Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Tag: Flying
British Airways
I earnestly hope that we are not about to witness the crashing disappearance of what only a few years ago was one of Britain’s relatively few major world class businesses. It is said that those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first make mad, and the intention of BA cabin staff to launch a strike over the busy Christmas period would seem to be a clear sign of insanity.
But how difficult can it be for Boeing to make yet another new aircraft? The answer depends on how different the 787 aircraft is from anything the company has built in the past. Some initial indication that is significantly different can be taken from its being named Dreamliner.
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!
This makes me proud to be human!
As their website explains:
Operation Migration has played a leading role in the reintroduction of endangered Whooping cranes into eastern North America since 2001. In the 1940s the species was reduced to just 15 birds.
Operation Migration is a founding partner of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP), the coalition of non-profit organizations and government agencies behind the project to safeguard the endangered Whooping crane from extinction.
Want to get involved? Here’s how.
Remember the film ET? Just look at this next picture …
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.
The introduction to this Post was published yesterday. The rest of this Post is Lex’s words and published with his written permission.
I don’t tell this story very often. Although the events inside it happened almost 12 years ago, the memory is still fresh, and still painful.
Over the years I’ve told it to two ready rooms, both by way of instruction – a kind of “been there, seen that,” in order to prevent anything like it from ever happening again. But it’s not one of those sea stories you tell over a beer, among friends. It’s a sad story. Maybe I post this one. Maybe I don’t.
Learning from Dogs 