Scudrunners

YouTube hates me. A video from PorkChops appeared with the title:

Most Difficult Plane to Fly? T6

PorkChops thinks I hate him, and that's not true. I just hate the idiotic bullshit he spouts.

Let's get this straight. A T-6 (Harvard, SNJ) is NOT a "fire-breathing dragon" despite
what various self-aggrandizing idiots with weak chins will tell you.

It is a trainer. In fact, Dear Old Dad - TC thinks he is a shitty pilot - soloed on it in the
RCAF in 1951 after only a few hours of dual on it as his ab initio training aircraft.

So, how hard can it be to fly? It's a fuckin' TRAINER!

I know a little about the T-6. One day, my best friend Freddy showed up at the airport,
flying a hot-rod T-6 (clip wind, geared giant 3-blade prop, etc) from Key West. He was
exhausted. I asked him, Freddy, can you sit there for 10 minutes?

I jumped into the hot-rod Harvard - it had really nasty aileron snatch, and wild gyroscopic
precession from that giant three blade metal prop - and flew a solo surface aerobatic
sequence in it.

My previous T-6 experience included one dual flight, many years ago, in Kissimmee
Florida, in a stock T-6 which flew nothing like this hot-rod Harvard.

See, Freddy was an ICAS evaluator, and my solo checkout surface aerobatic routine in
the hot-rod Harvard met the ICAS requirements so I got it added to my airshow pilot card.

I'm not sure that Freddy knew that I had basically zero experience in the Harvard before
I jumped into it and flew surface acro in my self-checkout flight on it.

Ask to see PorkChop's airshow pilot card, ok? What types are on it? His opinion is WORTHLESS.

And keep in mind that I flew solo surface aerobatics immediately after takeoff in a highly
modified T-6 in my first flight, and legions of Canadians think I am a really shitty pilot, and
I believe them. I accept and embrace the rhetoric of smug Canadians. And if I can fly it
effortlessly, so can the rest of the pilots in Canada.

In my limited experience, every "fire breather" has been disappointingly easy to fly. This makes sense, airplane designers go out of their way to make them easy to fly. While there have been bad aircraft designed, the only plane I know of that was purposefully designed to be hard to fly was the AT-9, which they determined was a pointless exercise.

But that all said, the whole "hard to fly" thing isn't because planes are difficult or even challenging, but rather because pilots like to bullshit. Worse than fishermen. Most work a day flying is incredibly boring, so any hint of excitement has to be blown up to make a good story, or in some cases online content. In any owner's club there seems to be a sect dedicated to making overly redundant and complex procedure. I remember a owner created Mooney checklist that required three hands to execute and was mostly pointless. Complexity theatre. Makes you look important to the lay person. Remember that to many, aviation is very expensive cosplay. Or cargo cultism.

If I ever have complaints about aircraft, its all banal systems over-complexities and ergonomic concerns.

Just remember that Flightchops content ain't for you, and it isn't even for me. There's a market of non-flyers who like to live vicariously through content creation. If he's found a market and filling demand, I can't really argue with some good old fashioned capitalism at work. There's lots of dreamers and flight training tire kickers out there. Lots of people who like to have the story of them learning to fly than are actually interested in becoming a pilot.

I have a feeling pork chop, like the most mere mortals, was trained on a fire breathing 172, and a warrior. I think I was trained the same way, except in a cessna 150. I did get some time and was checked out in a fire breathing citabria with an 0 200!! and a J3. I would consider myself still a novice wrt taildraggers
I think a harvard would have my full attention and maybe some sweaty palms the first few trips....
I think I would like Andrew to teach me taildraggers, and to get me harvard ready!! we need him back in Canada...
Andrew is probably not the target demographic for pork chops videos... I think his name is Steve and by his you tube "Fame" gets to do things I would love to do. I do not keep up on all his postings, I can always go out and clean and grease the landing gear, sump the tanks and similar, to get my fix...

Thank you for the kinds word. I need to learn the difference between instruction and entertainment.

Like many people who are not expert on a subject, I try to learn from videos on the internet. Makes
me wonder what total losers I have been watching for plumbing, car repair, cooking, etc.

I remember TC saying at the Tribunal that whatever they found on the internet was admissible
evidence in court. At the time, I thought that was odd. I objected, and the Member over-ruled me.
This had to do with social media posts about an AN-2 in Nova Scotia, btw. I had no idea that
FaceBook posts were equivalent to affidavits.

That’s it, the colonel needs to start a YouTube channel. A mix of flying and the technical info we see here.

I’ll watch.

Thanks again, but I'm not sure I could earn a living in the entertainment business,
which I guess YouTube is in. Reading the comments, I find it illuminating to remember
that there are around FOUR BILLION people living on earth with double (or single) digit IQ's.

FOUR BILLION. That's a whole lot of noise. What is the quote from "A Tale Of Two Cities" -
"full of sound and fury - a tale told by an idiot".

These are the (existing aviation) YouTube channels I might recommend:

https://www.youtube.com/user/blancolirio
https://www.youtube.com/user/UGOT2CTHIS
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc-Ipa ... AfMzH2lIcA
https://www.youtube.com/c/CWLemoine
https://www.youtube.com/c/MikeyMcBryan
https://www.youtube.com/c/ssairshows

I won't bore you with my politics, guns, cars, motorcycles or humor channels.

But I do like Dan Gryder. He's weirder than I am, which is a truly novel feeling for me.

Watching Dan reminds me of strolling down Duval St in Key West. Yup, there's Darth
Vader playing a bango. SpiderMan playing a sitar. My favorite place on the east coast,
even if the FAA made me piddle in a bottle to fly the tourists from the cruise ships in biplanes.



It gets fucking tiring, being the weirdest one the room.

Thanks again, but I'm not sure I could earn a living in the entertainment business,

You probably could, if you put the same drive towards that that you do the other things you do. Its sort of shocking what some content creators actually make.

It might be interesting to know what sort of revenue someone like flightchops actually gets, and how much of his content panders to generating that revenue.

Squaretail wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 18, 2022 5:31 pm

It might be interesting to know what sort of revenue someone like flightchops actually gets

IIRC YouTube is between 3-10 cents per view if your videos are watched (and future videos guaranteed to be watched) enough to be worth their while to involve you in payment. I think it’s X number of subscribers and Y number of hours that people have spent viewing your content in order to even begin setting this up. YouTube has been known to make it progressively harder to get into and has paid less per view as years go on but such is life I guess.

In addition to YouTube revenue, a lot of these content creators sell stickers and shirts and other merchandise which can be a good way to make a few extra bucks, then most also have a Patreon account where folks just send you some monthly amount because they think you’re cool and want to fund your shenanigans.

Squaretail wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 18, 2022 5:31 pm

and how much of his content panders to generating that revenue.

Damn near 100%. All successful content creators know exactly where their money comes from. Gotta hype up the risks and prime that emotional response to get eyes on what you’re presenting in order to get that ad revenue up. Ask Trevor Jacob. Hell, ask your favourite news site.

Key West from this afternoon: