Rules of the Air

An e-mail I received from a friend reported that these rules appeared in the July ’04 issue of an Australian Aviation Magazine. They were so good, I just had to post them.

Stephanie, especially remember #3.

  1. Every takeoff is optional. Every landing is mandatory.
  2. If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger. If you pull the stick back, they get smaller. That is, unless you keep pulling the stick all the way back, then they get bigger again.
  3. Flying isn’t dangerous. Crashing is what’s dangerous.
  1. It’s always better to be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here.
  2. The ONLY time you have too much fuel is when you’re on fire.
  3. The propeller is just a big fan in front of the plane used to keep the pilot cool. When it stops, you can actually watch the pilot start sweating.
  4. When in doubt, hold on to your altitude. No one has ever collided with the sky.
  5. A ‘good’ landing is one from which you can walk away. A ‘great’ landing is one after which they can use the plane again.
  6. Learn from the mistakes of others.
    You won’t live long enough to make all of them yourself.
  7. You know you’ve landed with the wheels up if it takes full power to taxi to the ramp.
  8. The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival. Large angle of arrival, small probability of survival and vice versa.
  9. Never let an aircraft take you somewhere your brain didn’t get to five minutes earlier.
  10. Stay out of clouds. The silver lining everyone keeps talking about might be another airplane going in the opposite direction. Reliable sources also report that mountains have been known to hide out in clouds.
  11. Always try to keep the number of landings you make equal to the number of take offs you’ve made.
  12. There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing.
    Unfortunately no one knows what they are.
  13. You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.
  14. Helicopters can’t fly; they’re just so ugly the earth repels them.
  15. If all you can see out of the window is ground that’s going round and round and all you can hear is commotion coming from the passenger compartment, things are not at all as they should be.
  16. In the ongoing battle between objects made of aluminum going hundreds of miles per hour and the ground going zero miles per hour, the ground has yet to lose.
  17. Good judgment comes from experience.
    Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgment.
  18. It’s always a good idea to keep the pointy end going forward as much as possible.
  19. Keep looking around. There’s always something you’ve missed.
  20. Remember, gravity is not just a good idea. It’s the law. And it’s not subject to repeal.
  21. The three most useless things to a pilot are the altitude above you, runway behind you, and a tenth of a second ago.

Oh to be naive

I thought I did dumb stuff when I was a teen, but nothing compares to this adventure. Imagine, 16 and traveling to Iraq on Christmas money. I guess my parents were smarter then I thought, they never gave me enough money to buy a plane ticket. :-)

Wow!

I just received the most incredible pictures in a powerpoint presentation attached to an e-mail entitle “So you can’t make it into work today?”. I wish I could give proper credit, but the only credit I could find was in the document properties of a name of “Dom” and company of “Bart.”

This is one of the pictures and the rest are on the full page.

I did a quick search on Google and found this page with more info regarding the storm as well as more pictures.

Picture1 Picture2
Picture3 Picture4
Picture5 Picture6
Picture7 Picture8
Picture9 Picture10
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Picture13 Picture14
Picture15 Picture16

Photos from last few trips

Finally uploaded photos from my last several trips. Captions are included with the pictures describing where the photos were taken. My favorites photos are from the Congressional Library, the photos of the really beautiful building.

On a side note, I’m trying out a flickr account to see how I like it. I’m still unsure of it, especially with the 20MB free limit for upload of photos. I’ll probably only use it for camera phone pics.