Scudrunners

Little story here.  Let's see if anyone can learn
anything from it.

Rwy 25 at Ottawa used to be a tad short and
covered in rubber from decades of landings.

When it rained, the gold bars had difficulty
from stopping their servicable aircraft from
running off the end, after they approached
too hot and touched down long like the AF
wankers at Pearson that let their pax out
on hwy 400.

Now, the rocket scientists here would have
simply accepted the traps of CYOW rwy 25
and suggested that more training and better
adherence to procedures be adopted.

Fortunately, no one listened to idiots like
that.

Rwy 25 was lengthened and grooves put
into the pavement, so that the bottom 10%
of the SOP monkeys out there would not run
off the end.

And sure enough, in the years since then,
not one gold bars has run off the end.

See the difference between an engineer and
a pilot?  An engineer solves problems, a
pilot tries to make up more paper to live
with the problem.

It is a fact that the bottom 10% of the SOP
monkeys out there have truly abysmal ability.

So, the various traps in aviation have to be
removed, so they stop getting caught by them.

I am sure that if the SOP monkeys here had
their way, rwy 25 at CYOW would still be
comparatively short and covered in rubber,
and gold bars would still be running off
the end of it.

Sadly you are correct Colonel.


One of the best examples of lack of understanding of the basics of flying can be found in another thread here where one of the posters here thought my using a DC6 compared to a 777 as an example of the pilot input it takes to fly yhe older technology airplanes compared to the new computer controlled machines was not useful.


The frightening part is you and I may end up in the back of one of those machines when the machine gets ahead of the SOP monkeys up front.


To make it simple.....we had to think and pay attention to the old big piston airline machines because they had to be controlled by the pilots not a magic box doing the controlling.


Look at the difference in something as common as setting power after take off between a DC6 and a 777.

Of course you are partly correct.  Unfortunately, there were quite a number of gold bars that may not have been able to think and pay attention to the DC-6...  186 hull loss occurrences of the 704 produced.  So far, the 777 has 6 hull losses of the 1346+ that have been built since 1995.

There is no doubt that automation has dumbed down the pilot pool by taking the pilot out of the loop of flying the aircraft.  At the same time, it is that automation that brought the accident rate to the low levels we're experiencing.  However, without the basic stick and rudder skills, there will be more of these accidents...  we've got to find a way to fix the pilot performance problems - and you both have very valid solutions.

Thanks for the info CD, very interesting.


There have been many improvements in aviation since the days of piston engine airline airplanes both in reliability of the engines and the lower workload of operating them.


The accident reports do not tell the whole story though.


For instance when I was flying the big piston engine airplanes a very high percentage of our operations were non airport flying with very limited bad weather navigation and landing aids.


For instance we flew the DC6 out of Yellowknife and many of our destinations in the winter were off airport, mainly ice strips with flare pots for night flying.


Yes there were accidents for sure partly because of the environment we flew in and the complexities of the big piston engines compared to the automation of the jets which made our workload quite demanding.


My reason for bringing the DC6 into this discussion was to point out we were forced to hand fly the things compared to today's modern jets we had lots of hands on flying because that was the only way we could fly them.


I never said today's modern jets are not well designed and the safety of aviation has improved immencely since the days of piston pounders.....but I do believe the hands and feet skills of todays pilots have to degrade because they do not use them enough.


The answer of course is automation will replace the pilots completely as far as actually flying them goes.


And of course the Colonel and I like picking one wing off flies and watching them buzz around.  :)
 

>:D

It is really nice to have you with us in this forum CD.  :) :) :)


We have fair fights over here....no mods to hide behind.  :D

[quote]we've got to find a way to fix the pilot performance problems[/quote]

As someone who spent 25 years of their life
instructing ... good fucking luck with that.

Aviation has to be dumbed down so that even
really shitty pilots can be safe.

That's why runway 25 was lengthened and
had grooves added.

Here's a data point:  a few years back, I
recommended a nice young man, to get
his instructor rating back.  He asked me
if he should do the ride in his Luscombe
or rent a 172.

Hell no, I said, the fucking Luscombe.

Now, TC in Ontario Region has exactly
[i]one[/i] - count it, [b]one[/b] - Inspector competent
in a tailwheel aircraft.

I am not making this shit up.

And, that Inspector was incapable of
landing that Luscombe - the candidate
had to take control.

When the gatekeepers are incompetent,
that does not bode well for the future.

Think about that.  No one at TC can land
a taildragger.  What does that say about
the importance of stick and rudder skills?

I spent a quarter of a fucking century trying
to improve stick and rudder skills, and all I
ever got was shit on by some nasty fucking
incompetent bureaucrats at TC.

They can go fuck themselves.

[quote]we've got to find a way to fix pilot performance probs [/quote]


Just don't let anyone incompetant get near any pilot who's in process of training ...

Ah rwy 25 yow brings back many memories, mostly scratching my head and going WTF --


ATC -- 861 any comments on the breaking --- 861 -- nope -- didn't use the breaks --


AC Skido  -- check the comments  -- LMFAooooooo -- Fuck me it was 8000 ft long and we operated out of 6000 ft at max landing wt of 160,000 lbs --


I can even remember when there was no ILS in the nation's capital -- GCA and PAR only


The Nation's Capital and not even a cat 11 runway - go to europe and most bum fuck no where places have that.


What happened to the rubber -- condoms I hope  >:D