Your humble scribe got a taste of an alternate lifestyle yesterday, inasmuch as he was asked to fly his CEO from sun sparkled Sandy Eggo to sun hammered Inkyokern, California. On account of the business trip to Naval Air Station China Lake that was in it. It being believed that there were better uses of hizzoner’s time than to be stuck in Riverside traffic of a Wednesday.
It’s maybe four hours or so up and the same back again by auto voiture, all for a one hour meeting. Which makes the point I think, and anyway, the freeways are wery hazardous round these parts.
Got to the aerodrome early, for to ensure all things were well, and everything was well and that all manner of things would be well. Was a little concerned that the boss would be stressing over his aviation department’s proficiency in the Beech Duchess, seeing as the entire department had but a mere 1.6 flight hours in make and model, and that gained on Monday afternoon. But as he reminded me, he had once been a P-3 Orion Naval Flight Officer, and thus had long accustomed hisself to the risks involved, flying with neophytes. Truth be told, I was a little concerned myself, but reconciled myself with the knowledge that, should worse come to worst, our jobs would be equally safe.
A friend loaned me a Garmin 396 GPS device, which I’d spent the previous afternoon programming while driving Highway 5. Which in retrospect, was probably the most hazardous part of the whole evolution. It proved useful once airborne, for there is always special use airspace to avoid, which I did more or less successfully.
À propos of nothing at all, the aviators in the crowd are no doubt aware that the FAA has charted NASA to maintain the Aviation Safety Reporting System, whereby the deviant aviator can anonymously self-report his deviation, and thereby shield himself from enforcement action. For the most part.
Aren’t you?
Because it can be dern useful if you find yourself all mesmerized by flying a new machine, with a new (to you GPS) on a new (to you) route east of the Los Angeles Class B airspace and find yourself blundering in to the R-2513. Is what I’m told.
The GPS made choosing Inyokern rather than NAS China Lake as a landing destination something more straightforward than it otherwise might have been. Spent an hour or so dawdling at the Starbucks in Ridgecrest leeching off the free Wi-Fi until the boss had finished his pitch, and flew home again uneventfully, having leaned the engines on the go due to the 5500 foot density altitude which resulted from a hot day at a relatively high field. The boss fell asleep on the way home at 9500 feet, whether that was due to the lack of scintillating conversation, the drone of the twin pistons or some innate confidence in my airmanship (I was on the autopilot, steering via the heading bug on the compass) is an exercise left to the reader.
It was in truth a little boring, and I have more or less decided that this whole “corporate pilot” gig is fine for ever once in a while, but may not quite be the thing for full-time work.
Unless he buys us a Dassault Falcon 7, in which case I’ll reconsider.
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Speaking of which!
A lovely lady of my online acquaintance provides me books from time to time, with the caveat from your humble that I’ll recommend what I actually like and remain politely silent about what I don’t. With that in mind, I can fully recommend James Huston’s Falcon 7.
It’s a very well written reader about a pair of young FA-18F jocks who get bagged on the wrong side of the Hindu Kush, and end up hauled before the International Criminal Court at The Hague for hitting a target that ended up being a refugee center – dozens of non-combatants die. They are fortunate to be defended by Jack Caskey, a former Navy SEAL (of course) turned criminal attorney, who immediately smells a rat in the fact that the eponymous Falcon jet has lain waiting on the tarmac at Islamabad in case of just such an event for a mere three days. Huston nearly lost me at the beginning of the book due to a switchology error – he places the weapons release button by the WSO’s knee – but eventually I forgave him for what was after all rather a mundane mistake (so easily remedied!), suspended disbelief and waded right in. I was glad that I did.
There’s not nearly enough air combat, OK-3 wire and getting the girl for some, but Huston’s depiction of the internal conspiracies of Evropean elites reads like a conservative’s nightmare and an internationalist’s wet dream. The book is placed in the here and now, Obama is the president and Eric Holder his attorney general. A bit of disbelief waiving continues to be called for: In response to what is, from the US perspective, an extrajudicial arrest of its servicemembers (the US not being a signatory to the Treaty of Rome), President Obama sorties a carrier strike group to the Northern Atlantic (!).
But the tale is a good one, even if the lads – who remain a shade two dimensional – are on their way to getting railroaded. There is also the obligatory female liberal lawyer to act as Caskey’s partern and foil, even as he engages in his own internal struggle: He is clearly a patriot, in the best sense of the word. But is he a lawyer, or merely an operator trying to fool himself?
The story line is simultaneously implausible in places and altogether too real. But Huston is an excellent story teller, and has written a real page turner, even if he did fly Tomcats.
I recommend it.
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Something old, something new.
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Today was the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Wretchard reminds us that, as World War II Pacific theater holocausts go, it was third rate.
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What the global economy needs least, right about now: Another bursting asset bubble, this time in China, of all places.
On the other hand, you have to be amazed at how the world has come in the last few decades, to grok the concept of an “asset bubble” in China.
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Brigid of “Mausers and Muffins” fame describes the joy of flight in an open cockpit biplane.
If getting your hair mussed doesn’t quite fit your definition of fun, there’s always the Grumman Ag Cat.
The cockpit is not just enclosed, it’s also pressurized. On account of the pesticides, you know.
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I’m Boston bound on Sunday, for to exchange pleasantries with the Unified Cross Domain Management Organization folks. Should be a blast, we can compare notes on our last full spectrum polygraphs, &c.
Have a great weekend, y’all!
I’ve always thought that NFO meant “slept in the back’.
As opposed to P3 pilot, which means “slept in the front”?
The thing I couldn’t ever figure out, was why Buffs could fly long missions with some pretty hairy segments and do it with two pilots, while our VP brethren wouldn’t countenance the safety impact of anything less than a five person flight deck crew. Union featherbedding?
After awhile you get used to being scared to death and it just becomes part of the routine.
About that rocket man dude……..um, no thanks.
Lex, I had a Squadron-mate who flew Falcons as a steady gig for one of the richest guys in America all over the world (but mainly in Central & S.America due to his holdings) and while the pay was good even that got old. Problem is, as you found out even this first time, there’s lots of in-between down time, and you’re always at the whim of the head guy 24/7 if flying for him personally, so even in exotic climes really can’t let one’s hair down as you never know when the guy will decide to cut things short and leap for home at o dark-thirty, so have to stay sober the vast majority of the time and hang around pretty close to the airdrome to be effectively on-call, so no jungle tours to see the exotic Birds of Paradise in Manual Antonio Park in Costa Rica etc.(the prospect of which–staying sober, that is– you will immediately surmise would have been a severely limiting factor for yours truly–basically a deal breaker.
) And when making corporate milk-runs sans big guy the sched gets old quick. So take it from a guy who personally knows a guy who had about as good a corporate gig as one could possibly get–your first instincts are correct and the Falcons simply serve to polish the gilded cage to make it shine a little bit more brightly.
Good stuff as always lex.
My adult single daughter is a corporate, charter, and family personal Citation Captain. Since I live between her airport and her home, she often stops by en route to her home to vent about her latest trip and talk about her occasional dawdling yet demanding charter clients. She had seriously considered Naval Aviation but was put off by the (to her) long initial commitment. I think she now has serious second thoughts. (I always did for her.) But she is unfortunately too old now for Naval Aviation. Nevertheless and fortunately, she still has a far better position in commercial aviation than most all of her peers.
BTW while we had planned to avail ourselves of your ACM services, my better half and loving “war department” – knowing how daughter and I are both from the same mold and would likely rip the wings off our respective aircraft to win or die –vetoed (wisely?) my aerial combat birthday present idea for her in June. Sorry.
Oh, and BTW and no surprise… I like liberal lawyers and F-14s… again, so sorry, lex-san.
Enjoy your weekend.
You lucky lucky b2#rqohrd! I wish my daughter lived that close. Some of us have all the luck!
UCDMO’s mission statement should read, “Adding a layer of paper-pushers and writing memos in the hopes of not being noticed until we reach retirement age.”
Probably a good gig if you can land it.
I dunno if this is off-topic or not, but I’m going to post a link about the death of an aviator:
http://storkdok-nos.blogspot.com/2010/07/rip-mark-haskell-mark-died-yesterday.html
Storkdok is one of the bloggers in my autistic list, not my milblogger list. She is a retired gynecologist and delivered two of the guy’s kids. One of her kids is autistic, and she’s pretty sure she’s an Aspie herself. (Hey, we do good work, when allowed to do so!)
I have a grandson I’m raising that is definitely autistic, we don’t have a formal diagnosis yet, but suspect it is Asperger’s. We haven’t been able to afford the formal testing needed to verify our strong suspicions because of the battle I had to fight to get he and his sister back from the state supported kidnappers of Georgia. The schools have found the money to get it done and we have an appointment this fall for the testing needed.
As I recall, Isaac Newton is suspected to been an Aspie, as was Einstein.
I have an x who seriously believes in leaving no living enemies behind. She’d do a hell of a number on Georgia if they tried to steal our 7 year old daughter.
I’d still like to do that. At least the case worker that committed perjury to take them back from us, after they had given them to us and let us keep them for 4 months, was fired.
More than 200 kids have been killed under the tender care of Georgia DFACS. I was a elected public official in Ohio when the mess started, and of the same party as the Governor, but that made no difference to Perdue. He made a big deal about having been a foster parent, but all it did was frame his hypocrisy on the matter.
It took 20 months to get them back. It took me that long to back them into a corner and we caught the case worker committing perjury, and showed she had committed perjury 20 months before. In Georgia, all they do is fire the case worker. She should have been fired, but then she should have been sent up to do hard time as well. Right along with her supervisors.
You have to move Hiroshima and Nagasaki down to about 4th and 5th on that list. LeMay’s boys did a pretty good job of carpet fire bombing Tokyo in March of 1945 with the kind of civilian casualties that you could expect from setting 20 plus square miles of a crowded city on fire.
As for my personal thoughts on the matter–one could do worse than read Paul Fussell’s essay “Thank God for The Atomic Bomb”.
Holy S%$^! Ridgecrest has a Starbucks?
I know, right?
Cap- Just got back from two 1/2 week R&R in Boston…weather was perfect (mid 80s/no humidity/cool Canadien air at night putting temps down to upper 50s at night)
Make sure you get some fresh seafood at Legals or any of a dozen other places…..best place for it….have a extra Guinness too….I did….before coming back to AFGHN….
Red Sox took one from Yankees last night too – In the Bronx…..doesn’t get better than that in Summer….BOSTON is the place to be at this time of year….highly recommended.
A meal anytime at Durgin Park is also a must! Being that it’s just down the hill from the Old North Church. For that matter, dinner anywhere in the North End of Boston is worth the effort it takes to find it.
In our neck o’ the woods you are Lex. Enjoy – it’s supposed to be a glorious weekend here. Some of the best weather of the season!
Hey, that Ag Cat? Nice A/C.
Here’s a nice walk around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4edfQ4vvLs
You rogue.
That was pretty mean of him.
Is that an inclinometer/angle of bank device mounted on the nose? I’ve seen something similar on Columbian OV-10s and wasn’t sure what it was for.
360-deg pan of a P-51C cockpit
http://www.stclairphoto-imaging.com/360/P51-Mustang/P51_swf.html
What a pity Boston Maggie is out of town this weekend. It would be cool for her and Lex to meet.
Ah, Inyokern. Brings back memories of the (by far) hairiest plane ride I’ve ever had.
Flying to IYK from LAX in a Fairchild Metroliner III. As we flew over some mountains into the valley, we must have encountered an 80 kt headwind, I STG. It hit us like a fist and blew us around so badly it was nearly comical watching the pilots. They had to make such extreme control inputs just attempting to keep us level that I was chuckling to myself, of course while holding on for dear life. Somehow they got us on the ground safely, but I will never, ever forget that flight.
Do they have “ads” in the “Law Reviews” of our land?
What a great place for an advertisement for the rocket suit. They could rake it in and do a public service as well.
Well Lex, if you’re ever up here again let me know. The least I can do is show you a little High Desert Hospitality. Starbucks, not my first choice. I would have taken you up to the Indian Wells Valley Brewery so we could have got you a sampler pack for when you got home. Their Mojave Red is not bad.