Author: Paul Handover

Skydiving stunt or utter madness?

From the Daily Mail (UK Newspaper) online

A skydiver has pulled off an astonishing stunt by climbing out of a glider’s cockpit, crawling along the wing and then somersaulting underneath and stepping onto the wing of a second glider flying below.

Paul Steiner then moves back onto the main fuselage of the second glider while the first glider turns upside down and flies overhead so that he can reach up and hold the tail fin at 100mph, forming a human link between the two aircraft. He then leaps off and parachutes back to the ground.

The spectacular stunt, captured on YouTube, was carried out by the Red Bull skydive team 2,100 metres above the mountains in Styria, Austria. And they look mightily relieved as they returned to their airfield.

More incredible pictures here.

By Paul Handover

More on the SR-71, Part 2

The second part of the guest post by Captain Dave Jones. Ed.

Part One was yesterday which I introduced as follows:

The SR-71, a truly great aircraft

John’s couple of articles about the SR-71 here and here reminded me of the time that I was given an article by my instructor at Mojave. He was a military test pilot and ended up with NASA and he was one of a select few to fly the Blackbird as a civilian….a great chap to talk to… I continue with Part 2

     The SR-71 was an expensive aircraft to operate. The most significant
cost was tanker support, and in 1990, confronted with budget cutbacks, the
Air Force retired the SR-71. The Blackbird had outrun nearly 4,000 missiles,
not once taking a scratch from enemy fire. On her final flight, the
Blackbird, destined for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, sped
from Los Angeles to Washington in 64 minutes, averaging 2,145 mph and
setting four speed records. 

        The SR-71 served six presidents, protecting America for a quarter of
a century. Unbeknownst to most of the country, the plane flew over North
Vietnam, Red China, North Korea, the Middle East, South Africa, Cuba,
Nicaragua, Iran, Libya, and the Falkland Islands. On a weekly basis, the
SR-71 kept watch over every Soviet nuclear submarine and mobile missile
site, and all of their troop movements. It was a key factor in winning the
Cold War. 

 Read the final part of this great story

More on the SR-71, Part 1

This is a guest post from Captain Dave Jones. Dave and I go back many years to the time when I was studying for my Instrument Rating, a flying rating that allows one to fly in the same airspace as commercial aircraft. He is what I call a Total Aviation Person! Dave read the posts from John Lewis about the SR-71 and mentioned that he had once had a instructor at Mojave Airport, California who had been a civilian SR-71 pilot. Ed.

The SR-71, a truly great aircraft

This is his article [broken into two posts because of its length. Ed.] with an intro from my instructor.

Awesome story about a truly great aircraft. I only let it go as high as Mach 3.27 once (the design speed was 3.2) but it could do all that is in this story, Cheers, Rogers

In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin
disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi's terrorist
camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the
damage our F-111s had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a "line of death,"
a territorial marking across the Gulf of Sidra, swearing to shoot down any
intruder that crossed the boundary. On the morning of April 15, I rocketed
past the line at 2,125 mph. 

        I was piloting the SR-71 spy plane, the world's fastest jet,
accompanied by Maj. Walter Watson, the aircraft's reconnaissance systems
officer (RSO). We had crossed into Libya and were approaching our final turn
over the bleak desert landscape when Walter informed me that he was
receiving missile launch signals. I quickly increased our speed, calculating
the time it would take for the weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4
surface-to-air missiles capable of Mach 5 - to reach our altitude. I
estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and
stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane's performance. 

 Read more about this amazing story

Man proposes, nature disposes.

A salutary reminder of the power of nature

This is being written at 15:00 UTC on Tuesday, 20th April. It’s still anyone’s guess as to when the airspace that commercial aircraft fly in will be free from volcanic fallout.

Based in Arizona but planning to fly to the UK in about three weeks, it’s also very frustrating finding really good, accurate information to help one think through plans and back-up plans.

But here’s a web site for UK glider (sailplane) pilots that goes a very long way to providing really solid information. Check it out. (And, once again, thanks to Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism for finding the site.)

Well done GlideMet.

By Paul Handover (ex British Gliding Association pilot/instructor.)

Letter from Payson – the language barrier!

America and England are two Nations divided by a common language

The other day I was in Payson’s local Home Depot looking for what I call a torch. As usual, if one has an air of not knowing where to look, it is only a matter of moments before a sales assistant asks if he or she may help.

Home Depot Payson — The Home Depot - Payson, Az

Me: Excuse me but do you sell rechargeable torches?

Sales Assistant: I don’t think so, Sir, you would be best advised to ask at the Information Desk.

A few moments later, at said Information Desk … Do you stock rechargeable torches?

The young girl types on a keyboard, looks up at the screen and replies … I’m sorry Sir, we don’t stock those.

Surprised, I get on looking for the other items that I need.

About 10 minutes later, halfway down an aisle I notice – guess what – a decent selection of rechargeable torches! Pleased, I make my selection and on the way out to the tills pass by the original sales assistant who came to help me.

Me: You see you do sell rechargeable torches!

Sales Assistant: Ah, we call them flashlights!

The point of this rather mundane story is to point out that the differences in language between American English and UK English are much more involved than the famous ones such as rubber and condom!

In fact there are so many different terms in the D-I-Y arena that I have stopped asking for items in what, to me, is the

obvious name and now tend to describe the problem that I am trying to fix.

Thank goodness, most of the assistants in Home Depot, and the equally efficient Ace Hardware, now see me coming and know that I’m still learning to speak American!

Is there a deeper element to this language difference?

I believe so. Because the assumption is that you are going to be understood straight off. If one was in a country where the natural language was other than English then, without doubt, you would know that verbal communication was going to be strained, to say the least.

In America we just take the language for granted. In practice, I suspect that verbal communications are much less effective than one assumes.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that Jean, who was married to an American for 30 years, effortlessly switches to both an American accent and vocabulary as soon as she is talking to the locals. Will I, too, make the switch over time?

(If you are in need of a rechargeable torch yourself, here is a Home Depot coupon. Good luck!)

By Paul Handover

P.S. The quote that started this article appears to have been originated by George Barnard Shaw and not Winston Churchill as I previously thought.

Captain Thomas Murray – RIP

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will know that we usually only post a single article on week-end days. But yesterday I received news that a business friend of many years standing had lost his battle against ill-health and died peacefully in the afternoon. His name was Tom Murray and it’s my wish to celebrate his life by reproducing in full the email that was sent to me. It’s serendipitous that the planned posts by John Lewis for this week-end are aviation related.

On Thursday afternoon the world lost a respected, influential, and creative aviator, one of the “Great Ones”.

Captain Thomas Murray was a pilot, artist, inventor, musician, and father.

A noted jet pilot, he explored the far corners of the globe, mapping out the Canadian Arctic, flying thousands of hours in Africa, Europe, the Himalayas, and the Americas.

Whether flying Gulf streams, Falcon, Hawkers, Learjets or old DC3s, Tom was a pilot’s pilot, the friendly, knowledgeable kind of guy who knew his craft so thoroughly that airmen the world over would “just call Tom”, whenever they needed answers.

He thrilled everyone he met with exciting stories of his travels…

…such as the time he found himself lost while flying over what should have been a large African lake, only to realize the lake had dried up. The only hope of finding civilization was to dead-reckon his way in a straight line and hope he hit the tiny “dot of a town” that was his final destination.

…Or the time his oxygen system failed in the Himalayas at 20,000 feet forcing him to dive the airplane into an 8000-foot valley to find out he was the only conscious crewmember.

…Or the time the entire front panel of his Hawker 800 fell onto his lap during takeoff because someone had forgotten to screw it in.

An adventurer to the max, he was also an inventor and visionary.

Tom took an ordinary problem such as converting hard-to-read aircraft performance charts into easy-to-read tables, and then turned that process into a successful business.

Tom created one of the first electronic documents to find its way into a cockpit – tables of aircraft performance data that minimized the chance of pilot error due to miscalculation that he called “EPADS”.

Constantly working to organize the cockpit, provide higher levels of safety and better information to the pilots, he invented one of the world’s first electronic flight bags, and established the process of managing aircraft electronic checklists, a process that the FAA later modeled their ECL guidelines after.

He joked that the entire cockpit should have a mode that turned it into a simulator during flight to alleviate boredom amongst pilots and give them a chance to train in truly challenging simulations during long flights.

He invented games for children, played flute, and wrote a storybook.

An accomplished artist, he relaxed by attending artist workshops and amazing all with his skill and precision. Just last summer, Tom held his first art exhibition.

His greatest creation with wife Daisy was his son, Thomas Alexander Murray, who was born with the charismatic smile and sense of mischief that characterized Tom at his best.

Tom’s inventions were his “other child”. He would latch onto a design problem like a pit bull.

He cherished the fact that he would uncompromisingly focus on a design and refuse to leave it go it until it was “perfect”, even to his own financial detriment when those around him insisted he was losing sight of the “big picture”.

To this effect, during his last year, he asked me to form a foundation in his name, to offer an annual award (which I’ll see if it’s possible to do)…

“To the individual who focuses on solving difficult problems; who is clearly addicted to finding the solution; who is unrelenting in the face of opposition – which may seem to be (or genuinely be) to their own personal detriment”

Perhaps he wanted an award, he knew he’d win!

Tom was well known for acting as “pilot in command” in his daily life, often forcing people to act “my way or the highway” and insisting that his way was the “right way”.

While this trait was annoying and frustrating to colleagues and friends, what was possibly more frustrating was the number of times one was forced to humble oneself when he was indeed “right”.

In the last year of his life, Tom worked relentlessly to teach others his design philosophy and prepare several of us to run the company he’d created, the vessel that would carry his vision and concern for the safety of his fellow pilots into the future.

Tom loved life and spent his days on a personal mission to make the world a better place, a more interesting place, a more ordered place, a more beautiful place, a more fun place to live…

Tom wasn’t always too clear with his emotions, and though he often maintained a “business” exterior, at heart he was the artist, and his appreciation and depth of love for his family, fellow pilots, and the people who worked for him and with him, his friends — was endless.

You always knew when he respected you, he’d give you a big pilot’s “Thumbs up!”

We will miss him dearly.

Today, we salute a great airman, Captain Thomas Murray.

On behalf of Tom, I know he would wish you a warm, “Thumbs up!”

Charles Guerin President
On-Board Data Systems (OBDS)

Alistair Cooke

A tribute to Alistair Cooke of Letter from America

Many, many people of a certain age will remember with very fond affection the weekly BBC Radio broadcasts of Alistair Cooke under the title of Letter from America.

Alistair’s broadcast title, Letter from America, came to mind because I have been thinking for a couple of weeks about what to call my impressions about moving to Payson in Arizona.

Payson Perceptions? Pictures of Payson? Payson Profile? No! They all seemed naff!

But would it be too presumptuous to echo Cooke’s hugely famous programme title? Hopefully not.

(And regular readers will know that yesterday, the first Letter from Payson was published.)

I did a Google search on Alistair Cooke and immediately found the BBC web page devoted to him. For those that don’t know Cooke here are a few details from WikiPedia.

Born in 1908 in Salford, Lancashire, England, Cooke first started broadcasting for the BBC in 1946 and continued until the 20th February, 2004, a total of 58 years and making Letter from America the longest-running speech radio show in the world.

I hope the BBC will forgive me in reproducing here on Learning from Dogs the obituary that is on the Alistair Cooke website. He was a wonderfully interesting man and his weekly Letter from America seems to have been part of my complete life (in a sense it was).

——————-

Reading Letter from America in the 1950s

He read his Letter from America for 58 years

Esteemed writer and BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke, famed for his programme Letter From America, has died aged 95. BBC News Online looks back at his long and respected career.

For more than half a century, Alistair Cooke’s weekly broadcasts of Letter from America for BBC radio monitored the pulse of life in the United States and relayed its strengths and weaknesses to 50 countries.

His retirement from the show earlier this month after 58 years, due to ill health, brought a flood of tributes for his huge contributing to broadcasting.

Born in Salford, near Manchester, northern England, Alistair Cooke’s father was an iron-fitter and Methodist lay-preacher.

Alistair Cooke

Alistair Cooke: Consummate broadcaster

Winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge he read English, edited the undergraduate magazine, Granta, and founded the Cambridge University Mummers.

Alistair Cooke made his first visit to the United States in 1932, on a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship which took him to both Yale and Harvard universities.

Following his return to Britain, he became the BBC’s film critic and, in 1935, London correspondent for America’s National Broadcasting Corporation.

He returned to the United States in 1937 to work as a commentator on American affairs for the BBC. He made his home there and, in 1941, became an American citizen.

Alistair Cooke

A passion for jazz

March 1946 saw the first edition of American Letter, which became Letter from America in 1949.

The series was the longest-running series in history to be presented by a single person.

Alistair Cooke never decided what he was going to talk about until he wrote the script, made no notes during the preceding week and preferred to rely on his memory.

In an interview given at the time of the 3,000th edition of Letter from America, he appeared to have mixed feelings about the future of the United States.

“In America,” he said, “the race is on between its decadence and its vitality, and it has lots of both.”

Addressing Congress in 1973

He addressed Congress in 1973

Cooke led his listeners through the American vicissitudes of Korea, Kennedy, Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon’s resignation and Clinton’s scandals.

In all of this, Cooke pulled no punches. The lyricism of his broadcasting and the urbanity of his voice did not disguise his fears for America which he saw becoming a more violent society.

A liberal by nature, he reserved particular dislike for what he saw as the shallow flag-waving of the Reagan presidency.

Alongside working for the BBC and The Guardian, for which he wrote from 1945 to 1972, he developed a passion for jazz and golf and, as a film critic, he mixed with Hollywood stars.

As a commentator on history, Cooke was sometimes an eyewitness too. He was just yards away from Senator Bobby Kennedy when the latter was assassinated in 1968.

He was never as comfortable on television as radio but, by the 1970s, his hugely successful television series America recounted his personal history of his adopted homeland and won international acclaim, two Emmy Awards and spawned a million-selling book.

British or American?

The Queen awarded him an honorary knighthood in 1973 and the following year, for a journalist, he received the ultimate recognition – he was asked to address the United States Congress on its 200th anniversary.

He told his audience he felt as if he was in a dream, standing naked before them and there was only one thing he could find to say.

Teasing, he exclaimed to the assembled legislators, “I gratefully accept your nomination for President of the United States!”

Naturally, he brought the house down.

Many Britons thought he was American, but to the Americans he was the quintessential Brit, the man who brought them the best of British television as presenter of Masterpiece Theatre. For his part, he explained, “I feel totally at home in both countries.”

He impressed both audiences with his high quality work. With his unquenchable curiosity, Alistair Cooke remained for decades the consummate broadcaster, an elegant writer and a man of enormous wit and charm who made sense of the American Century.

By Paul Handover (still missing Letter from America on the radio.)

Letter from Payson – first impressions

Ma’am, it’s only a small cow town!

On February 26th Jean and I, and a caravan of dogs and cats, arrived at our new home in Payson, Arizona.

We chose Payson simply because we wanted seasons. Payson is about an hour NE of Phoenix up at 5,000 feet and has very distinct seasons!

Home and snow — Snow in the garden - late March!

Both of us for different reasons thought we knew America pretty well. Jean was married to an American for nearly 30 years and I had been doing business in the US for a long time, even having my own (small) US company based in New Jersey.

But what neither of us anticipated was the wonderful warmth and friendliness of the Payson inhabitants. Despite the fact that Payson is hurting big time as a result of the economic situation, the majority of people that we met were happy, smiling and wonderfully accepting of a couple of Brits turning up in their town.

Indeed, Jean spoke to this stranger in the local supermarket, a tall guy complete with the boots and Stetson hat, and asked simply, “Why are so many people in Payson smiling?”

His reply was simply, “Ma’am, it’s only a small cow town!”

Well here’s a couple of newcomers to this small cow town who like it!

Payson and the Mogollon Rim in the background.

By Paul Handover

Europe Uber Alles, Pt 2.

A Guest post by Patrice Ayme

Part One ended saying:

The euro, long in planning by some European institutions, was introduced minimally, namely without the governmental apparatus generally associated to a currency. This is the way Europeans have found to progress peacefully towards greater harmony: do what is necessary, and nothing more than that, and do it with total consensus.

Everybody knew that a currency without a government to create and anchor it had never happened before, and was unlikely to endure.

Part Two continues

That fit the European federalists just right, and could not have escaped the understanding of Paris and Berlin. As it turned out, the PIIGS’ crisis is putting back Paris and Berlin, the historical engine of Europe, back on top, and this, for an excellent reason.

“PIIGS” stand for Portugal Ireland Iceland Greece Spain. All of them ran bubble economies, partially propelled by taxes from the richest European countries (including France and Germany). It became ridiculous as, for example, Ireland was getting European subsidies while the Irish were already way richer than those subsidizing them. (OK Iceland is not in the EU, yet, but it begged to enter the Eurozone, and it has disappeared the savings of countless Brits and Dutch, which means it has some outstanding business with the rest of Europe, that it will have to sort out, after executing a few more whales, guilty as charged.)

Some acknowledge the convenience of a common European currency and easier border transits, while remaining obsessed by what they view as gigantic differences between European countries. Those quaint nationalists and parochial types obsess that core differences between countries are so strong and deep-rooted that any form of real European union is a ridiculous concept. This is triply erroneous.

Read the rest of this Post

Europe Uber Alles

Welcome Patrice Ayme

On the 22nd March, Learning from Dogs had the pleasure of a Post from our first Guest Author, Elliot Engstrom. We were then doubly delighted to have Per Kurowski join us as our second Guest Author with his introductory Post.

Now we have the additional honour of welcoming Patrice Ayme to the growing ranks of Guest Author to Learning from Dogs.

Patrice, like Elliot and Per, also is a prolific blogger. He describes himself as:

I was born in Europe, raised in Africa, and lived in America. So doing, I learned to compare different cultures, even during my early childhood, and to appreciate superiority of many of their traits, even the most surprising. I consider myself Senegalese, and proudly so. I studied, and know, several languages, not just Latin, and several cultures, deeply, by living through and inside them for years. I have done formal studies in mathematics and physics at three leading Universities receiving the highest degrees, and putting me in a good position to learn to differentiate between hard knowledge and wishful thinking, differently from many a common philosopher. I am a specialist of non commutative geometry, arguably the most abstract field of knowledge in existence (even hard core logic, model theory, is used in my approach).

Here is Patrice’s first Guest Post for Learning from Dogs.

——————————

GREEK TROJAN HORSE TO CONQUER BETTER EUROPEAN UNION

Abstract:

The European currency, the euro, is, foremost, a solution to a problem. War. All other problems, and the euro solves many, pale in significance relative to this one.

Many talk about “problems” with the euro, and, oozing with glee all over, perceive weakness. They are right, there is weakness, but it is not European weakness. Just the opposite.

What those skeptics are seeing with their uncomprehending neurology is the further construction of the European imperium, according to its core principle: fix what needs to be fixed, but with complete consensus of the parties concerned, which means do it just so. It appears messy, because it’s democratic, and before the people (demos) can use its kratos (power), it needs to think right, which means it has to argue thoroughly. It looks like squabbling, but it is thinking aloud. Europe is not built for some parties to gain advantage anymore (as it was with Napoleon, or Hitler), but to solve problems and gain opportunities for all.

The euro is, for the first time, used as a weapon against Europe’s enemies. Hence all the squealing. Far from weakening Franco-German resolve, the recourse to the IMF adds another layer of authority to the European Communities. When the IMF, speaking in the name of Franco-German taxpayers, tell restive exploiters in Greece that they have to pay more taxes (only 6 plutocrats declare more than one million euro income in Greece, and more than 500 professions can retire at 50 years of age, whereas Germany just brought up the retirement age to 67!), they will have to submit under orders (imperare, to use the Roman notion)

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