Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Category: Aircraft
What retired dentists get up to!
While dealing with children and their little models I can spend hours making and mending small plastic and wooden pieces to give them a few hours of fun and assist them in understanding what machinery is made up of.
Recently I saw a model of a galleon made by a prisoner of war. He would obviously have had many hours with which to spend his time, making a work of art, but now prepare to have your jaw dropped.
The almost surreal area where aircraft are ‘laid to rest’.
The Mojave Desert is one of the places in the world where aircraft, both military and civil, are placed when they are at the end of their life, whatever that means.
Anyway, came across some nice material and wanted to share it.
In an earlier copy of Mental Floss Magazine (seriously) there’s a very good article about this area. Fabulous pictures, by the way. (Both pics in this Post are from that article.)
Next this is a YouTube video using Google Earth in flyover mode:
Finally, a reminder that it’s not all about dead aircraft. The Mojave Air & Space Port is also the site of the privately backed SpaceShip enterprise.
All in all, not your average place.
By Paul Handover
Some stunning pictures.
Of the six active authors on this Blog, four have been or still are pilots. Of course, only young Bob Derham is a ‘real’ pilot having been an Air Transport pilot for almost as long as Pontious Pilate (sorry, that’s an awful pun!).
Anyway, there has been a growing collection of some incredible photographs from odd sources around the Web and it seemed time to share a few.
Here’s a wonderful picture of an F-15C Eagle Fighter circling over the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida with Shuttle Mission STS 108 on the launch pad.
Sometimes we think that we know nothing and feel that we having nothing to contribute; then, on reflection, we realise that, in fact, we do know something and that maybe it is worth sharing. This is perhaps the opposite of the paradox that the more we know, the more we realise that there is to know. Is a little knowledge a dangerous things? Possibly, if used with a cavalier attitude. In the end you, the reader, will decide.
A couple of months ago, Paul Handover described on this blog some details of his Piper Cub aircraft. Although I knew of his post, having skimmed it at some time, I had missed a coincidence which now triggers me to think about my limited knowledge and experience of the Piper Cub!
Sent to me by Neil Kelly, a long-standing friend in Devon, England.
Wish I could add something witty to this, but I can’t! But it does remind me of the saying, there’s no such thing as error-free software!
P.S. the image is too small to read the copyright notice – anyone help out? It would be good to credit it properly.
By Paul Handover
It’s a funny old world …
Recently I was asked to run a detail lasting 4 hours in an Airbus simulator, for a film crew coming from Australia.
I was told by the training office that this was just operating the instructor panel on the simulator to help them get the information they needed regarding certain situations that would be explained in a television documentary to be aired on a Sunday evening weekly program.
Apparently the various people involved had visited Airbus, and were due to return to Australia for interviews with some of the major airlines operating Airbus aircraft.
I soon gathered that the likely scenario was to be the loss of instrumentation and automation as experienced by an A380 crew recently, and what might have been the case with the A330 lost over the Atlantic.
A theme about flying, pilots and fate.
Many, many pilots whether civil or military or private, have read the book by Ernest K. Gann entitled Fate is the Hunter. Ernest Gann was born a little under a hundred years ago, on October 13th 1910 and died, aged 81, in 1991. He
is known, in the main, as an aviation writer and airline pilot pioneer but achieved much more besides.
Fate is the Hunter is a book about the workings of fate. And this Post is more than a reminder of Ernest Gann’s book and the message it carries, it is also about fate, as Part Two published tomorrow reveals.
Fate or serendipity has happened along to cause a number of recent Posts to be about flying. We had the Post about low-level RAF flight training in North Wales – Mach Loop. Then we had three Posts about air carrier operations prompted by the PBS Series, the first one being published on the 2nd October. Today, circumstance brought me to the Blog of another naval aviator, published by Neptunus Lex. More about him and links to the Blog later.
I want to set the scene by using the words of Ernest K Gann as he starts the preface to his book.
A personal reflection on the emotions stirred by the PBS series on the USS Nimitz
The last three days have seen Posts on the USS Nimitz. On the 2nd there was the first part of air carrier operations specifically looking at the challenges of a pitching deck. On the 3rd came the second part as the pilots and crew operated into night, still with the deck of the USS Nimitz pitching significantly. Yesterday, the Post carried links to background information including the excellent web site that PBS have on the USS Nimitz series.
So why raise the question of integrity?
Background information behind the YouTube Background videos shown on Learning from Dogs
Many will have found the video extracts about carrier operations on USS Nimitz thrilling, fascinating and superb watching. The first was shown two days ago and the second yesterday. In fact they come from an brilliantly executed
10-hour series from PBS in the US called Carrier. The film has an associated web site including the ability to watch all ten episodes in full. [NB – it has been discovered that the PBS videos may not be available in all countries due to licensing issues.]
The USS Nimitz was launched in 1972 and has an overall length of nearly 1,100 feet. WikiPedia has a good summary.
The final Post on this topic will be published tomorrow and will explore the questions of integrity and ethics that are associated with the emotions raised by the videos.
By Paul Handover
Carrier pilots learn about pitching decks, in the dark!
Yesterday we published the first of two 10 minute videos on YouTube about carrier operations on the USS Nimitz. Here’s the second video. Warning: Once you start watching you won’t be able to stop until the very end!
By Paul Handover
Learning from Dogs 