[FRIAM] Flight Training and Deprecated Skills/Languages, etc.

[Steve Smith]

I actually knew someone who lived near the Embry-Riddle location in
2000/2001 where several of the 9/11 pilots learned to fly well enough to
do what they did.   She had friends (go figure) who worked at a
strip-club who claimed these "boys" were regulars there.  It was pretty
creepy 2nd order connection.  

My uncles were both pilots in WWII but the older was trained up on the
newfangled idea of a helicopter and proceeded to become a test pilot for
Sykorski.  He was forced into retirement (chief test pilot) to a desk at
65.   Nobody wanted to ground him, but "rules is rules" and in fact his
health degraded acutely and abruptly and he died just a few years
later.  His family insists it was from "heartbreak" from being grounded.  

I have a "young" friend (now 40s) who was just finishing up his
commercial certification at Embry-Riddle Prescott on 9/11 and claims
that the bottom not only dropped out for commercial pilots for the next
couple of years, but has "never recovered" and he has been making a
living as a bartender ever since.   Perhaps it is time for him to revisit. 

My ex brother-in-law left his career in the Air Force to become "a bus
driver" and recently was retired (for age) from Delta.   Even 30 years
ago things were incredibly automated.   I see no reason that airliners
won't be entirely automated and teleoperated in the next 20 years.   The
risk-profile of such things is evolving as self-driving cars (and more
aptly? Semi-tractors?) emerge.  

The hyperloop game is going to change long distance rapid-transit
eventually.   I don't believe anyone is planning for underground
"ballistic-trajectory-velocities" quite yet, but mag-lev-centered,
evacuated tube, zero-grade velocities could still be pretty impressive,
and energy consumption as well with magnetic (regenerative) braking.    
The earliest days of railroading involved gravity-trains often with
empty return cars being towed by animal power.   Yet others used water
from the high-side source as "ballast" and if the up/down routes were
mechanically coupled, the extra weight of water plus load would allow
the empties to be returned "for free".  

Regarding Dave's friend's drug conviction, Denzel Washington's (one of a
series of flawed) character in the movie Flight is a drug-addled pilot
who, by implication in the story, actually achieves a heroic manouver
*because* he's still jacked on the cocaine he snorted to lift himself
out of his alcohol hangover.    The setup is that a jackscrew
controlling horizontal stablizer breaks, forcing the nose of the plane
down with no recourse...  Denzel's character quickly recognizes the
futility of the situation and the *opportunity* of rolling the dive into
an inverted orientation such that the forced "nose down" is now "nose up".

Popular Mechanics (of all places) had an article on the plausibility of
the Cocaine effects supporting the story (rather than the mechanics of
inverted flying).

I suspect I could get work myself using my 40 year-stale FortranIV
experience on "mission critical" systems already old at that time, but
still in some sort of service.  I did a huge senior project on a
FortranIV system for simulating exo-Terran atmospheres (e.g. Mars) which
might well be still be in service?   Fortunately my COBOL/RPG experience
is so slim I'd never be tempted to try that domain.

I'd like to believe that the myriad "stale skill" job opportunities
(demands) we see today are going to be yet-more-fully deprecated.   I
still have a coal-fired forge and an anvil, both probably manufactured
100 years ago, that I can shape and even temper iron and steel with (and
aluminum if I'm incredibly careful), but I do not and never will have
the skills required to do it well, and certainly not to replace what
modern industrial processes can achieve... barring a full apocalypse, it
is merely a quaint "hobby" that might afford me the opportunity to turn
out some rustic items others would mistake for "art",  or more often,
repair the various related tools I might *use*in my forge...   though in
most cases a strap and some bolts or rivets makes more sense than trying
to re-weld a broken connecting rod, or lever.

Meanwhile, the discussion of how our "first programming language"
defines us, I believe that my earliest "programming" experience was more
"analysis" of the circuitry of pinball (and vending) machines in my
friend's father's workshop where he repaired them, and there were always
an array of pinball machines in various states of repair, with all the
guts open for inspection while operating.   Very much an analog/digital
hybrid system while the older vending machines were essentially all "rod
logic" (albeit simple).   Later, at my first employer (radio station) I
learned the ins and outs of automated infinite loop carousel
"programming" which was a hybrid of relay and mechanical
(rod/gear/lever) logics.    The "programming" was really simplistic,
involving inserting "shorting pins" in matrices to define priorities and
timing to get the "right" mix of commercials, PSAs, and a diversity of
music played during any given period (usually a 4 hour shift).   I can't
say how much it influenced my later understanding of "computer
programming" which I was being introduced to simultaneously by our
Driver's Ed teacher who had somehow wrangled a PDP-x rack into a small
room with a teletype/paper-tape-punch.  He didn't really have a clue, he
was learning BASIC along with us, following a simple set of "sample
programs" listed in what I think was the "owners manual" for the machine.

Ramble,

 - Steve

> Does it include lessons on how to land the plane?
>
> —Barry
>
> On 12 Aug 2020, at 21:53, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>
>     I just got an email from a flight training program offering me a
>     nine month
>     course to get a multi engine commercial license. They don't read
>     the Friam
>     listsrv, I hope. I'm too old in any case.
>
>     ---
>     Frank C. Wimberly
>     140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>     Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
>     505 670-9918
>     Santa Fe, NM
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