Favorite Aviation Blog: Bush Flying Diaries

Dear Fellow Aviation Junkies,

Recently I've seen a lot of gray weather where I live, which has been a great time to check out other people's blogs.  My brother-in-law told me about a British TV Series called "Worst Place to Be a Pilot" about pilots flying around Indonesia:

From a pilot's perspective, the narration is excessively dramatized, basically listing off the hundreds of ways a person could die in an airplane, so I wouldn't recommend it to people who are already scared of flying in a small plane.  However, the video footage they captured is phenomenal, capturing the thrill of flying in remote settings.

The episode above featured Matt Dearden, who has an excellent aviation blog about flying with Susi Air in Indonesia.  He also has some great GoPro footage from his flights into remote airstrips in Papua, Indonesia.  Check out my personal favorite video below:

"Off Centerline, Correcting"

Runways have centerlines, roads have side stripes.  Many students pilots know this from their first flight lesson, or learn it the first time they start taxiing.  A runway is designed for one aircraft at a time.  There are no "passing lanes" on a runway.  The stripe in the middle doesn't divide traffic landing from opposite directions --- it's a target, a goal.  This difference between roads and runways may seem subtle at first, but it's a clue about a major distinctive of aviation: precision.

Generally, side stripes give us enough distance from other cars.  We can wander around in our lane a fair bit.  Some drivers of average-sized vehicles carelessly drift around in their lanes like a ball thrown by a five-year-old at a bumper bowling alley.  When these types of drivers take flight lessons, they use the entire runway as one giant lane.

Pilots of different airplanes with widely varying wingspans, though, need more precision to safely taxi, take off, land without hitting the obstacles along the sides of their path.  When precise pilots see they're off centerline, they smoothly make the change back toward their target.

Where in life do I wander from side to side?  Where do I need to stop drifting around in my lane, and start correcting back to the centerline?

Proverbs 4:25-27

Chasing Needles

In flight, sometimes I notice a condition that I want to change, like an airspeed that's too slow. That can be a dangerous problem. I can try to change that by pitching down while looking at the airspeed indicator, but most likely I'll end up too fast. Then I pitch up to go slower... but then, too slow. I'm noticing a problem and fixing it as best as I can, but it doesn't work how I'd like. I will usually end up at the other extreme of what I want.

We call this "chasing the needles", because the pilot notices a problem but overreacts to it, making an uncomfortable ride.  If I instead look outside at my airplane's pitch when I adjust it and then let the plane stabilize at the new speed, I'll fly my airspeed much more precisely.

You've seen an extreme that you want to correct, but if your focus is on not doing that extreme, chances are you'll side with the other extreme.  In life, what problems have you tried to correct while looking at the problem, instead of looking at the solution?

Heb. 12:1-2