Right now, I’m in a bubble. This is just one of those inexplicable absurdities of flight school: as flight training is very expensive and very perishable, one would expect to be rushed through as quickly as possible. Instead, there is a mandatory, months-long wait between finishing primary and beginning training in your advanced aircraft. It’s [...]
I picked up the miniaturized version of TM 1-1520-237-10 yesterday. It’s a book, two inches by six by eight: the operator’s manual for the Black Hawk. Today I’ve spent a little time browsing through to find interesting pieces of information. The rotor system shall not be shut down in winds exceeding 45 knots. Presumably, in [...]
The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a medium-lift utility or assault helicopter derived from the twin-turboshaft engine, single rotor Sikorsky S-70. The primary mission of this helicopter is that of tactical transport of troops, medical evacuation, cargo, and reconnaissance within the capabilities of the helicopter. This is what I will fly. Training begins in the [...]
Some facts about my activities of late: We are required to produce a map book. This book contains 30 infantry-scale maps, 1:50,000. The maps are folded in such a way that you can flip the ‘pages’ in any of the four cardinal directions and get to the appropriate adjacent map. The maps are marked up [...]
In other news, I just passed the military competency exam. This means that when I get my military wings, the FAA will recognize them as qualifications to fly as a civilian commercial pilot as well.
Today was the last day of the Instruments section of flight school. I therefore had to take a check ride: a flight with an alternate instructor pilot whose sole job in the flight was to evaluate my performance. The weather was perfect for an instrument check ride: overcast and hazy; just above the minimum weather [...]
Today was a pretty decent day to fly. There was some instances of heavy turbulence–at one point, I got a sudden descent of more than 1000 feet per minute for about ten seconds–but I thought things were going well. I was on short final, getting ready to land and switch out, when the “Main Gen [...]
It seems that the ALSE people rock. Aviation Life Support Equipment is a small, but heavily-trafficked office just outside the briefing rooms at the stagefield. Before every flight, one of the pilots goes to ALSE to check out life-support vests to wear in-flight. The vests are packed with goodies which are only useful after having [...]
Everyone has heard of holding patterns. They are those little racetracks in the sky that aircraft fly around while waiting for space to clear up so they can proceed with what they want to do, which is nearly always to land. Until quite recently, I hadn’t put any thought into exactly how pilots maintained those [...]
It makes me very, very happy when a technology first imagined in science fiction appears in the real world. Today, we see the wearable airbags from Snow Crash. IN OTHER NEWS, a transgender dude is now pregnant. My instinctive reactions are twofold: 1) that’s a cool photo accompanying the article, and 2) go him, I [...]