Oldman tell us your stories about your flying experiences.

Did you ever dive or spin or lose control of the aircraft? Did you ever fly in storms with no visability? Were you ever frightened while flying?
Did you always know you wanted to be an aviator? Have you ever flown a smaller plane? Did you ever have to land on water? When you were a child, did you play-pretend that you were a pilot?
 
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Oldman, maybe you could answer this....
When I worked in Amsterdam, I stayed in the Marriott hotel and a lot of flight crews stayed there too. I got to know some of the pilots - mainly in the bar. One time when my wife was staying with me, we saw a fairly short pilot come in and Mrs. l wondered if the cockpit seats were adjustable. We asked one of the pilots (who mainly flew 747 cargo flights) and instead of a simple answer, we got a whole story of the difficulty in flying different sizes of planes and how you had to set up things to get the proper perspective for landing.

Is this the case? Do you adjust the seats to suit the pilots ? Are there specified height ranges for pilots?
 
Estelle is on the left. She died about 10 years ago of colon cancer. She seemed to be very intelligent. She had told me that she wanted to be a clothing designer. And, I also read where she was homeless for awhile. If I had known that I would have invited her to stay with us. She was kind of shy, but sweet girl. I also thought she was so cool. She told me that she didn't like Phil Specter, but then again, who did? Talk about a whack job.

All three of the girls were related. Estelle and Ronnie were sisters and the third girl, Nedra Talley was a cousin. I think she sort of lost her mind later in life. I know she was anorexic. I spoke with a friend of their's just a few years after I had met her and he told me that the other two girls kind of deserted her because of mental issues. To me, it seemed to be just a shame how her life turned out.

 
Gaer said:
Did you ever dive or spin or lose control of the aircraft? Did you ever fly in storms with no visability? Were you ever frightened while flying?
Did you always know you wanted to be an aviator? Have you ever flown a smaller plane? Did you ever have to land on water? When you were a child, did you play-pretend that you were a pilot?
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WOW!!! You asked more questions than at career day in high schools. Well, almost more.
I never lost control of a plane that I was flying, but I did a few times while flying a sim. (Simulator)
Oh, I flew in some really terrible storms. Once, I even flew above a tornado. You should see what a funnel cloud looks like from the other side. I also took off in a blizzard in Chicago and I landed in what was almost a blizzard in Salt Lake City. They were going to be closing the airport and the ATC asked me if I could divert. I told him no and that I didn't have enough fuel to do that. (I lied.) When you are flying and coming down through the clouds and it's either pouring down rain or snowing to beat the band, you can't see anything, including the runway. At nighttime, it's like having a blindfold on. You better be a really good pilot and trust your instruments. Was I ever frightened when flying? Hmmm...No, I can't remember a time when I was. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a pilot and I built many models from kits. Mostly military planes. At flight school, I flew small airplanes that were gas powered and had propellers. Big difference between those and the jets of today. My favorite small plane was the Cessna 172. The only water landings that I made were in a sim. I made many of them just for practice. Here again, there is a huge difference landing on a river, where the water is generally much calmer than landing on an ocean where the water is unpredictable. When Sully made his landing on the Hudson, he had very calm water, but he executed the landing perfectly. I remember when he wrote a column in our magazine we get a few times each year and he wrote about water landings. He was the right man in the right place at the right time. Those passengers had the best there was at water landings and he didn't disappoint. A great airman, that's for certain. If a pilot has to ditch into an ocean and there are waves, Oh Boy!! I don't think he's going to walk (or swim) away from that one.

Thanks for asking. I hope you understand my answers.
 
Oh! Holy Crap! Wow! Thanks for answering those! I heard of many other pilots that knew from when they were born that that's what they wanted to be! VERY INTERESTING!
 
oldman said:
Estelle is on the left. She died about 10 years ago of colon cancer. She seemed to be very intelligent. She had told me that she wanted to be a clothing designer. And, I also read where she was homeless for awhile. If I had known that I would have invited her to stay with us. She was kind of shy, but sweet girl. I also thought she was so cool. She told me that she didn't like Phil Specter, but then again, who did? Talk about a whack job.

All three of the girls were related. Estelle and Ronnie were sisters and the third girl, Nedra Talley was a cousin. I think she sort of lost her mind later in life. I know she was anorexic. I spoke with a friend of their's just a few years after I had met her and he told me that the other two girls kind of deserted her because of mental issues. To me, it seemed to be just a shame how her life turned out.

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Omg, this video reminds me of the childhood I never really had long enough.

So sad about the other two. Yes, Spector was a sound genius, but a murdering weirdo.

Ronnie's mother first named them "Ronnie and the Relatives".

Back on topic, I was lucky enough to visit the Bradley Air Museum shortly before the tornado almost wiped it out. Thrilling. The size of a troop carrier is mind blowing.

I'd rather fly an F15 than anything else. No time to get scared, LOL!

Amazing is the Harrier Jump Jet. No runway needed and it can hover. So cool.

Funny, I'm nervous flying, but I love aircraft.

 
When I was in Vietnam, we were pinned down in the jungle north of the Mekong River. This was my first ever encounter with the enemy. The Sergeant yelled to the radioman to call in the birds. Wait! What? Everyone starts retreating back into the jungle deeper and deeper and then we had to lay flat and hope for the best. Two- F-4's come screaming in. You almost see them before you hear them. They dropped Napalm. It smelled terrible. President Johnson was big on body counts. At first, the Sergeant yelled to get a body count, but before I got to them, someone yelled that there was just pieces lying around. Sarge says, "Forget it."
 
RadishRose said:
Omg, this video reminds me of the childhood I never really had long enough.

So sad about the other two. Yes, Spector was a sound genius, but a murdering weirdo.

Ronnie's mother first named them "Ronnie and the Relatives".

Back on topic, I was lucky enough to visit the Bradley Air Museum shortly before the tornado almost wiped it out. Thrilling. The size of a troop carrier is mind blowing.

I'd rather fly an F15 than anything else. No time to get scared, LOL!

Amazing is the Harrier Jump Jet. No runway needed and it can hover. So cool.

Funny, I'm nervous flying, but I love aircraft.

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I saw my first Harrier about twenty years ago down at Annapolis at the Air Show for Veterans. Great, just great!!
 
squatting dog said:
If anyone ever gets around Tucson, you have to take in the plane museum. Be advised, it'll take most of the day to see most of it. Besides the museum building's and grounds all around it, the ticket includes a trip to the military boneyard across the highway. It's awesome. (y)

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I've been there and its really very very interesting. Never knew there were some crazy looking aircraft like we saw in that old boneyard. Somewhere there are probably some pics I took, now if I could just remember...
 
Liberty said:
I've been there and its really very very interesting. Never knew there were some crazy looking aircraft like we saw in that old boneyard. Somewhere there are probably some pics I took, now if I could just remember...
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LOL, yep. by the time I got over to the boneyard, my camera batteries had died. Still, they had some strange ones outside of the buildings.

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Remember one, Squat, that looked like a cartoon...a big fat round plane with funny wings that looked like it wouldn't even be able to fly. Wish someone would publish a catalog of those different planes. I'd sure buy it. the one
with the fancy paint job looks like something Janis Joplin would have owned...lol.
 
Great stories Oldman. My dad traveled a lot in his work and as a kid I always loved going to and from airports to pick him up or drop him off. Back then you could walk outside and stand behind the gates and watch the planes or go to the watch tower for a better view. Now I live about 8 miles west of Bush Intercontinental airport and enjoy sitting on my balcony watching the planes fly over as the approach. I still am in awe of the 747s as the come in because from the ground it looks as if they are at a snails pace and you realize the immense power it takes to get them up and keep them up. I used to fly in my work constantly and loved every trip. The "puddle jumpers" were especially fun as the winds threw them around like a toy.
 
We used to own a Navajo commuter plane. Sold it after the ATF rented it for Waco...we would see the front nose of it sitting off to the side of the picture about every night on the news and when they brought back the dead agents in it, that was it, we sold it.
 
fmdog44 said:
Great stories Oldman. My dad traveled a lot in his work and as a kid I always loved going to and from airports to pick him up or drop him off. Back then you could walk outside and stand behind the gates and watch the planes or go to the watch tower for a better view. Now I live about 8 miles west of Bush Intercontinental airport and enjoy sitting on my balcony watching the planes fly over as the approach. I still am in awe of the 747s as the come in because from the ground it looks as if they are at a snails pace and you realize the immense power it takes to get them up and keep them up. I used to fly in my work constantly and loved every trip. The "puddle jumpers" were especially fun as the winds threw them around like a toy.
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United stopped flying the 747's. They have been replaced with the Triple 7's or Boeing 777. The neat thing about the 747 is the two decks. I really liked sitting up high above the ground when taxiing. For such a huge plane, they were very easy to maneuver on the ground. I especially enjoyed the sounds of the 747's that had Rolls Royce engines on them. They are very quiet and when you reach the end of the runway and are cleared for takeoff, we spool up the engines and then release the brake and off we go. Once we get rolling, we push the accelerators fully forward to gain maximum thrust for takeoff. The RR engines have a very distinctive sound of their own. I can tell a RR engine from a GE or a PW (Pratt & Whitney) blindfolded.

I spoke with pilots that flew the Airbus A-380, which is the largest passenger jet. I asked them to compare it to the 747 and what would they say is the main difference. The consensus among the pilots that I asked that question to said it was the power. The one pilot said that he could feel the inertia of the thrust throughout his body and that his heart would actually speed up from the force of the inertia. Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't. It could have been just his anxiety, but it would have been interesting to find out if it was or wasn't true.
 
There was a time when in Alaska they averaged one plane crash a day. Many people that live in Alaska live in remote locations. There easiest way to get around is to fly. So, several of them would buy a cheap small plane, take some lessons, get their license to fly a single engine nothing of a plane and fly on their own. These people are not true aviators and that's why they crashed. Many died, but many were lucky and survived their crash.

You just don't get behind the yoke or control wheel and takeoff and when you get to where you are going land. It's not that simple. Flying is very complicated and also very in depth. It takes years to become a truly good aviator. Howard Hughes learned that the hard way. Check out the movie "The Aviator" sometime.
 
Liked that movie. It seemed when I lived in Alaska, every other person, (I might be exaggerating a little) a LOT of people up there either had at least 3 boats in their yard (we did) or a pilot's licence. Many had their own little planes and would fly to the bush. Pretty common! But there is NO WAY to equate WHAT YOU DO with THAT! Two different species! I think we all have the deepest respect for your skill and . . . "Confidence"!
 

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