Your correspondent considers that whole taildragger endorsement to be unfinished bidness. I don’t like starting things and not finishing, even if – like the master’s thesis from hell – it takes a hideously extended time.
But sitting there on the runway with the spinner stopped in a 65-HP Champ that really wasn’t up to the task of moving the combined bulk of two grandsons of Ireland – one very tall, the other compensating for a relative disadvantage in height by a certain, shall we say, avoirdupois – was off-putting. Perhaps I shoved the throttle up more rapidly than the carburetor could handle on the go. Perhaps. But the same thing might have happened given a bail out from a bad approach or landing, or a runway incursion, or a tower-directed go around, or any number of easily imagined incidents calling for full power rather than its opposite. Any one of which could have injured more than our pride, like.
Tailspin Tom has dredged up a relic from the past that details a love/hate relationship with the Champ that almost – but has not quite – convinced me to get back in the fray.
I’m still thinking “Citabria.”
–
By the way, that thesis? The department chair wrote to say that it was the “best written thesis” he had ever read. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.
I knew that this whole blogging gig had a pay-off.
Speaking of which, a hat tip to Sonar Senior for his generous donation to the “keeping the Irish down” fund.
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In Britain, parents who had fought to preserve the life of a baby boy born with significant medical issues have lost their fight with the government to preserve the child’s life. The boy died yesterday at 1008 after doctors pulled the plug on his breathing support.
Makes perfect economic sense, really. Hard to justify using taxpayer dollars when the child would have remained a drain on society as long as he breathed.
Still, if you don’t find a little chilling the concept of your own government deciding for you whether or not your economic contribution to society is a net positive or negative, you are not easily chilled.
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Got summoned to Montgomery on Thursday afternoon for to tear the skies assunder in a 150-HP Varga 2150. With a young man from Dallas in the trunk, and his father occupying the adjacent machine, similarly situated behind Bronco, the tricksy beast. He has a way of going high at the first turn that runs deeply counter-intuitive to all that your host had learned pushing fast metal around in two-circle fights above corner airspeed in full grunt. It oughtn’t to work, but somehow it does. Summat to do with a mere 500 feet of altitude to work with between our starting altitude and the hard deck, an aircraft that one cannot in all decency describe as “over-powered” and a forty knot band between best turn airspeed and accelerated stall.
We have learned painfully that it will not do, old shoe, to leave him too high above us at the second merge. One must do what what can to clamber up and meet him, hanging on the prop, forcing a vertical overshoot and then using radial g to bend the machine around to our advantage. All of which takes time and patience, and requires a very good deal of out-of-plane maneuvering.
In consequence of which the first two fights took practically forever, but ended up with the young man situated behind me in a position of decided advantage over his dear ol’ da.
On the third hack I had some vague notions of easing the power back a bit, for to let the geezer get his licks in when your man in the back mentioned apologetically that he was feeling a little off and wouldn’t it be splendid if he took the machine for a little straight and level time?
It would. On account of all the dreary spewing up that the alternative would inevitably invoke.
So, we called a knock it off and lazily went in search of the ever-retreating horizon for a time. When we both felt better and turned back south, it was only to learn that his pops had waited a beat too long to inform Bronco of a growing apperception that his own innards had become disarranged. “Join on us,” was the guidance issued, and so we did, only to find Bronco’s guest in steady, intimate discourse with the little white bag.
So it was 2 t0 0 in the young man’s favor before a second serving of lunch was tasted.
Which I thought was rubbing it in.
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Had an interesting discussion yesterday with some engineers about the information assurance benefits of cyphertext routing vs. the simplicity a plaintext core, various encryption gear at varying locations (the Internet being full of Chinese), dynamic addressing at the third layer of the OSI stack and the onerous packet burden of encryption on communications paths of lesser volume. And, you know, the old comsec vs. transec thing. The frightening thing being that I understood pretty much all of it.
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are -“
A geek.
Keep this up, and I’ll be earning my pay.
–
Have a great weekend!
Get back in the saddle. Don’t let that ‘lil engine incident deny you the pleasure of taming the ill mannered pup. I suspect a little less rambuctious application of throttle was all that was called for.
Besides, you need to develop a lighter touch on application of the go lever to prepare you for enjoying the rumble of the R-1340 in that SNJ you can’t help glancing at each time you saunter out to the Varga. Too rapid application of the throttle there will generate a backfire sure to get everyone’s attention to that most capable converter of fossil fuel to sonic pleasure.
When I was getting checked out and did my first power off stall I has a wee bit hasty getting the fan going as I shoved the nose down seeking airspeed to terminate the ol’ girls rock imitation and was greeted with a cardiac stirring explosion that made the lesson etched in places never likely to be fail recollection. Instructor grabbed he throttle and I heard over the intercom: “Oh, I forgot to tell ya ’bout that…”
“best written thesis” he had ever read.’
Kinda just slipped that one in there didn’t ya.
So far…So good.
Congrats on the very positive first (?) post submission response.
Why would you get out of the plane to maneuver?
Oh…
“best written thesis”…all very good (and not particularly surprising given other samples of your work) BUT, the academic wants to know:
Have they signed off? A crappily written thesis with signatures = degree, a nicely written thesis with no signatures = continued holding pattern.
Having read a bit here, I suspect there’s a good amount of content behind the pretty words…so give us the full story…how many signatures do you need, how many have said “yes”…and who do we need to lob emails at to get this done already
Four signatures, all signed, green card in hand, diploma in the mail.
Yay!
Congrats
Congratulations!!
*doing happy dance*
Doesn’t it feel good to be done with it? So you will be attending the graduation since you already missed the retirement send off?
Congrats, indeed!!
HUZZAH! Are you an MA, or a MS?
An MS in “Systems Engineering Management.”
Whatever that is.
Lex – re the Sys Eng Mgmt degree – are you more the Sys Eng or the Mgmt?
Awesome! See? You left the vital part out…not like you to blow the end of a story
Congrats!
Lex,
Congrats, Skipper.
Seriously, you put in a great deal of time, and you also have the vernaculatory skills to express yourself better than many I read.
I’ll drink a glass of bourbon in honour of one of Ireland’s and Virginia’s own.
Best of all, he’s one of us: a bloody sailor
Congrats!
Do we now call you Dr. Lex?
(Yes, I know; but I’ve been called Dr. Jones, and all I have is an ME.
And no whip.)
Well since you’re a Ms now you will find no problems being properly addressed within the European Union…
Excellent!
Congratulations; a proper end to a lot of hard work.
Lex:
Welcome to my world! (of getting that conventional gear endorsement, that is!) We’re taking a hiatus for a week or so while my instructor is off, having just gotten started with wheel landings. Of course up here in the Great White North it’s a bit hard to mix snow-wear with footwear that allows me to use the rudder pedals and the heel brakes, but hey, that’s what wool socks are for!
OBTW, I am doing this in a Citabria, a lot more oomph when it’s on wheels; it’s also “our” summer float plane; trust me, you wouldn’t want that 65-hp on floats. Well maybe, but you’d be measuring your flight time in very short spans to make GWT!
Enjoy every minute, I do. (plus it’s a nice change from the Cirrus gadget-beast)
VR,
Comjam
If ever there was an argument for getting the taildragger endorsement, this was it:
http://www.theospark.net/2009/03/plane-spotting.html
Grats, Lex! Hang that sheepskin! And I don’t want to hear you whining about a little tail dragger endorsement after years of night traps and NFWS. You got the right stuff, now use it!
Congratulations! And now, dear friend, when do you get started on that first novel?
You have a remarkable gift, and there are millions out there who are dying to read your work. (They just don’t know it yet, but once the reviews get published they’ll be lined up to buy autographed copies.)
“Have a great weekend!”
Has Lex left the building? Is everyone going to have to go cold turkey for 48hrs?
Is that why Lex left us with a movie?
“Time” will tell……While the cat’s away will the mice play ….amongst themselves?
Congrats, Lex.
I considered doing something similar once (in a different field obviously) but gave up on the idea as too much work once the kids came along. Looks good on ya!
But I must say I was disappointed with the link to the Baby OT story. Definitely a sad sad case. But a little misleading on the whole health care angle, don’t you think?
As in maybe it’s best that the Kat is keeping you away from Texas, what with their Advance Directive Act, aka the Texas Futile Care Act. Because they’re not above taking babies off life support there too. And you gotta just love this headline, don’t you? Then again I don’t mean to pick just on Texas. It’s not alone. And apparently Idaho is considering something similar, although it’s not passed yet.
Okay, I’ll stop beating a dead horse. But my point is that while I’m no fan of the British system and I think the right to life/right to death issue highlighted here is a real one, I’m not so sure it’s as simple as taxpayer dollars and being a drain on society. It looks like a like bigger moral and ethical conundrum to me.
I’m sorry if you somehow felt you were being misled, Michelle. That certainly wasn’t my intention.
But I do reiterate my main thrust, regardless of where it occurs: When states decide that care for children is futile, and withdraw lifesaving aid over the objections of parents, on what basis is their interest? It seems to me that it comes down to resources: Hospital beds, a doctor’s time, the money it costs. Once you take a step down that slope, you may find it slippery indeed.
I’m not saying it wasn’t the correct action. But I still find such decisions chilling.
No, I agree, Lex. It is chilling. Can you imagine if it was your child or mine? No easy answers, maybe no answers at all.
But my point was … well, since it’s so much fun (and so easy) to pick on the NHS, I just assumed you were just taking another
cheapshot in the health care debate. If that wasn’t where you were going, than I apologize.National Health Care System…
That’s one of the reasons I am against much of the current stem cell research, and the sort of Frankenstein research being done on both humans, animals and our food supply.
I am very much concerned that as we move towards a world where it is possible to engineer our offspring to the standards we desire, where we eradicate disease and it’s attendant suffering, where every kernel of corn is as full and richly colored as the next, that we will, indeed, lose sight of our humanity, our ethical and morale compasses, our compassion.
I wrote a short piece once about a society being “impaled upon the velvet fangs of conformity”. Perhaps it’s time to dust it off and see how it stacks up to all this.
I truly believe that there are areas of science where we MUST not go, where we will, perhaps, begin the process of our own destruction.
“Brave New World”.
More warning than destination.
Lex, Michelle:
There have been occasional proposals floated at various times and at verious levels of govt and the pvt sector to institute special panels/committees at each hospital comprised of clergy, psychologists, sociologists, medical ethics & economics specialists, Physicians $ Nurses, etc. to advise parents on options and to “reason through” the moral/medical/financial dilemmas involved in such cases with the parents so that no one feels any decision that results is one that someone has callously “ram-rodded” thru.
Only problem is, according to those who’ve tried such things, the majority of time the parents are in no emotional state at that point to truly “reason through” any such logical analysis, mentally and physically exhausted as they usually are from suffering through such an ordeal.
As Lex says, no easy answers, “maybe no answers at all”–or at least any that will ever satisfy the parents and truly assuage their inevitable pangs of guilt.
“guilt and remorse.”
virgil … We’ll be a little bit busy over here in Houston, repelling boarders, so to speak. Obama’s brownshirts are supposed to be out among us going from house to house to get us to sign an endorsement of everything the Big O has done so far, and to pledge undying fealty to all his future plans. I’ve locked the front gate, gotten out the broom [first line of defense] and checked the loads in the house gun.
If you see my signature on any such pernicious rubbish, you’ll know they forged it.
Marianne
Lex,
BZ on the MS. I agree with the Chair. Superb work!
AW1,
This Frankenstein-ing of the human race is just something that ultimately may need to be “exorcised”. Seriously. Like Iranians with nukes, there is a line out there that is about to be crossed………All y’all that read SciFi have read the fiction. This is reality looming.
Michelle is clinically correct: “like bigger moral and ethical conundrum to me”. Yep. Law and science can’t handle this genie….
How to deal with it?….. I fall back on my religion AND 3000 years of western civilization as my compass. I’ve had enough change. I see a point in the near future where folks gotta “make a stand”.
b2
Agree B2. Same compass here. Western society and culture is in a free-fall into the moral abyss. This country made the leap with the rest of the West in November. The fall isn’t what kills you. It is the sudden stop at the bottom.
Lex, this your 2nd Masters isn’t it? Congrats!
Do we get to read the thesis?
I’d like to see it also. I waded through “A Brief History Of Time” by Hawking. I think your thesis would be much more enjoyable.