Playing Catchup

I'm ashamed to report that I haven't looked at any of the blogs on my blogroll in several weeks. I dunno how I suddenly got so busy, but between working on a project for the union, planning our European trip this summer, and work, I haven't had a whole lot of time to write here, much less keep up with others in the aviation blogosphere. Too bad, I've been missing some good stuff.

Over at RantAir, GC's been posting some humorous QRH and Immediate Action card knockoffs. If you're at work you might want to hold off, as some of them contain some salty language. The "GPWS Flowchart" , a classic bit of cockpit humor, is more suitable for work viewing.

Very big congratulations are in order to the one and only Aviatrix of Cockpit Conversation - she got that job she's been after, with "Vole Airlines." And, she's flying an airplane that's near and dear to my heart, the "Weedwhacker." I have a few hundred hours flying boxes around in Weedwhackers and they're well-designed, well-built, and fun to fly airplanes. Congrats Trixie!

Dave at Flight Level 390 had a very cool encounter with a WWII veteran who served as a ball turret gunner in the B-17. With every passing year, we lose more and more of the fine men and women who won that war; every meeting becomes more precious, an increasingly rare chance to learn about that part of history from someone who was there.

Everybody's favorite Freight Dog, John, is heading to the sim and has some related throughts on the subject of training. My current airline used to require its pilots to memorize lots of useless trivia ("How many rivets are there on the side of the cowling?") but is now much better about prioritizing "need to know" stuff versus "nice to know" stuff.

Ron Rapp posts some interesting comments related to a loss of pitch control incident that happened to American Eagle a few years back. Remember my last sim session? The point of the unlikely-but-possible scenarios was to show that at some point the checklist is inadequate; once you're at that point, you need to throw the book out the window and use your knowledge and skill to figure out a solution to save the airplane. The situation Ron talks about is another scenario we run in the sim at my company.

Much of the country has experienced some pretty nice weather over the last few weeks, but winter flying isn't completely over for the season. Captain Wilko writes about a training mission in which he found himself in an uncomfortable encounter with ice and turbulence over the mountains. The real danger of this story is that he came out okay, and it's going to be easier to push it next time. I think he's learned the proper lesson, though.

Last but certainly not least, I can never get enough of Shawn Roberts' beautiful pictures. Keep it up, Shawn!

Good stuff, everybody. You've kept me entertained tonight.