, and effort he is willing to expend, the closer he can come to having the best of both professional and general aviation.

*What follows applies to a large extent to all professionally flown operations, but in particular airline ( Part 121) operations. Professional pilots operating under other parts such as Part 135 (air taxi) and Part 91 (corporate) will still have many of these things going for them, but not all will be required or available—there is no dispatch requirement outside of Part 121 scheduled service, for instance.

Track Up

San Francisco has some of the most unusual weather in the world, a fact perhaps first noted by Mark Twain in his now famous quip, “I spent the coldest winter of my life one summer in San Francisco.” Tourists still don’t get it, assuming that San Francisco means California and California means fun in the sun, so pack those shorts and flip flops. My wife and I regularly hike up to Twin Peaks, a 900 foot hill above our house, partially for the exercise and partially for the 360 degree views of the entire Bay area, and there are often vendors there making a nice living selling sweat shirts with Golden Gate Bridge emblems on them to freezing tourists for outrageous prices. The wind off the ocean up there is strong and cold, even in July.

The reason it is cold is because it has just crossed hundreds of miles of ocean that is 50 to 55 degrees at the surface. The reason it is strong is because the central valley heats up to 100 degrees or more every day in the summer, creating a powerful vacuum that sucks that cold air inland, dragging cold fog along with it. The gap known as The Golden Gate, the narrow opening that separates San Francisco and Sausalito (a gap that was there for a long time before a bridge was built to cross it, in fact for a long time before it was called The Golden Gate), creates a kind of venturi, aggravating the wind and fog, and creating, at times, some of the most localized stormy weather in the world. And as you can imagine, the same vendors selling sweat shirts on Twin Peaks also do a nice business at both ends of the Golden Gate Bridge.

In the winter the pattern changes somewhat. The water is still cold, but the central valley doesn’t heat up in the winter like it does in the summer, so cold wind and fog is much less common. But winter is when Pacific storms, many originating thousands of miles away and having a tremendous amount of water and massive blocks of cold air from the Arctic to support them, hit the West Coast. San Francisco is no more vulnerable than any other area along the coast, but it’s unique geography again exacerbates the conditions when one of these storms does hit, the hills along the shore lifting the winds, the Bay itself swirling them, and The Golden Gate accelerating them.

We have such a storm forecast for later today and on through the weekend, January 3, 2008 until January 5, 2008. Heavy rain is forecast, becoming snow as it hits the Sierras, up to five feet, and winds are forecast to gust to 70 miles per hour in the Bay area, up to 100 miles per hour in the mountains. It is forecast to be one of the strongest storms to hit the Bay area in several years. The last such storm hit in November of 2002. I know, because I was flying that night.

I was doing a Maui “turn”, where you leave SFO in the morning, fly to Maui, turn around and fly back later that same day. Very routine, always the same track over, the same track back, visual approach to the north at Maui, often a visual to 28 left at SFO, unless the weather is down and the wind is out of the south, when you can plan on an ILS to either 19 left or right. The only thing that varied a little bit on those turns was the weather.

That night the weather was forecast to be quite stormy coming back to SFO, but nothing that would indicate anything other than maybe some arrival delays and a rough approach. As I remember the forecast was for rain with ceilings of 1000 feet or so, visibility a mile or two, occasionally down to ½ mile, with winds of 25 to 35 knots from the south, right down 19 left and right. Oakland, just across the bay, had the same forecast, so it wasn’t a good alternate that night, but Sacramento was forecast to be much better, the storm really wasn’t supposed to hit it hard at all. So despite the somewhat adverse weather, not going was never really a consideration: we would probably have arrival delays—you always did when the weather went down to instrument conditions at SFO—but we had plenty of fuel for that, and Sacramento was a good alternate if needed, and we had plenty of fuel to get there. The weather would be rough but manageable, we had anticipated delays, and we had a good out, so I was comfortable leaving Maui.

Approaching the coast all seemed well: weather was as forecast with no delays anticipated. Then, suddenly, things changed. Just seconds from PIRAT, a common holding point for arrivals from the west, center told us to hold as published, SFO was closed due to a “microburst.” “Microburst?” I thought. Thunderstorms were possible anytime you have a clash of air masses, but weren’t forecast or expected. But whatever, we quickly slowed to holding speed, programmed the FMC to enter the hold, got an expect approach clearance time, which the controller said was just an estimate, who knew how long the airport would stay closed, and starting figuring up how long we could hold, which looked like an hour comfortably, maybe a little more if we were lucky.

This is one of those times when ACARS, an automated system for communicating with the company, pays for itself many times over. I got on the ACARS and quickly sent a message to dispatch telling them we were holding, gave them our fuel remaining, asked if they had any more information on SFO and asked for the Sacramento weather. They came back that a major storm was going through the whole area, including Sacramento, and all airports were reporting winds of 50 to 60 knots, gusting to 75. The best airport, ironically, was SFO because the wind was right down the runway, but it was closed. San Jose and Oakland both had the same 50 to 60 knot winds, and both had runways perpendicular to the wind. So we decided to wait it out for awhile and hope conditions improved.

They didn’t. As we approached the end of our comfortable holding time, I told the International Officer, a young pilot named Matt Gibbs, and a terrific pilot in his own right—to contact the company directly on the radio and get updated Sacramento weather, and check to see if any other airports had improved, and to tell them that if Sacramento was still the best alternate that we were going to take our chances and divert there. While he was on the radio approach control came on and said, “Amtran 123, Oakland has opened up, we are accepting approaches, you’re number one.”

I said, “Standby, we’re checking with our company,” and he said, “There’s only one opening, you’re it, yes or no.”

I said, “Yes.” I yelled back to Matt, “Tell them Oakland’s open for one arrival, we’re going there.” And we did. It was a wild ride, the aircraft barely controllable, the FO hanging on to anything he could get a hold of, the IO wedged between the jump seat and the center console, and I was hanging onto the controls as best I could trying to keep it upright. I remember at one point glancing down at the EHSI, the electronic horizontal situation indicator, which displays an average wind vector showing the direction and strength of the wind, and it was showing 70 knots directly from the right. I thought about going around, but I didn’t know where else we could go that would be any better. I could have declared an emergency and landed at SFO anyway, a closed airport, but that was a pretty extreme measure and in any case only solved the cross wind problem, not the wind itself. So I continued.

It turned out alright, but a lot of that was just good luck. I got it on, got on the brakes, had to keep flying it all the way to the end of the runway, actually it still wanted to fly even taxiing in, bouncing and bucking all over the place, and taxied to a spot on the ramp in rain so heavy I could barely see the marshaller. It was all he could do to stand upright, but he was able to indicate where to park. (It turned out he wasn’t even a marshaller, but a United mechanic who saw we had nowhere to go and just parked us, all on his own. I wish I’d gotten his name, he was a real hero.) I was so glad to be on the ground, I took a big deep breath, turned around in my seat and all I could see were four big eyes staring at me. I guess we were all pretty scared. I could second guess what went on that night for the rest of my life, but it worked out. We were down, no one was hurt, and nothing was broken.

The most unusual thing that happened though, had to do with the way modern glass cockpits are designed. The EHSI is based on the HSI—a mechanical horizontal situation indicator that is essentially a slaved gyro compass with a course deviation indicator overlay. Because the compass is gyro stabilized and slaved to a remote magnetic reading device, it is a steady and reliable indicator of magnetic heading. With an airplane symbol in the middle, the combined device shows at all times the aircraft heading at the top, and with the proper course set it shows the relationship between aircraft heading and track: when on course, the difference between the two will be the wind correction angle.

The traditional HSI is a mechanical device, but the EHSI is an electronic device and is not limited by its mechanics to a compass rose and a single course indicator, but can be configured in a variety of ways to suit different situations and different preferences or policies. One of the ways is to configure it like the traditional HSI and this is the way many pilots transitioning to EHSIs like to configure it because it is so familiar. Because the heading is always shown at the top in this configuration it is called, logically enough, “heading up.”

But the more common configuration, the one all experienced EHSI users almost always use and the one less experienced users normally transition to as they get comfortable with the EHSI, is called “track up.” That is, instead of showing where the aircraft is pointed, or headed, at the very top, the top shows where the aircraft is going—where it is tracking. Normally the differences are slight and barely noticeable because the difference between the two, which represents the wind correction angle, is usually only a few degrees. With a wind correction angle of five degrees to the right, for instance, with heading up, the top of the EHSI would show the aircraft heading straight ahead with the desired course five degrees to the left of that. With track up, the course would be at the top and the heading bug would be five degrees to the right of that. In either case, if you were to look carefully at the ground you might be able to see that where you were headed and where you were going were off by five degrees, but in almost all cases both heading and track would be close together, one up and one to the side, which one depending on whether you had selected track up or heading up.

I was using track up that night, just as I almost always did, the normal configuration for the 757. But that night, with a 70 degree crosswind from the right and an approach speed of around 140 knots or so, my wind correction angle was 35 degrees to the right of course. I broke out of the overcast at about 1200 feet with what appeared to be good visibility underneath, five or six miles. The EHSI showed me dead on course, straight ahead, but looking straight ahead all I could see was water. I could see the city of San Francisco to the right, so I knew I was in more or less the right place, but I couldn’t find the airport: it was 35 degrees to the left of where I was looking, well outside of my peripheral vision and, in fact, hidden from view by the pillar between the front window and the side window. I was directly on course, but couldn’t see the runway. It took me a couple of heart stopping seconds to figure it what was happening and find the runway behind the pillar. The greater the wind correction angle, the greater the difference between track and heading and the greater the difference between what you see straight ahead and where you’re going. I knew that, in theory anyway, some dim memory from ground school, but after that I knew it for real.

Once we were parked, it took an hour or so for the wind to die down enough for air stairs to be safely driving up to the aircraft and we off loaded our frightened but relieved passengers onto chartered buses that took them back to SFO. An hour or so after that the storm had passed through, SFO opened up again, and we refueled and flew it back there empty for the next day’s launch. Driving home I saw trees down everywhere, and most of the city was blacked out. My wife had long since gone to bed in the darkness and cold—no heat—because she didn’t know exactly where I was but wasn’t worried because she knew I wouldn’t be silly enough to be out flying on a night like that. I read in the paper the next day that winds had hit 100 mph at SFO and a maintenance shed had been destroyed along with a lot of minor damage all around the airport. So maybe it wouldn’t have been such a good idea to have declared an emergency and gone to SFO after all. Not with a perfectly good airport right in front of me.