Hi Folks,   My thanks this afternoon go to my friend Mike Murphy over at Boeing for stimulating pleasant memories of my days as a student pilot, and I thought you might enjoy the following hangar flying stories also.    My third flight instructor was Captain Larry Carmody, a delightfully crotchety old man probably now trying to tell God how to fly, and I raise my cup of apple juice in his honor.  Larry had flown “Clipper” flying boats across the Pacific for Pan American in the 1930s and bombers during the war and, as a flight instructor operating out of an FBO at Honolulu International, occasionally tolerated young whippersnappers like me .  On my dual long cross country, flying a Cessa 150 between O’ahu and the Big Island, I asked Larry how much flying time he had.  He fell silent and, because we didn’t have headsets and he was already somewhat hard of hearing, I figured he’d missed my question.  A bit later he asked “How many hours are there in a year?”  I did some mental gymnastics and said “About eighty-seven hunnerd” and he fell silent again for a few minutes, then said “About seven years.”  I looked at him and mumbled something like “What?”  to which he replied “You asked how much flying time.”   Larry taught me what he called “the cheapest flight simulator you’ll ever fly.”  I was having problems with coordinating stick & rudder, so he asked “You ever sit on a toilet?” When I admitted that, occasionally, I do, he then asked “You got one of those plunger things in the corner behind it?”  I said that I keep it in the closet in the bathroom and he said “Close enough.”  Then he said “Next time you’re in there doing your business, stick the cup to the floor in front of your underpants and practice right rudder right stick and left rudder left stick.  You’ll never pay less for better flight instruction.”   My first instructor some months earlier, a fellow named “Gil” who should remain otherwise nameless, was also an aerobatic instructor that thought I should learn spin recovery.  Accordingly, while I was flying with him with all of about 90 minutes in my logbook, he said “Let me show you something” and the next thing I knew I was watching a lot of revolving grass coming up at me very quickly!  Frankly, I have never forgiven him for that bit of terror, and the experience made me fearful of accelerated stalls because I learned in my reading that such silliness leads to spins.    Fast forward to my initial familiarization flight with Larry and he wanted me to demonstrate the stall series.  I did the take-off and approach-to-landing stalls okay but balked when he asked for an accelerated stall.  When he asked why, I told him that I didn’t like to do them because it could lead to a spin.  He said “Okay.  Go back to the airport.  We’re done.”  I said, somewhat angrily, “What?  I’m paying you to teach me to fly!” to which he said “Then do the accelerated stall.”  I flew straight and level for ten or fifteen minutes with Larry not saying a word or moving a muscle.  Finally, I said “Larry, I want to fly.”  He then said, “The problem is that you’re afraid of spins because you don’t understand what is happening because your instructor was a jerk.  My airplane.”    He took the controls and started into an accelerated stall and, as the horn sounded he backed out to straight and level again and asked why the horn sounded.  I gave a lame textbook explanation and he taught me thoroughly about the way air was supposed to flow over the wing and what happens when it does not.  He then flew deeper into the accelerated stall until the wing started to shudder and backed out to level again, followed by another lesson.  He then had me fly an approach-to-landing stall and, with the horn sounding continuously had me very gently apply left and right rudder to prove to myself that, although we were flying very slowly and the horn was blaring we were still flying and in control.  He then took the controls and, while climbing, explained that he was going to spin the airplane and asked if I was okay with that.  I would not have been surprised at that point to learn that he could walk on the ocean, so I agreed.  We went to about 8,000 feet as I recall and he very gently entered a spin to the left, rotated once very slowly and recovered to straight and level.  We climbed back up and he had me do the same, followed by three or four spins of up to five revolutions each, with he and I taking turns at the controls.  From the hands of a skilled teacher I learned about aerodynamics and  have never since been afraid of it.  While I would never expose a potential pilot to a spin on an initial flight, I thoroughly agree that such training is necessary if done effectively.   Thanks, Larry, wherever you are!   Best, Frank

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Hi Folks,   First, I apologize for being nearly 27 months out of phase for this story.   I well remember standing on a sidewalk in front of an appliances store in Moses Lake, Washington on 20 July 1969 to watch, with a gathering of other passersby, Neil Armstrong’s historic first step onto the surface of the moon.  Yes, it was a crummy picture, but we were watching it as close to real time as long-distance telecommunications permitted at the time and I was enthralled while simultaneously very proud to be not only an American but a human being able to witness the event.   Yesterday, my eldest son sent me a link to a post in Space.com from July 2009 marking the 40th anniversary of that historic giant leap for mankind.  The post included an honestagoodness US Customs declaration that the Apollo 11 crew completed and submitted to US Customs officials in Honolulu after being plucked from the Pacific Ocean on 24 July.  Whle the Customs declaration is genuine, the astronauts weren’t really required to clear customs and filled out the form as a prank, but it is a poignant reminder of the scope of the Apollo missions in that they really did leave the United States and really did return, bringing with them the potential for disease and cargo from a foreign land (remember the moon rocks and dust?).   Here’s a link to the article, which includes an image of the Customs declaration:   http://www.space.com/7044-moon-apollo-astronauts-customs.html  

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Hi Folks,   I’ve long admired those men and women that build exquisite models of things.  Their patience far exceeds anything remotely close to what I might do, and their ability to capture fine detail on a tiny scale is a delight to admire.  The Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany, displays the best and most spectacular examples of the modeler’s art, most recently unveiling the world’s smallest airport.  Knuffingen airport is patterned after Hamburg International Airport but features aircraft that land and take off.  They also taxi to the gate and deplane their passengers.  You have to study the video very closely to see how the modeler arranged the takeoff and landing capabilities.   Here’s a link to a great article about the opening of the airport last May:   http://biggeekdad.com/2011/09/worlds-smallest-airport/   And here’s a link to the museum itself which, by the way, also includes the worlds largest model train layout:   http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/   Makes me feel kinda clumsy.   Best, Frank

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Hi Folks,   I haven’t flown on an Airbus A-380 and, frankly, I haven’t even seen one except in pictures.  By anyone’s definition, however, it is pretty big.  That’s okay, though, because the sky is pretty big too, even outside Montana.  (Okay, that’s a fairly obtuse attempt at humor, but there it is.)   When thinking of the -380 I can’t help but ponder the logistics of boarding a “typical” pax load of 500, and the “high density” pax load of 853 just makes my head hurt.   Bear in mind that I am so old that I remember when taking a flight on a commercial airliner was a significant experience that deserved dressing up in fancy duds and acting suave and civilized.  Not so, unfortunately, in our current world where an airline trip is very similar to riding in a crowded but very tall bus.  One of the irksome things about commercial flying is the boarding process.  Aside from permitting the first-class pax to board first so they may their chilled water from their regally wide seats in the first-class cabin while we merelings trudge past them to the coach class seats, I can’t fathom why the gate agents don’t board the pax from back to front?  What nincompoop manager thought that up?   I’ll also add that I’m old enough to remember when perfectly fine Americans were told to go to the back of the bus because some other nincompoop thought the world would be better that way.  That is a shameful book that should be closed and put on the shelf, but I concede that yet other nincompoops might misconstrue efficient airline boarding procedures to be some something entirely unrelated.   So I move slowly among the peristaltic line of humans, headed to my seat 42-A (I choose the window, of course, because I’m an incurable tourist) while the future occupants of seats 12-C, 17-D, 22-F and 31-B work to stow their overstuffed bags into the already crowded overhead bins.  I would imagine that such experiences have tried your patience also.   A simple solution, of course, is to board pax from the back row to the front row so fewer people would get in each other’s way, but that would still cause problems in widebody jets when all ten future occupants arrive at row 85 at the same time.   A clever particle physicist at Fermilab outside Chicago took his knowledge of how subatomic particles tend to order themselves to maximize their efficieny and applied the same principles to moving large groups of polite but relatively uncooperative people onto large airplanes in the shortest amount of time.  He ran his algorithm several times to find the optimum pattern, and came up with the following:   First, board families with small children wherever they sit.  Sure, it takes a little time, but just do it.   Next, board passengers sitting on one side of the plane in the odd-numbered rows, but window seats only (my seat A).  Then the next group would be those sitting in window seats in even numbered rows on the other side of the plane (seat K).  Then the window seats A in even numbers rows, then window seats K in odd-numberes rows, then middle seats B in odd-numbered rows, and so on.    Okay.  It’s confusing to read, but if you lay it out on a grid you can easily see that it eliminates having somebody’s rear-end in your face as they struggle with their overhead bin while you stuggle to fasten your seat belt.  Each passenger has a turn at the use of the aisle and the overhead bin and seatings happen essentially simultaneously all along the length of the airplane.    Here’s a link to an excellent article  about Dr. Steffen’s plan and a video showing how it works:   http://wrightsquawks.blogspot.com/2011/09/particle-physicist-discovers-fastest.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WrightSquawks+%28Wright+Squawks%29   Even though it is a great idea, I doubt we’ll ever see it in common practice.  Although a lot of people travel by themselves, a lot of travelers do not even though they may be connected by nothing more than a mutual employer.  Because we humans tend to avoid surprises, many travelers will balk at being separated from their traveling companion if but only a short time even though the entire process will proceed much more efficiently.  Even so, the next time you check in at the boarding gate, look the agent right in the eye and ask “Are you using the new Steffen Boarding Plan yet?” and when the agent replies with a quizzical look, you just say “Oh.  I see you haven’t caught on yet.  They’re doing it over at (Name of a competing airline at that airport) and it works great!  You should look into it.” and then walk away confidently.  

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Hi Folks,   The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is about the size of a medium sized school bus and weighs about the same at 6-1/2 tons.  It has been tasting and smelling the boundary between space and our atmosphere since 1991 and it is going to come back to earth on Friday this week.  Or maybe Thursday.  Or maybe Saturday.  The folks that are really good at calculus and physics don’t know where it’ll come down, but they’re all pretty sure that some of the pieces will hit the ground in a debris field expected to be about 10 miles wide by 500 miles long.   If it doesn’t rip your neighborhood to shreds by Sunday afternoon, you missed it.  Or it missed you.   Here’s a link to the satellite tracker website:   http://spaceweather.com/flybys/   I note that UARS isn’t scheduled to fly over Indianapolis until Sunday night, so I’ll miss the whole show.  Drat.  

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