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

Thu Aug 13 14:24:03 EDT 2020

Steve, 

Back in the old days, when I could tolerate Scientific American, there was a fascinating article on Pendulum-pneumatic trains.  You know, if you just dug deep enough you could get from Boston to NYC in an hour, with a push from the air behind you.  Who needs windows!  As a person who first discovered his capacity for claustrophobia in the BART tunnel under the Bay, shortly after it was constructed,  I am not sure I would be able spend an hour in a pneumatic capsule no matter how fast it got me there.  What would you do if the guy in the seat behind you started decompensating when you were several thousand feet under Middlebury CT?  

HOOOO, boy! 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 12:00 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] Flight Training and Deprecated Skills/Languages, etc.

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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