Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Moderators: sky's the limit, sepia, Sulako, lilfssister, North Shore, I WAS Birddog
Re: Music to a Professional Pilot's Ears
Ya good to see something being brought up about this and good on Sully to take the chance to have his voice heard. Very short article tho, I wonder how much Sully is getting this out there.
My ambition is to live forever - so far, so good!
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mcconnell14
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Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
The Mods changed my title!
I wrote "Music to a Professional Pilot's Ears"
Interesting quotes from "Sully" is not wordage I would use
I wrote "Music to a Professional Pilot's Ears"
Interesting quotes from "Sully" is not wordage I would use
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flyinthebug
- Rank (9)
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- Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2004 8:36 am
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Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
MichealP.. I saw your topic? Why did the Mods change it?
It is great to see "Sully" lobbying for better pay and training!
Fly Safe.
It is great to see "Sully" lobbying for better pay and training!
Fly Safe.
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Hey I noticed that too!
I thought you had changed it yourself.
I thought you had changed it yourself.
My ambition is to live forever - so far, so good!
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
I didn't change it for what it's worth. I've even had some of my own posts deleted in the last week. Damn mods.
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Doesn't look like the mods changed it. They just merged two threads with the same subject. Look at the "post subjects" just above each post. I think they moved the 3rd posters thread into yours and kept his title.
BTD
BTD
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Meatservo
- Rank 10
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- Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:07 pm
- Location: Negative sequencial vortex
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Yeah, well back to the topic of "best and brightest"... I think "Sully" is absolutely right. The current marginalization of the piloting profession has resulted in the disenchantment of the pilot community. Where going to a college to get a diploma in "aviation" used to be considered the equivalent, acheivment-wise, of a university degree, the colleges have lowered their entrance requirements now and I hear it's no big deal to be accepted. Talented, intelligent people used to be attracted to the profession and now it attracts the "lower of brow", if you will, because it simply is not as difficult to master anymore, and the perception in head offices nowadays is that pilots are semi-skilled lower-middle-class "wage donkeys" just like any other bluecollar Johnny Punchclock. And to a certain extent this is true. How many younger pilots have I heard wondering out loud why they "have to" learn the inner workings of an engine or hydraulic system? How many of you know how to navigate without the GPS? I mean really navigate? How many of you have ever even held a sextant or looked at an astrocompass? I'm not trying to be haughty, I'm just as bad as everyone else. You don't "need to" anymore. You don't "need to" understand aerodynamics, physics, astronomy, electronics, mechanics, like the guys did in Cat Driver's era. The old war-trained pilots could build spark-gap transmitters out of mag parts salvaged from a crash. Who here even knows what that is? Never mind there aren't any receivers capable of receiving a signal from a spark-gap transmitter. And even if there was, no-one knows morse anymore anyway.
The education a pilot receives these days just gives a token nod and a gloss-over of the subjects most young men had a deep understanding of just from having attended high school in the immediate post-war era. Crack open a boy's book from that era and you'll find instructions on how to build electric motors from paperclips, and how to make a steam engine, or a reed-valve radio control for your model plane, or a gas-powered go-cart. Since everyone's dad knew how to do this too, there was education in the home. No-one nowadays knows how anything works, or how to make anything. Even if you do, you aren't allowed to anyway.
This is all as it should be. Nobody wants a pilot opening up a panel and tinkering with the stuff inside. No pilots are inventing new ways to navigate, or better equipment to do it with.
The pilot's famous "Ego" used to borne out of a sense of professionalism, by a group of men and women who were typically more intelligent, courageous, resourceful, physically fit and mentally adept than the average person. The high wages and respect they commanded were a result of their being asked and able to function at a higher level than the average person, for extended periods of time. The first thing to go was the prestige, and that was because of the backbiting and professional envy experienced and acted upon by executives who were neither capable of nor willing to adapt to the life of a professional pilot. The second thing to go was the "ego", since an entire generation of pilots have been sensitized against displaying any for fear of recrimination. How many times have you heard about so-and-so having a "bad attitude" because he is professionally assertive at work? How many times have you seen a fellow pilot being browbeaten or chastised or criticized by some non-pilot "management" type who has the nerve to try and manage something he knows nothing about? The next thing to go was the wages, because of all the less professional, more hastily educated and more easily "managed" young pilots willing to accept criminally low wages in return for being able to grasp at the last tatters of honour and respect earned by pilots who went before them. Pilots have become a marginalized, semi-skilled, semi-educated group of semi-professionals trying with greater and greater futility to convince the "executives" of the world who are less and less willing to give a shit, that their contribution to the bottom line is relevant and worth something, which is becoming less and less so due to the increasing levels of automation, and the increasing level of support and technological reliability, and the decreasing desire on the part of the pilots to learn the increasingly arcane and irrelevant arts of communication, navigation, engineering, and physics.
A professional organization of some sort would help address and regulate these concerns, but only if membership was mandatory and legislated, like it is for teachers, police, nurses, engineers, etc. It'll never happen.
The education a pilot receives these days just gives a token nod and a gloss-over of the subjects most young men had a deep understanding of just from having attended high school in the immediate post-war era. Crack open a boy's book from that era and you'll find instructions on how to build electric motors from paperclips, and how to make a steam engine, or a reed-valve radio control for your model plane, or a gas-powered go-cart. Since everyone's dad knew how to do this too, there was education in the home. No-one nowadays knows how anything works, or how to make anything. Even if you do, you aren't allowed to anyway.
This is all as it should be. Nobody wants a pilot opening up a panel and tinkering with the stuff inside. No pilots are inventing new ways to navigate, or better equipment to do it with.
The pilot's famous "Ego" used to borne out of a sense of professionalism, by a group of men and women who were typically more intelligent, courageous, resourceful, physically fit and mentally adept than the average person. The high wages and respect they commanded were a result of their being asked and able to function at a higher level than the average person, for extended periods of time. The first thing to go was the prestige, and that was because of the backbiting and professional envy experienced and acted upon by executives who were neither capable of nor willing to adapt to the life of a professional pilot. The second thing to go was the "ego", since an entire generation of pilots have been sensitized against displaying any for fear of recrimination. How many times have you heard about so-and-so having a "bad attitude" because he is professionally assertive at work? How many times have you seen a fellow pilot being browbeaten or chastised or criticized by some non-pilot "management" type who has the nerve to try and manage something he knows nothing about? The next thing to go was the wages, because of all the less professional, more hastily educated and more easily "managed" young pilots willing to accept criminally low wages in return for being able to grasp at the last tatters of honour and respect earned by pilots who went before them. Pilots have become a marginalized, semi-skilled, semi-educated group of semi-professionals trying with greater and greater futility to convince the "executives" of the world who are less and less willing to give a shit, that their contribution to the bottom line is relevant and worth something, which is becoming less and less so due to the increasing levels of automation, and the increasing level of support and technological reliability, and the decreasing desire on the part of the pilots to learn the increasingly arcane and irrelevant arts of communication, navigation, engineering, and physics.
A professional organization of some sort would help address and regulate these concerns, but only if membership was mandatory and legislated, like it is for teachers, police, nurses, engineers, etc. It'll never happen.
If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
I have to agree with all of that. Send these young guys away for two maybe three days and you would think the sky is falling. What ever happened to hauling fuel all day in a twotter and then getting to sleep in freakin tent freezing your butt off all night and then do it all over again. I can't believe I thought that was exceptable. I am such an idiot but I got an education you just can't get in school.
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Chuck Ellsworth
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Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Jesus Christ Meatservo that has to be one of the best rants about how dumbed down aviation has become that I have read here in many a moon.
When I did my instrument rating we couldn't even start the engines until the inspector scrolled the ADF band and had us tell him/ her the morse code ident of the station...if you couldn't read morse at that speed you went back to study.
I studied astronmy by letting the girls get on top so I could identify the stars even while I was doing something else. Multi tasking was just something we did naturally.
We had to know the mechanical workings of airplanes because we were expected to help fix them.
Todays pilot can be identified by the pimped out uniform and hearing them complain about the long walk in the terminal as they drag their luggage equipped with girly wheels behind them.
When I did my instrument rating we couldn't even start the engines until the inspector scrolled the ADF band and had us tell him/ her the morse code ident of the station...if you couldn't read morse at that speed you went back to study.
I studied astronmy by letting the girls get on top so I could identify the stars even while I was doing something else. Multi tasking was just something we did naturally.
We had to know the mechanical workings of airplanes because we were expected to help fix them.
Todays pilot can be identified by the pimped out uniform and hearing them complain about the long walk in the terminal as they drag their luggage equipped with girly wheels behind them.
The most difficult thing about flying is knowing when to say no.
After over a half a century of flying I can not remember even one trip that I refused to do that resulted in someone getting killed because of my decision not to fly.
After over a half a century of flying I can not remember even one trip that I refused to do that resulted in someone getting killed because of my decision not to fly.
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Letterhead
- Rank 1
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Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
There is little doubt that the calibre of individual attracted to aviation over the last decade has declined markedly. It is tough to attract the best and the brightest when the investment required is substantial and the return is below average. If a new hire pilot in the U.S. earns $18,000 per year in the right seat of a CL65 it is doubtful such an individual can be described as one of the best and brightest of her generation. The brightest minds are, quite frankly, doing other things. In my view, the only organization that has maintained the standard is the military. If you compare the average military pilot against his civilian counterpart the military pilot generally has a university education and millions of dollars worth of flight training. He also has administrative and leadership experience. The average GA pilot generally has no such refinement.
Working in a heavily unionized airline environment where the training standards have been eroded as a result of economic pressure is also worrisome. At the moment, we have a tremendous amount of experience in the flight decks at most mainline carriers, the problem is that airlines fail, and fail often and this "banked" experience is dwindling. Since pilots seem to prefer the perception of certainty that comes with seniority systems and trade unionism this experience is often lost on the occasion of corporate failure. There are many former UAL pilots that simply did not return to the airline when recalled from furlough earlier this decade. In the case of Mr. Sullenberger, should his airline fail and he desire to join American or Southwest et al, his decades of experience, and education would be ignored and he would be hired as a first officer or cruise relief pilot.
If pilots want to have their occupation treated like a profession they must not mimic the work structures of "Johnny Punchclock", and look at professions like Law and Dentistry for some guidance. Since the standard has been eroded and the requirements to join the aviation fraternity are few, I doubt the Johnny Punchclocks that are just commencing careers in GA, or have been at this for awhile have the education and experience to even acknowledge that there is a problem. Paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld, it is a difficult circumstance when you don't know what you don't know.
There used to be a saying that you needed a PHD to design an airplane, a masters to engineer the thing, a bachelor's degree to fly it and high school to fix it. The first two still stand the third has been profoundly diminished over the last 15 years.
There is some encouraging news however, the AME's standard for entry has actually increased over the last decade or so and their compensation (in non unionized shops) has also increased. Funny how that works.
Working in a heavily unionized airline environment where the training standards have been eroded as a result of economic pressure is also worrisome. At the moment, we have a tremendous amount of experience in the flight decks at most mainline carriers, the problem is that airlines fail, and fail often and this "banked" experience is dwindling. Since pilots seem to prefer the perception of certainty that comes with seniority systems and trade unionism this experience is often lost on the occasion of corporate failure. There are many former UAL pilots that simply did not return to the airline when recalled from furlough earlier this decade. In the case of Mr. Sullenberger, should his airline fail and he desire to join American or Southwest et al, his decades of experience, and education would be ignored and he would be hired as a first officer or cruise relief pilot.
If pilots want to have their occupation treated like a profession they must not mimic the work structures of "Johnny Punchclock", and look at professions like Law and Dentistry for some guidance. Since the standard has been eroded and the requirements to join the aviation fraternity are few, I doubt the Johnny Punchclocks that are just commencing careers in GA, or have been at this for awhile have the education and experience to even acknowledge that there is a problem. Paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld, it is a difficult circumstance when you don't know what you don't know.
There used to be a saying that you needed a PHD to design an airplane, a masters to engineer the thing, a bachelor's degree to fly it and high school to fix it. The first two still stand the third has been profoundly diminished over the last 15 years.
There is some encouraging news however, the AME's standard for entry has actually increased over the last decade or so and their compensation (in non unionized shops) has also increased. Funny how that works.
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goldeneagle
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Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
I gotta add a bit to this. Remember those guys that 'made the big bucks' for doing the same thing folks driving airplanes today do? Lets take a quick peek at just _what_ a typical workday was like for those guys.
So, we arrive at the airport, and do a walkaround on the B-707. There's probably a few hydraulic leaks, and definitely a lot of 'black soot' all over the place, but, she looks ok to fly. Next head inside and get the weather package. The weather package has metars and tafs for half a dozen airports along the route, and if you are REALLY lucky, it's got some winds aloft at fl280 and above, those winds came via pireps from other folks flying the route. For your planned flight from YVR to europe, there's probably a thousand mile gap in the weather reports. Ah well, life is good today, got some really good wind reports from the pan-am guys 3 hours ago.
So, now down to the airplane, passengers are already loaded. How much fuel to carry, well, no thinking required even to answer that, tanks full is the only answer, all she can carry. So now, push her back at the gate, and wait for the compressor truck to show up and help you get them fuel suckers started. Once the first one is going, life gets easier, you can bleed from 4 to start 3, etc. Now you've got 4 engines running, and you start to taxi out in yvr. There's a bit of a lineup, so, after 5 minutes with the gas guzzlers idling, you are starting to 'munch the seat' a bit about fuel, and already starting to ask yourself, will we be here long enough that I'll have to land in iceland instead of pressing on to prestwick ?
Now the big moment arrives, and you are in position, cleared to go. 4 engines pushed up to max thrust will just _barely_ accelerate that heavy beast well enough to get airborne on the 8000 foot runway. Takeoff is a 2 man job, one in the front steering, and the guy in the sidesaddle seat doing a heck of a dance with levers and knobs keeping those engines going at the thrust needed to get airborne, guy in the sidesaddle seat was the first variation of 'fadec'. 500 feet a minute, and you hand bomb it up to fl260, she wont climb any faster till you burn off some of that fuel, and, she cant climb any higher till you burn off the fuel. This particular airplane has a 'good autopilot', it can hold level enroute if there isn't much turbulence, and it can hold a heading. So, after almost an hour of hand bombing up to altitude, you turn on auto, and start to relax.
But, there's just a bit of work to be done yet. Guy in the sidesaddle seat is pretty busy now for a while. Fuel has to be pumped between tanks both to make it accessible to the engines, and to keep the airplane trimmed. Guy in the right seat is busy with adf taking a couple cross bearings so we can nail down a couple exact positions, figure out the true track and groundspeed. From that we can figure out the wind, and then we can make the first judgement call on wether or not the fuel is good to prestwick, or if we are gonna end up diverting into reykjavik. Then it starts to get a bit bumpy, and auto cant hold her anymore, back hand bombing so it's not to uncomfortable in the back. After a couple hours, guy in back announces that the fuel load is burned off enough to climb on up now to 320. You gotta climb right away, cuz if you dont, wont be enough fuel to get to the other end, that 4 to 6 thousand extra climb in the step climb makes a huge difference in the final range you can make.
So now it's a few hours later, up over the arctic, adf only gets static. Guy in the right seat is fussing with the sextant to get a good sun shot, guy in the back is still busy pumping fuel between tanks, and monitoring the gas guzzlers to see one of them isn't about to pack up and quit. You've been hand bombing up at coffin corner for 3 hours cuz auto cant hold her well enough, but that's just another day at the office. For a break, you swap the column for the sextant, and go double check the calcs on 'where we were half an hour ago'.
Winds have'nt been to bad, and now you are closing in on the iceland area, finally raised somebody on the hf. They tell you prestwick was reporting 500 overcast, 2 miles an hour ago, they dont have anything more recent. Reykyavick has 800 overcast, 25 knots, 10 miles viz underneath. Decision time again. Do you press on, and risk the approach to prestwick, knowing full well that once you start down out of the flight levels, all that air in the tanks means you are committed to a landing. Or, do you take the better conditions here and now, drop into iceland and give the airplane a drink ? It's a bit of a tuff call, you can hear the reykjavik beacon nice and clear on the adf, heading down to shoot an ndb approach on that sounds pretty comfortable right now, even with the wind down there. In the middle of all that, guy in back pipes up, one of the transfer pumps is acting up, there may be a thousand pounds of fuel just went unuseable, he's gonna need another 10 or 15 minutes to know for sure. dialing prestwick on the adf gets you lotsa static.
Ah yes, the good old days, when pilots made the big bucks. I wonder why ? Probably had something to do with the job at the time, the computer was an e6-b, and every airplane came with one. The adf was great for navigation and approaches, when you were within 200 miles of a beacon, but, for the real nitty gritty, we got a sextant and an almanac. Long haul airplanes were fuel critical already pushing back from the gate. And to be quite honest about it, _most_ folks flying today would refuse the trips on 'safety issues'. Can you even imagining hand bombing a big airplane in the flight levels, not because the autopilot was unserviceable, but because it came from the factory without one ? That adf sure is a mighty fine navigation tool, but when the approach is into the real crap, there's nothing like that steady tone of the radio range to settle your nervous aprehension about 'just where exactly are we?'.
And then after all that, now that we are safely on the ground in prestwick after hand bombing for the majority of that 8 hour hop, the hotel is gonna look and feel mighty fine, except, first we gotta fuel up and then hop over to amsterdam, cuz thats the real destination, and where the hotel is booked.
I dunno, todays world of SOP's, ETOPS, up to the minute live weather on most of the planet, GPS and precision approaches, just doesn't sound the same, especially when you mix in airplanes that can fly themselves better with auto ON than the meatstick in the seat can fly it with auto OFF.
Inflation adjusted, the long haul pilot 50 years ago probably made 5 times or more what the long haul pilot makes today, in equivalent dollars. They actually flew airplanes across the country, didn't go along for the ride to monitor systems and ensure the airplane was flying itself correctly. They earned every penny of that money. Today, the real difference is, instead of paying for very smart people to do a very difficult job, airlines pay the big bucks to purchase very smart autopilots, then hire managers to ride along and monitor them. Ultimately, the net cost is about the same, but most of that goes to the folks designing / building very smart airplanes, rather than to very smart people flying them.
So, we arrive at the airport, and do a walkaround on the B-707. There's probably a few hydraulic leaks, and definitely a lot of 'black soot' all over the place, but, she looks ok to fly. Next head inside and get the weather package. The weather package has metars and tafs for half a dozen airports along the route, and if you are REALLY lucky, it's got some winds aloft at fl280 and above, those winds came via pireps from other folks flying the route. For your planned flight from YVR to europe, there's probably a thousand mile gap in the weather reports. Ah well, life is good today, got some really good wind reports from the pan-am guys 3 hours ago.
So, now down to the airplane, passengers are already loaded. How much fuel to carry, well, no thinking required even to answer that, tanks full is the only answer, all she can carry. So now, push her back at the gate, and wait for the compressor truck to show up and help you get them fuel suckers started. Once the first one is going, life gets easier, you can bleed from 4 to start 3, etc. Now you've got 4 engines running, and you start to taxi out in yvr. There's a bit of a lineup, so, after 5 minutes with the gas guzzlers idling, you are starting to 'munch the seat' a bit about fuel, and already starting to ask yourself, will we be here long enough that I'll have to land in iceland instead of pressing on to prestwick ?
Now the big moment arrives, and you are in position, cleared to go. 4 engines pushed up to max thrust will just _barely_ accelerate that heavy beast well enough to get airborne on the 8000 foot runway. Takeoff is a 2 man job, one in the front steering, and the guy in the sidesaddle seat doing a heck of a dance with levers and knobs keeping those engines going at the thrust needed to get airborne, guy in the sidesaddle seat was the first variation of 'fadec'. 500 feet a minute, and you hand bomb it up to fl260, she wont climb any faster till you burn off some of that fuel, and, she cant climb any higher till you burn off the fuel. This particular airplane has a 'good autopilot', it can hold level enroute if there isn't much turbulence, and it can hold a heading. So, after almost an hour of hand bombing up to altitude, you turn on auto, and start to relax.
But, there's just a bit of work to be done yet. Guy in the sidesaddle seat is pretty busy now for a while. Fuel has to be pumped between tanks both to make it accessible to the engines, and to keep the airplane trimmed. Guy in the right seat is busy with adf taking a couple cross bearings so we can nail down a couple exact positions, figure out the true track and groundspeed. From that we can figure out the wind, and then we can make the first judgement call on wether or not the fuel is good to prestwick, or if we are gonna end up diverting into reykjavik. Then it starts to get a bit bumpy, and auto cant hold her anymore, back hand bombing so it's not to uncomfortable in the back. After a couple hours, guy in back announces that the fuel load is burned off enough to climb on up now to 320. You gotta climb right away, cuz if you dont, wont be enough fuel to get to the other end, that 4 to 6 thousand extra climb in the step climb makes a huge difference in the final range you can make.
So now it's a few hours later, up over the arctic, adf only gets static. Guy in the right seat is fussing with the sextant to get a good sun shot, guy in the back is still busy pumping fuel between tanks, and monitoring the gas guzzlers to see one of them isn't about to pack up and quit. You've been hand bombing up at coffin corner for 3 hours cuz auto cant hold her well enough, but that's just another day at the office. For a break, you swap the column for the sextant, and go double check the calcs on 'where we were half an hour ago'.
Winds have'nt been to bad, and now you are closing in on the iceland area, finally raised somebody on the hf. They tell you prestwick was reporting 500 overcast, 2 miles an hour ago, they dont have anything more recent. Reykyavick has 800 overcast, 25 knots, 10 miles viz underneath. Decision time again. Do you press on, and risk the approach to prestwick, knowing full well that once you start down out of the flight levels, all that air in the tanks means you are committed to a landing. Or, do you take the better conditions here and now, drop into iceland and give the airplane a drink ? It's a bit of a tuff call, you can hear the reykjavik beacon nice and clear on the adf, heading down to shoot an ndb approach on that sounds pretty comfortable right now, even with the wind down there. In the middle of all that, guy in back pipes up, one of the transfer pumps is acting up, there may be a thousand pounds of fuel just went unuseable, he's gonna need another 10 or 15 minutes to know for sure. dialing prestwick on the adf gets you lotsa static.
Ah yes, the good old days, when pilots made the big bucks. I wonder why ? Probably had something to do with the job at the time, the computer was an e6-b, and every airplane came with one. The adf was great for navigation and approaches, when you were within 200 miles of a beacon, but, for the real nitty gritty, we got a sextant and an almanac. Long haul airplanes were fuel critical already pushing back from the gate. And to be quite honest about it, _most_ folks flying today would refuse the trips on 'safety issues'. Can you even imagining hand bombing a big airplane in the flight levels, not because the autopilot was unserviceable, but because it came from the factory without one ? That adf sure is a mighty fine navigation tool, but when the approach is into the real crap, there's nothing like that steady tone of the radio range to settle your nervous aprehension about 'just where exactly are we?'.
And then after all that, now that we are safely on the ground in prestwick after hand bombing for the majority of that 8 hour hop, the hotel is gonna look and feel mighty fine, except, first we gotta fuel up and then hop over to amsterdam, cuz thats the real destination, and where the hotel is booked.
I dunno, todays world of SOP's, ETOPS, up to the minute live weather on most of the planet, GPS and precision approaches, just doesn't sound the same, especially when you mix in airplanes that can fly themselves better with auto ON than the meatstick in the seat can fly it with auto OFF.
Inflation adjusted, the long haul pilot 50 years ago probably made 5 times or more what the long haul pilot makes today, in equivalent dollars. They actually flew airplanes across the country, didn't go along for the ride to monitor systems and ensure the airplane was flying itself correctly. They earned every penny of that money. Today, the real difference is, instead of paying for very smart people to do a very difficult job, airlines pay the big bucks to purchase very smart autopilots, then hire managers to ride along and monitor them. Ultimately, the net cost is about the same, but most of that goes to the folks designing / building very smart airplanes, rather than to very smart people flying them.
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Meatservo. I just reread your post and you have a sentence there that is five lines long and it rolls through your mind like a well oiled bearing. Who says pilots (you are one right) don't have the ability to express themselves in written form. Made me laugh. I bet your face was red after all those discriptive terms. Most would call that a run on sentence, I'll call it a right on sentence.
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
holy mackerel, meat!
You must be right up there with me & cat...
btw, you'd be surprised how sensitive receivers are these days, and CAN receive a spark-gap transmitter.....and how many people still understand the code...
But it sure did me good reading your rant! 
Holy @#$!! You too, goldeneagle? But I can see you weren't too cool on using the ADF loop. Please PM me and I will give you a few short pointers....
I didn't realize YOU were so old...heheheheheHow many of you know how to navigate without the GPS? I mean really navigate? How many of you have ever even held a sextant or looked at an astrocompass? I'm not trying to be haughty, I'm just as bad as everyone else. You don't "need to" anymore. You don't "need to" understand aerodynamics, physics, astronomy, electronics, mechanics, like the guys did in Cat Driver's era. The old war-trained pilots could build spark-gap transmitters out of mag parts salvaged from a crash. Who here even knows what that is? Never mind there aren't any receivers capable of receiving a signal from a spark-gap transmitter. And even if there was, no-one knows morse anymore anyway.
You must be right up there with me & cat...
btw, you'd be surprised how sensitive receivers are these days, and CAN receive a spark-gap transmitter.....and how many people still understand the code...
But it sure did me good reading your rant! Holy @#$!! You too, goldeneagle? But I can see you weren't too cool on using the ADF loop. Please PM me and I will give you a few short pointers....
Last edited by swordfish on Tue Feb 24, 2009 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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North Shore
- Rank Moderator
- Posts: 5625
- Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2004 3:47 pm
- Location: Straight outta Dundarave...
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Meatservo,
Wow! I knew from our drunken musings at the Winston and Zoo that you were an articulate guy, with a historical appreciation of our field - but that piece takes the cake! I sit in awe.
Wow! I knew from our drunken musings at the Winston and Zoo that you were an articulate guy, with a historical appreciation of our field - but that piece takes the cake! I sit in awe.
I wonder if farm kids nowadays have the same fixit mentality, or whether that have joined the NintendoTM generation as well..Crack open a boy's book from that era and you'll find instructions on how to build electric motors from paperclips, and how to make a steam engine, or a reed-valve radio control for your model plane, or a gas-powered go-cart. Since everyone's dad knew how to do this too, there was education in the home. No-one nowadays knows how anything works, or how to make anything. Even if you do, you aren't allowed to anyway.
Say, what's that mountain goat doing up here in the mist?
Happiness is V1 at Thompson!
Ass, Licence, Job. In that order.
Happiness is V1 at Thompson!
Ass, Licence, Job. In that order.
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Letterhead
- Rank 1
- Posts: 27
- Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:06 am
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Golden Eagle - a different set of challenges to be sure. However, airline pilots really didn't begin to be compensated extremely well until the 1980's. In the early to mid eighties a 727 captain at Air Canada earned approximately $120,000. Adjusted for inflation this is equal to $219,773.10 in 2009 dollars. The 727's were of course replaced by Mulroney's Airbus A320s. An Airbus Captain today earns approximately $160,000 working for Air Canada.
If one thing can be observed it is that the occupation moved to become more professional over time peaking sometime in the late 90's (SOP's, CRM etc.). Sadly, due to cost pressures money that used to be spent on pilot professional development programs at airlines were largely cut from flight operations budgets in the early part of this decade. Of course, because pilots chose the Johnny Punchclock trade union model to organize their work lives, they were caught flat footed and without a voice when these negative changes were occurring. To this day there still is no professional pilot's association. ACPA's president is trying to move in that direction, but one wonders whether such an organization will be heavily influenced by the trade union model or by existing professional associations in the traditional professions. If it is the former, the occupation is doomed if it is the latter, there may be room for optimism.
If one thing can be observed it is that the occupation moved to become more professional over time peaking sometime in the late 90's (SOP's, CRM etc.). Sadly, due to cost pressures money that used to be spent on pilot professional development programs at airlines were largely cut from flight operations budgets in the early part of this decade. Of course, because pilots chose the Johnny Punchclock trade union model to organize their work lives, they were caught flat footed and without a voice when these negative changes were occurring. To this day there still is no professional pilot's association. ACPA's president is trying to move in that direction, but one wonders whether such an organization will be heavily influenced by the trade union model or by existing professional associations in the traditional professions. If it is the former, the occupation is doomed if it is the latter, there may be room for optimism.
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The Old Fogducker
- Rank (9)
- Posts: 1784
- Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:13 pm
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Hi Folks:
I still use morse from time to time, and have a tough time with navaid idents because they are sent too slowly. But, I admit it has been more than 40 years since building my last spark gap transmitter from a Model T ignition coil. In a pinch, I could likely convert a mag to a spark gap TX, but keying it would be a little problematic, so maybe you should have a passenger do that part....LOL. That spark gap transmitter was great fun until my mom found out it was me that was wiping out all AM broadcast signals for a few blocks around the house. It wasn't long after that I moved up to a 6V6 crystal controlled oscillator and changed frequencies using a soft lead pencil.
It is super-rare for me to initiate a CW contact, but will drag out the old RCAF straight key if someone really, really grovels that they need the call area for some special award. My SSB signal from my restored Collins S and A line equipment sure sounds good though, and is more fun to tune up than my new solid state radios.
Too bad that all that typing regarding my past exploits was wasted on more than 98% of you.
Now, regarding pilot training, you guys must be total wimps if you require training, and pussy-whipped jerks if you actually ask for any kind of training. According to one training pilot on 705 class aircraft I know, if you've got a pilot's licence, you should be able to figure it out for yourself. Hence no pre-flight or post-flight briefings are given, and heaven forbid you should expect to have any structure in your training "program."
Reading about how some of the regular AVCanada posters feel about anyone engaged in training other pilots, all Training Pilots or Instructor Pilots are obviously incompetent bozos who can't fly, retaining their positions only because they are willing to drop to their knees and elbows for the boss at the wink of an eye and an adjustment of his belt buckle.
After all, isn't the all too common refrain here something along the lines of "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." I can't ever recall anyone coming forward, telling those posters that they are overfull of refried beans and they are posting excess flatulence out their asses. QED, It must surely be true.
So, that said, why would any self-respecting line pilot lower themselves to undergoing training, and making themselves look like idiots among their all-knowing line pilot peers?
Most certainly, anyone "worth their salt" as a "real pilot" sure wouldn't be caught dead having anything whatsoever to do with passing along information to anyone who has a pilot's licence of any type. After all, you worked hard to get that information, why give it away to someone too lazy to go out and figure it for themselves ... the lazy weasels. For sure, if the other guy holds an ATPL, there is simply zero excuse for not being able to just devine how anything & everything on the face of the earth works.
That especially goes for those useless right seat newbies, now called by the new-fangled name of "First Officer" rather than the good old tried and true "Co-Pilot" which let everyone know he was there to be your junior and subordinate.
If they had a licence worth anything at all, and weren't trained at some structured program "Puppy Mill" school ... (unlike the British Commonwealth Training Program) they should have a solid grip on their asses with both hands before they ever get to the line.
Your job as a line pilot is to show these young whippersnappers that they aren't worth calling themselves a pilot.
Fog
I still use morse from time to time, and have a tough time with navaid idents because they are sent too slowly. But, I admit it has been more than 40 years since building my last spark gap transmitter from a Model T ignition coil. In a pinch, I could likely convert a mag to a spark gap TX, but keying it would be a little problematic, so maybe you should have a passenger do that part....LOL. That spark gap transmitter was great fun until my mom found out it was me that was wiping out all AM broadcast signals for a few blocks around the house. It wasn't long after that I moved up to a 6V6 crystal controlled oscillator and changed frequencies using a soft lead pencil.
It is super-rare for me to initiate a CW contact, but will drag out the old RCAF straight key if someone really, really grovels that they need the call area for some special award. My SSB signal from my restored Collins S and A line equipment sure sounds good though, and is more fun to tune up than my new solid state radios.
Too bad that all that typing regarding my past exploits was wasted on more than 98% of you.
Now, regarding pilot training, you guys must be total wimps if you require training, and pussy-whipped jerks if you actually ask for any kind of training. According to one training pilot on 705 class aircraft I know, if you've got a pilot's licence, you should be able to figure it out for yourself. Hence no pre-flight or post-flight briefings are given, and heaven forbid you should expect to have any structure in your training "program."
Reading about how some of the regular AVCanada posters feel about anyone engaged in training other pilots, all Training Pilots or Instructor Pilots are obviously incompetent bozos who can't fly, retaining their positions only because they are willing to drop to their knees and elbows for the boss at the wink of an eye and an adjustment of his belt buckle.
After all, isn't the all too common refrain here something along the lines of "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." I can't ever recall anyone coming forward, telling those posters that they are overfull of refried beans and they are posting excess flatulence out their asses. QED, It must surely be true.
So, that said, why would any self-respecting line pilot lower themselves to undergoing training, and making themselves look like idiots among their all-knowing line pilot peers?
Most certainly, anyone "worth their salt" as a "real pilot" sure wouldn't be caught dead having anything whatsoever to do with passing along information to anyone who has a pilot's licence of any type. After all, you worked hard to get that information, why give it away to someone too lazy to go out and figure it for themselves ... the lazy weasels. For sure, if the other guy holds an ATPL, there is simply zero excuse for not being able to just devine how anything & everything on the face of the earth works.
That especially goes for those useless right seat newbies, now called by the new-fangled name of "First Officer" rather than the good old tried and true "Co-Pilot" which let everyone know he was there to be your junior and subordinate.
If they had a licence worth anything at all, and weren't trained at some structured program "Puppy Mill" school ... (unlike the British Commonwealth Training Program) they should have a solid grip on their asses with both hands before they ever get to the line.
Your job as a line pilot is to show these young whippersnappers that they aren't worth calling themselves a pilot.
Fog
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
So... if we hauled the GPS out, went back to the ol smoke and noise maker engines today pilot wages would go up? : 
Everything is getting cheaper and people are getting paid less. In some places you pay for your catchup in fast food restaurants.
Everything is getting cheaper and people are getting paid less. In some places you pay for your catchup in fast food restaurants.
No trees were harmed in the transmission of this message. However, a rather large number of electrons were temporarily inconvenienced.
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
well this thread is starting to loose its appeal.
Meatservo hits it off with good reactions from everyone and now the rest have to puff up their chest and write an equally long winded self patting on the back how much more of a true pilot they are. Ok, I get it, you know morse code, Congratufuckinlations. You can group me into that 98% that your typing was wasted on because I don`t GARA. I`m sick of hearing you guys tear down new age Pilots and cutting us short on the efforts we put in. There may be a bunch of guys who aren't capable of building a time machine like ol`FogDucker but how about passing some respect back down to the guys out there who give it all they got. As mentioned, we don't NEED to build a spark gap transmitter these days and we are victims of circumstance rather then being lazy good for nothing "meatsticks". We DO learn what we NEED to do the job and if I was needed to build a spark gap transmitter I would fucking learn it you can be sure. If I was needing to learn celestial navigation, I would know it. We face new obstacles these days and still put in equal effort to earn our position. I know I won't be making the same money as the legacy times and I know the public doesn't have the same respect for new age Pilots, but I would hope the "Mentors" we have to guide us along the way would be a little more insightful then telling me how much I don't know and how we are constantly dumbing down our industry. Cuz reality is, a fish rots from the head down and you are the trail blazers who paths we are following. I'm well aware of the problem this career path holds for me but you can be sure I do my best to make it enjoyable for everyone I'm going to share it with.
Meatservo hits it off with good reactions from everyone and now the rest have to puff up their chest and write an equally long winded self patting on the back how much more of a true pilot they are. Ok, I get it, you know morse code, Congratufuckinlations. You can group me into that 98% that your typing was wasted on because I don`t GARA. I`m sick of hearing you guys tear down new age Pilots and cutting us short on the efforts we put in. There may be a bunch of guys who aren't capable of building a time machine like ol`FogDucker but how about passing some respect back down to the guys out there who give it all they got. As mentioned, we don't NEED to build a spark gap transmitter these days and we are victims of circumstance rather then being lazy good for nothing "meatsticks". We DO learn what we NEED to do the job and if I was needed to build a spark gap transmitter I would fucking learn it you can be sure. If I was needing to learn celestial navigation, I would know it. We face new obstacles these days and still put in equal effort to earn our position. I know I won't be making the same money as the legacy times and I know the public doesn't have the same respect for new age Pilots, but I would hope the "Mentors" we have to guide us along the way would be a little more insightful then telling me how much I don't know and how we are constantly dumbing down our industry. Cuz reality is, a fish rots from the head down and you are the trail blazers who paths we are following. I'm well aware of the problem this career path holds for me but you can be sure I do my best to make it enjoyable for everyone I'm going to share it with.
My ambition is to live forever - so far, so good!
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Chuck Ellsworth
- Rank 11
- Posts: 3074
- Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:49 am
- Location: Always moving
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
I believe you are taking this stuff too personally B-rad, most of these posts are just guys letting off steam because we are as fed up with the way the industry is going as you new people.We face new obstacles these days and still put in equal effort to earn our position.
Sure you have new obstacles but the airplanes are easier to fly and new technology sure has made flying easier and it should be safer.
How come you didn't make it to the airport last week?
The most difficult thing about flying is knowing when to say no.
After over a half a century of flying I can not remember even one trip that I refused to do that resulted in someone getting killed because of my decision not to fly.
After over a half a century of flying I can not remember even one trip that I refused to do that resulted in someone getting killed because of my decision not to fly.
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Meatservo
- Rank 10
- Posts: 2581
- Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:07 pm
- Location: Negative sequencial vortex
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
There is a "Merchant Navy Officer's Guild" or its equivalent in almost every country. The sailors of course, have their own unions as well. Only an idiot could fail to draw a parallel between an officer on a civilian ship and a pilot on the flight deck of a civilian aircraft. Why do we not have such an association? I am NOT talking about a trade union. I am talking about mandatory membership in an association that sets benchmarks for training, skill level, rank, and pay levels. Employers would be forced to employ under these guidelines. Pilots would be forced to adhere to the professional standards of this organization. Flying Schools would be forced to teach to this standard. Flying lessons would cost accordingly. "Private" and "commercial" flying would be as separate as they are for sea officers, i.e, you can take your boater's safety course and muck around in a motorboat if you like, but if you want a job on the bridge of a ship, you become a cadet at a merchant seaman's academy, and achieve their qualifications. Flying lessons would be expensive. Stupid or less motivated candidates would fail. There would be fewer pilots. Wages would be higher. Instructors would be super-qualified and highly paid. A lot of people would have a problem with this. I think this would have to be the way to go if we wanted to elevate our trade to a "profession". They have this in the marine transportation industry. Why don't we have it here?
B-rad has a point in that we don't need to know how to build spark-gap transmitters anymore. But young people do seem to me to be less capable on the whole than they used to be. Now, maybe that's just a phase people go through as they age, believing the quality of younger people is diminishing. And it's also true that the environment new pilots are forced to operate in was created by those who went before. It's like a chicken and egg paradox. The "golden age" guys didn't need to fight for respect because they got it anyway. The guys after them had to work harder to get it, and now the new guys find it almost impossible to get. You COULD still get a job flying a twin otter, living in a tent for months, keeping a jaded eye on every little change in the weather, hand-flying all day, loading and unloading fuel drums and rock samples, doing your own flight planning, watching fuel on a minute-to- minute basis, gaining knowledge as the years go by about open leads and multi-year pan ice and currents and beaches and sand bars and eskers and mountain waves and overflow and loon shit and ocean swells and tides and NDB approaches and homemade GNS ones too, and how to fix stuff, and not get caught with your pants down, and at the end of it all you've earned LESS respect and LESS pay than the other guys who are now flying around under full auto sucking cappuccino in the flight levels.( Don't tell me your job is just as hard because it fucking ISN'T. ) But I think nowadays the smart guy is the one who gets onto the big plastic (I would have said big iron but it doesn't sound right anymore) as soon as possible and hopefully gets into management as soon as he can after that so he can get down to patting his own back and taking weekends off along with the other office guys, which is where the REAL money is.
I like to rant. How'dya like THAT run-on sentence?
B-rad has a point in that we don't need to know how to build spark-gap transmitters anymore. But young people do seem to me to be less capable on the whole than they used to be. Now, maybe that's just a phase people go through as they age, believing the quality of younger people is diminishing. And it's also true that the environment new pilots are forced to operate in was created by those who went before. It's like a chicken and egg paradox. The "golden age" guys didn't need to fight for respect because they got it anyway. The guys after them had to work harder to get it, and now the new guys find it almost impossible to get. You COULD still get a job flying a twin otter, living in a tent for months, keeping a jaded eye on every little change in the weather, hand-flying all day, loading and unloading fuel drums and rock samples, doing your own flight planning, watching fuel on a minute-to- minute basis, gaining knowledge as the years go by about open leads and multi-year pan ice and currents and beaches and sand bars and eskers and mountain waves and overflow and loon shit and ocean swells and tides and NDB approaches and homemade GNS ones too, and how to fix stuff, and not get caught with your pants down, and at the end of it all you've earned LESS respect and LESS pay than the other guys who are now flying around under full auto sucking cappuccino in the flight levels.( Don't tell me your job is just as hard because it fucking ISN'T. ) But I think nowadays the smart guy is the one who gets onto the big plastic (I would have said big iron but it doesn't sound right anymore) as soon as possible and hopefully gets into management as soon as he can after that so he can get down to patting his own back and taking weekends off along with the other office guys, which is where the REAL money is.
I like to rant. How'dya like THAT run-on sentence?
If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself
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CanadianEh
- Rank 7
- Posts: 564
- Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:00 pm
- Location: YYZ
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
It's funny that you guys are mentioning all this stuff about how Aviation no longer attracts the best and the brightest. I believe this is true to a certain extent. I'm finishing up High School and I currently have a 90% average going into aviation and so far everyone I've told (who knows anything about the industry) thinks I'm crazy. They tell me that with my marks I should be going into something else. The thing that bothers me the most about aviation is the role that luck plays. Some are getting a right seat job at Jazz right out of school while others get the same job much later and with much more experience. Low wages is also a concern of mine, but it's really way to soon for me to be worrying about that.
At the end of the day, all I can really do is keep my eye on the prize, do the best I can and hope I get a little help from lady luck. I think Sully did a real service to all present and future pilots by voicing his concern about the state of the aviation industry.
At the end of the day, all I can really do is keep my eye on the prize, do the best I can and hope I get a little help from lady luck. I think Sully did a real service to all present and future pilots by voicing his concern about the state of the aviation industry.
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Chuck Ellsworth
- Rank 11
- Posts: 3074
- Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:49 am
- Location: Always moving
Re: Interesting quotes from "Sully"
Love your T-shirt if you are a girl lets go out some night. 
The most difficult thing about flying is knowing when to say no.
After over a half a century of flying I can not remember even one trip that I refused to do that resulted in someone getting killed because of my decision not to fly.
After over a half a century of flying I can not remember even one trip that I refused to do that resulted in someone getting killed because of my decision not to fly.
