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 …
Tag: practice
Awake
The squeak of tires on landing, the view over a ridgeline, the red warning light. When I’m fully awake, I’m flying my best. Quote by Thich Nhat Hanh, online article The Three Gems in Tricycle magazine. Original photo of single-seat sailplane CC0 Public Domain from pxhere.
So That’s Why I’m So Humble!
Zero/Zero, Charles D. Svovoda
“At last I understood what true professionalism is. Being a pilot isn’t all seat-of-the-pants flying and glory. It’s self-discipline, practice, study, analysis and preparation. It’s precision. If you can’t keep the gauges where you want them with everything free and easy, how can you keep them there when everything goes wrong?” Charles D. Svoboda Flying magazine, November 1976. Old editions …
How You Do the Little Things
How you do the little things everyday is important. Why is explained by former RAF Tornado F3 fighter pilot and Red Arrows display pilot Justin Hughes in his 2016 book The Business of Excellence. The full quote is: How you do the little things is how you do everything. You don’t choose a different behaviour just because it’s a big …
How You Learn to Land an F/A-18C on an Aircraft Carrier at Night
Quote from Lea Gabriella in an interview on fighterSweep.com Original photo of an F/A-18 Hornet landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) in 2010 is U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kilho Park: ref 100629-N-6003P-195.
Do ‘Brain-Training’ Games Make You a Better Pilot?
The Association for Psychological Science recently published a massive 200-page research report on brain training programs, seeing if fun cognitive tasks or games can enhance performance on other tasks. Peer-reviewed, respected authors, fully-referenced. It covered all the valid studies that have examined this question, a huge research database. And the results? Based on this examination, we find extensive evidence that brain-training …
Checklist Complete! Or is It?
This airline training slide explains ‘active monitoring’ – visualize, act, compare. You must look for something, not just at something: It’s easy to say we should be mentally flying the aeroplane, but it’s also kind of a cop out. So it’s a nice addition to have some concrete ideas on how to actually do it.
Maya Angelou on Becoming a Great Pilot
At an airshow I admire the biplanes, the jets, the smoke and the sounds. But the persistence of the pilots to get this good is most amazing.
Mikaela Shiffrin on Winning Formula
“I still don’t think there is a winning formula. It’s really just working your butt off.” Mikaela Shiffrin She is the youngest slalom champion in Olympic alpine skiing history. She is also the current world champion in slalom. There is no magic formula for success. The winning formula involves hard work. And sounds a lot like the seven P’s: Proper Prior …