Guess what year this newspaper article was published: 1946? 1976? 1996? 2016? Answer: Rain, Fog, Snow! Future Airliner to Go Right Thru: Automatic Devices Will Handle It. Chicago Daily Tribune. 6 June 1946. Yep! 1946. And the next year Time magazine reported on a military aircraft flying from Newfoundland to England under the control of an autopilot programmed on punched …
Category: Airmanship Quotes
I’d Rather be Flying . . .
“I would rather be in my glider and think about God, than be in church and think about my glider.”
Chair Flying
I go back to airline flying next month. Been a long time. In my basement I have followed Space Shuttle Commander and test pilot instructor Rick Searfoss’s advice: “For best effect, chair flying even involves moving the hands as if you actually have a stick, throttle, and multiple switches in front of you. I went so far before my first …
Watch the Thing Fly Itself
Concorde or Cub, the thinking is the same: “If everything was going absolutely perfectly, then you could just sit there and watch the thing fly itself across the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound. But all the time you had the think about what you would do if there was some sort of an emergency.” Concorde Captain John Hutchinson. …
Psychological Skills of Elite Military Pilots
Fifteen highly-rated pilots were interviewed at a Royal Canadian Air Force base by university psychology researchers as part of a larger longer project on how master performers differ from those of us that are merely ‘good’. Some of the results were published in 2014 — Examining the Psychological Skills Used by Elite Canadian Military Pilots — and it makes for interesting …
10 Don’ts from 1939
Published in 1939, Robert Winston’s book Dive Bomber takes us back to the exciting world of 1930’s US Navy aviation. It starts great — “Eighteen dollars an hour. That’s what they wanted for dual instruction at the flying school on Long Island. I had expected flying lessons to be expensive, but I didn’t think they were going to tear such …
Inside the Tunnel
Three-time US National Aerobatic Champion Patty Wagstaff clearly explaining the inner game: Quote and original movie still from the 2004 documentary America’s Heart & Soul.
Out of This Nettle
I live in Phoenix, Arizona. So the picture isn’t of English stinging nettles, but the top of a big prickly saguaro cactus. However, Shakespeare’s line from 1591 still rings true today: “’Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.”
The Sea is Always Ready
“We must remember that the sea is no respector of ships or persons. The sea is always ready, at the first sign of failure, to rush in and destroy the very craft it so readily supports upon the surface of the water. The sea is only safe and harmless so long as the ship is safe and seaworthy and ably …
Neil Armstrong Quote
“Pilots take no special joy in walking: pilots like flying. Pilots generally take pride in a good landing, not in getting out of the vehicle.” Neil Armstrong