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I've always had dreams of flying an F-16 Falcon, I just love the way it looks.
But you can't wear glasses and fly though
Actually, that is no longer true. Most of the services have a vision limit correctable to 20/20, and they will give you a medical waiver, if you meet the requirements.
It varies from service to service, and with their recruiting needs.
Well I have been sitting here thinking about my looming checkride, and I was just going over some of my favorite aviation adages in my head.
I figured I would share. Feel free to comment. These are in no particular order...
1) Learn from the mistakes of others, you'll never live long enough to make all of them yourself.
2) In the ongoing battle between the ground going 0 miles per hour and objects made of aluminum going hundreds of miles an hour, the ground has yet to lose.
3) Stay out of clouds. The silver lining everyone keeps talking about might
be another airplane going in the opposite direction. Reliable sources also
report that mountains have been known to hide out in clouds.
4) The 3 most useless things to a pilot are the runway behind him, the altitude above him, and a tenth of a second ago.
5) There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. There are however, no old bold pilots.
6) A good landing is any landing you can walk away from. A great landing is any landing that they can re-use the airplane.
7) It is better to be down here wishing you were up there, than to be up there wishing you were down here...
8) In the beginning every pilot is given two bags. One labeled luck and one labeled experience. The luck bag is full and the experience bag is empty. The trick is to fill up the experience bag before the luck runs out.
9) When one engine fails on a twin engine airplane you
always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.
10) There are more planes in the ocean than there are
submarines in the sky.
11) Weather forecasts are horoscopes with numbers.
12) Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a
person on the ground incapable of understanding it or doing anything about
it.
13) Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death I Shall Fear No Evil For I am at
80,000 Feet and Climbing (sign over the entrance to the SR-71 operating
location Kadena, Japan).
14) What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots? If a
pilot screws up, the pilot dies; If ATC screws up, the pilot dies.
15) Flying Basics:
1. Try to stay in the middle of the air.
2. Do not go near the edges of it.
3. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground,
buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space.
It is much more difficult to fly there.
16) You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power
to taxi to the terminal.
17) Takeoff is optional, landing is mandatory.
18) If you push the stick foward, the houses get bigger. If you pull it back they get smaller, unless of course you keep pulling it back, then they get bigger again.
19) Flying isn't dangerous, crashing is dangerous.
20) The ONLY time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.
21) The propeller is just a big fan in front of the plane used to keep the pilot cool. When it stops, you can actually watch the pilot start sweating.
22) The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of
arrival. Large angle of arrival, small probability of survival and vice
versa.
23) When in doubt, hold on to your altitude. No one has ever collided with
the sky.
24) Always try to keep the number of landings you make equal to the number
of take offs you've made.
25) There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately
no one knows what they are.
26) If all you can see out of the window is ground that's going round and
round and all you can hear is commotion coming from the passenger compartment, things are not at all as they should be.
27) Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, the experience
usually comes from bad judgment.
28) It's always a good idea to keep the pointy end going forward as much as
possible.
29) Remember, gravity is not just a good idea. It's the law. And it's not
subject to repeal.
30) Never let an aircraft take you somewhere your brain didn't get to five
minutes earlier.
And last but not least:
Flying is the second greatest thrill known to man.
Well, I have successfully passed the first part of my Instrument checkride.
I had the Oral exam on Thursday night.
2.5 hours of getting asked every Instrument question imagineable. All in all I did quite well, I only had to look up 2 answers.
Now I still have the practical portion of the checkride (the actual flight).
That should take about 2 hours. I basically will just shoot 3 local instrument approaches, one normal, one with an engine failed, and one with my primary flight instruments failed.
I think it should be fun. I was a lot more worried about the oral than anything.
LOL! That is good news. Now that prices have gone down, they should. My favorite carrier never has charged for beverages.
That isn't the justification from Doug Parker. He says, it is because none of the other legacies followed with the charge.
He also says that the other "a la carte" programs; bag fees, choice seats, nap sacks will generate $400 to $500 million in 2009.
The charge for drinks never bothered me. Most of the time, I only took the drink because it was offered, not because I needed/wanted it. I survived just fine on several 3+ hr flights last year without anything.
That isn't the justification from Doug Parker. He says, it is because none of the other legacies followed with the charge.
He also says that the other "a la carte" programs; bag fees, choice seats, nap sacks will generate $400 to $500 million in 2009.
The charge for drinks never bothered me. Most of the time, I only took the drink because it was offered, not because I needed/wanted it. I survived just fine on several 3+ hr flights last year without anything.
They SAY that isn't the justification, but really it was. They said it all in a sweeping statement about fuel prices. They all did. And his statement that nobody matched is fairly bologna. I know quite a number of majors that are charging for everything.
Also, most of the orther legacies are charging for EVERYTHING. The ONLY carrier that doesn't is Southwest. LOL!
I love how they refer to themselves as "legacies" when they all accomplish the same goal, as if Southwest weren't competition for them.
Sorry, and no offense to your mom, but most airline management (Doug Parker mostly included) are idiots.
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