Month: April 2021

How to run a quota-based operation in a transgender-friendly manner?

by philg

Pilot friends are still talking about the new United Airlines training operation in which half of the slots are reserved for people who fall into one or more victimhood categories (white women, Black men, anyone “of color”, etc.; see Fly the Quota Skies).

I’m a little confused as to how this can operate in a world where we recognize that gender ID, and therefore victimhood group membership, is fluid, transitory, and unmoored to our DNA and anatomy.

Suppose that Larry Localizer identifies as a “white male” through age 18. She decides, shortly before applying to train/work at United Airlines, that Loretta Localizer is a better fit for her current gender ID. If questioned, Loretta says “I am large, I contain multitudes [of gender IDs].” Loretta qualifies under whatever reduced standards United has for the “quota half” of the pool and is admitted. When she arrives on campus, however, she says “Call me Larry. I experienced some gender dysphoria over the summer and now I identify as a man.”

Now United’s carefully chosen mixture of trainees is messed up due to an excess of student pilots identifying as white males. I can see how a skin color-based quota system could work, assuming that applicants are denied the use of makeup or tanning beds, because United could apply an objective test with a color temperature meter. But how does a quota system based on gender ID work at an employer that #FollowsScience regarding LGBTQ?

United Airlines supports the “Transgender Law Center”, from which they might be hearing if they were to terminate Loretta/Larry due to her/his/zis/their gender fluidity.

Related:

  • “What it means to be gender-fluid” (CNN): For some people, gender is not just about being male or female; in fact, how one identifies can change every day or even every few hours. Gender fluidity, when gender expression shifts between masculine and feminine, can be displayed in how we dress, express and describe ourselves. [and how we apply for jobs at United!] Everyone’s gender exists on a spectrum, according to Dot Brauer, director of the LGBTQA Center at the University of Vermont. Progressive gender expression is the norm for the university, which offers gender-neutral bathrooms and allows students to use their preferred names.
  • “What Does It Mean to Be Gender Fluid? Here’s What Experts Say” (Health.com, reminding us to listen to “experts”): Because gender fluidity means not having a fixed, single sense of your gender, that gender could shift over time—during the course of a day, weeks, months, or years. “Whatever form gender fluidity takes, it is important to remember that it is a valid gender identity. It is not being flaky or ‘going through a phase,’” says Eckler. “So many other aspects of ourselves ebb and flow and shift that it only makes sense that our gender can, too.”
  • Facebook uses a Malibu-flying engineering manager to promote careers in engineering… (in which Facebook sends a pilot who identified as a “man” for 51 years to show teenagers identifying as “women” how easy it is to succeed in the world of nerds)
Full post, including comments

Hyundai electric cars actually do have dog mode

by philg

Although I have new respect for Elon Musk due to his scorn for coronapanic and his success with SpaceX, I still don’t love the idea of driving a Tesla (no Apple CarPlay, dashboard replaced by an oddly-placed screen, the image of being a climate zealot (like the jet fuel-pumping Bill Gates!)). Hyundai has all of the bones for a good dog mode, so to speak, e.g., a big battery and an efficient heat pump. This presumably extends to Hyundai’s sister car company, Kia, which just released the EV6 (charge for 4.5 minutes to drive 60 miles… after driving 60 miles to the nearest high-speed charging location).

The clever British have figured out that dog mode already exists in Hyundai EVs. It is buried in the menu structure as “utility mode” and locking the car while in this mode requires using the mechanical key (buried inside the electronic key).

I don’t think I would buy one until I had verified at the dealership that this works on a U.S.-spec car.

One good thing about Hyundai and Kia is that they remain eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit, unlike Tesla. So if you’re a high-income person you can enjoy the spectacle of low-income Americans being forced to work longer hours to pay for a portion of your shiny new car.

Tesla anecdote: I asked an engineer friend if he still liked his Tesla 3. He said that he did, but his wife (a doctor) hated it, finding the “autopilot” jerky/scary. “I enjoy monitoring the system,” he said. I’m consistently confused by the conflation of attempted self-driving and electrification. Why should we expect an electric-powered car to drive any differently than a Toyota Camry? We used up so much energy plugging the thing in every night that now we’re too tired to turn the steering wheel?

Where will we charge this thing? “Biden’s spending plans could remake the economy, says Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz” As in Aladdin, it will be A Whole New World:

A Nobel Prize-winning economist says he not only endorses President Biden’s expected $4 trillion infrastructure spending plan, but expects that it could break the U.S. out of the low-growth, low-inflation environment that has existed for the past 20 years.

See also “Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan calls for EV rebates, 500,000 charging stations”.

Full post, including comments

The idiots who said that marijuana legalization would be the gateway for harder drugs…

by philg

For those fools who objected to legalizing marijuana because it would open the door to social acceptance of more harmful drugs…. “This Heroin-Using Professor Wants to Change How We Think About Drugs” (New York Times, April 10, 2021):

Carl L. Hart, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, … confides that he has used heroin regularly for the last four years and describes the time he took morphine daily for three weeks in order to experience withdrawal.

Dr. Hart argued that most of what you think you know about drugs and drug abuse is wrong: that addiction is not a brain disease; that most of the 50 million Americans who use an illegal drug in a given year have overwhelmingly positive experiences; that our policies have been warped by a focus only on the bad outcomes; and that the results have been devastating for African-American families like his own.

Unlike past academic advocates for drug use, like Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Dass, who both experimented with L.S.D. at Harvard University, Dr. Hart rejects as “self-serving” the distinction between so-called good drugs, like psychedelics, and more maligned substances, like heroin and methamphetamine. All, he said, have their place.

What to do with all of the COVID vaccination sites once smart humans have shown the dumb virus who is boss?

A next step, Dr. Hart said, should be setting up testing sites nationwide where users can determine the purity and strength of their drugs — anathema to researchers like Dr. Madras, who say that anything that “normalizes” drug use leads to more use by adolescents — but essential for saving lives, Dr. Hart said.

He held out little hope that such sites would appear any time soon.

But he noted a twist during his time in the field. When he started, his students wanted to explore the dangers of drugs. Now they see more harm in drug prohibitions, he said.

(For the record, I am personally against the War on Drugs because it leads to an expansion of the government in general and the police state in particular. But I do think that alcohol should be cut way back (see Reintroduce Prohibition for the U.S.? and Use testing and tracing infrastructure to enforce alcohol Prohibition?) and I wouldn’t be telling folks to pick up heroin at the Safeway.)

Full post, including comments

Pacific Islanders won’t be safe on Uber?

by philg

Email received from the Righteous of Uber:

Let’s break this down a little…

The hate and violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is heartbreaking.

There is hatred and violence against Group A and Group B.

We stand with our Asian-American friends, community, and team to strongly denounce these frightening and painful acts of hate.

Uber stands only with Group A (Asian Americans). Group B (Pacific Islanders) can fend for itself with private cars, public transit, walking, or perhaps sheltering in place? (14 days to flatten the curve on racism?)

Separately… “If you tolerate racism, delete Uber.” (is this another way to say “intolerance will not be tolerated” or is it more complex?)

Related:

  • Uber stands with the Black community (but won’t hire more than 0.8 percent Black “teach leaders”); Uber’s only email to me on the subject of #BLM was in June 2020. Apparently it was “one and done” for what Uber said were “problems we have faced for centuries”.
Full post, including comments

Should one stay off Facebook, Instagram, et al. following the death of a parent?

by philg

Judaism requires that one refrain from attending social gatherings for a year following the death of a parent. From “Shiva and Other Mourning Observances” (Chabad):

Even as the mourner resumes his or her everyday routine after the Shivah, certain mourning practices, such as not purchasing or wearing new clothes, cutting one’s hair, enjoying music or other form of entertainment, and participating in joyous events (weddings, etc.), are continued for a period of thirty days (beginning from the day of the burial).

In the case of a person mourning the passing of a parent, these mourning practices extend for a full year.

Other sites clarify that “purely social gatherings”, “parties”, or any event in which music is played are off limits.

How do we translate this into our modern world that was increasingly anti-social even before coronapanic? What are the best examples of frivolous social activities that are incompatible with the status of mourning a relative (for a month) or parent (for a year)? My vote: Facebook and similar social networks.

Prior to my father’s precipitous decline (perhaps coincidence, but it was a week after receiving Pfizer Covid vaccine shot #2), my own Facebook presence was certainly frivolous. Some examples:

If Facebook had been around in 1599, surely Hamlet would have reproached Gertrude for posting on Facebook so soon after the death of his father:

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

might have been

Likes, Likes, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did go positively viral on Instagram.

Facebook makes people unhappy (New Yorker, 2013; and also a 2019 study), so we could perhaps argue that using it doesn’t violate the letter of the Jewish law against participating in joyous gatherings. I’m not an Orthodox Jew, but I think that the law makes sense and that social media is against the spirit of the law if not the letter.

Readers: What do you think? Should the mourner of a parent be on Facebook? If so, after how many months?

Related:

Full post, including comments

Fact-checking Donald Trump’s predictions regarding COVID vaccine availability

by philg

From September 18, 2020, an Unscientific American who was “without evidence” and who contradicted “experts”:

From the linked-to article…

President Trump said Friday that every American would have access to a coronavirus vaccine by April, contradicting his own statement of two days earlier and sowing deeper confusion about the process and timing of vaccine approval and distribution.

When Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said earlier in the week that the general public was unlikely to get access to a vaccine until the second and third quarters of 2021, echoing other scientific leaders in the administration, Trump said he’d misspoken.

“I think he made a mistake with that statement,” Trump said Wednesday. “When he said it, I believe he was confused. I’m just telling you we’re ready to go.”

Trump then said a vaccine would be ready in weeks and swiftly made available, despite the fact that no one knows yet when sufficient data will be collected from clinical trials to show that one of the vaccines in late-stage trials is effective or safe.

What do we have from science-guided leadership (and we are assured that leadership is important in determining COVID-19 death rate)? “Biden announces April 19 deadline to make all adults eligible for Covid vaccine” (NBC):

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that all adults in the U.S. should be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine by April 19 … The new deadline to expand eligibility — which is two weeks earlier than Biden had previously targeted — should not be difficult to meet since several states have already begun administering the vaccine to anyone over 16 who wants it.

“The virus is spreading because we have too many people who see the end in sight think we are at the finish line already,” Biden said. “Let me be deadly earnest with you, we aren’t finished. We still have a lot of work to do. We’re still in a life and death race against this virus. Until we get more people vaccinated we need everyone to wash their hands, socially distance and mask up.”

Asked why Biden was announcing the new timeframe when nearly every state has already moved up eligibility to the April date, Psaki said the president wanted to provide clarity and remind seniors to hurry to get their shots before the lines get long.

In case the “Experts say the president’s latest timeline is nearly impossible to confirm since none of the vaccines in development have been proved effective…” is cut off on mobile, here’s a screen shot from the desktop Twitter:

Related:

  • U.S. should approve a saline injection as a Covid-19 vaccine? (my idea from June 2020 that would have reassured a lot of folks)
  • “Italy Pushes Back as Health Care Workers Shun Covid Vaccines” (NYT, March 31): Prime Minister Mario Draghi issued a decree requiring that workers in health care facilities be vaccinated, a move that will test the legal limits of his government’s efforts to stem coronavirus outbreaks. … “Unfortunately there is huge part of doctors who are deeply ignorant,” said Mr. Burioni [a virologist with a Ph.D., but not a “Dr.” like Dr. Jill Biden, M.D.], who suggested that perhaps “the selection process for bringing people to gain a medical degree and then the medical license is not effective enough.” … Salvatore Giuffrida, the director of the hospital, Europe’s fourth largest, said he favored a vaccination requirement because it would also keep medical workers healthy and would strengthen defensive lines as a brutal third wave spreads through northern Italy.
Full post, including comments

How’s the Derek Chauvin trial going?

by philg

How’s State v. Chauvin going? I haven’t been paying attention to this trial because I assume that conviction is guaranteed. If nothing else, since the judge denied a change of venue to somewhere outside the city, jurors who live in Minneapolis will have to convict Chauvin or risk having their houses burned down in a wave of post-acquittal mostly peaceful demonstrations (see also the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which followed an unwelcome acquittal).

Readers: Has anything new been learned?

It is a little unclear why taxpayers must fund this trial. Mr. Chauvin has already been convicted here in Massachusetts. From the Harvard Art Museum director, in an email regarding “Anti-Asian racism”: “It feels only moments ago that I was writing to you about the murder of George Floyd and so many others and the importance of banding together in support of our black and brown communities.” From our town’s “Selectmen” (one of whom is named “Jennifer”, so don’t take the “men” part literally): “Embedded in our town vision statement is a commitment to fostering economic, racial, ethnic, and age diversity within ***Happy Valley***. This longstanding commitment was brought into sharper focus and scrutiny last spring after the murder of George Floyd.” (the 2-acre zoning minimum is the cornerstone of our commitment to economic diversity, enabling us to welcome anyone able to afford a $1 million vacant lot) From the school superintendent: “Following George Floyd’s murder you received messages from [a diversity bureaucrat], me, and recently a statement from the School Committee expressing a commitment to focusing on race, inclusion, equity, and diversity in all aspects of our schools.”

Mr. Chauvin was also quickly convicted by our best and brightest nationwide. An email received July 4, 2020: “… more than 200 years of systemic racism. And just weeks ago, the murder of George Floyd. … We have a chance to rip the roots of systemic racism out of this country. … Happy Fourth of July, Joe Biden.” An email received February 9, 2021: “Black History Month is a time to celebrate, reflect, and be inspired to action. … from the wrongful murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, to the treatment of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, to the attempts to diminish Black votes and Black voices in last year’s elections. … Happy Black History Month! Jaime Harrison, Chair, Democratic National Committee.”

[Regarding the unfortunate Breonna Taylor, note that a Grand Jury came to the opposite conclusion.]

Update, 4/20/2021: In case the jury is confused regarding the correct verdict … “President Biden calls George Floyd’s family and says evidence for a guilty verdict is ‘overwhelming.’” (NYT).

Related:

  • a 2015 post in which I noted that “Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been convicted by an impartial jury of 12 locals wearing ‘Boston Strong’ T-shirts.” (the trial judge’s and prosecution’s failure to agree to the seemingly obvious need for change of venue has now resulted in years of litigation all the way up to the Supreme Court and, 8 years after Mr. Tsarnaev’s jihad, his fate remains uncertain)

Full post, including comments

Success story for general aviation: transporting plague-ridden 2-year-olds

by philg

“Family catches private flight to Austin with pilot friend after getting booted off Southwest plane when their two-year-old couldn’t keep his mask on” (Daily Mail):

A family kicked off a Southwest flight after their two-year-old could not keep his face mask on turned to Facebook to complain and were offered a private flight by a family friend.

He said his family woke up at three in the morning to prepare for their flight out of Denver, Colorado.

‘I practiced with him at least two or three times at the house and every time he threw it off, but I figured that [Southwest] would work with us on the plane because he’s two,’ Michelle Harvey said.

FOX 7 reports that Peck flew his twin-engine airplane to Denver, picked up the family, and flew them to Austin at no charge.

There are already pilot groups for flying medical patients (Angel Flight and PALS), dogs (Pilots N Paws), sea turtles (Turtles Fly Too; see also Merry Christmas to the Sea Turtles and Merry Christmas (again) to the Sea Turtles). If we assume that coronapanic never ends and that recalcitrant toddlers remain recalcitrant, could it be time for a new volunteer pilot group for transporting families who don’t want their trip to turn into a mask fight? Light planes are at their best when some of the seats are occupied by children (reasonably low in weight despite one or more years of lockdown, unlike their adult counterparts).

Readers: What should the group be called? Winged Unmasked Brats (“WUB”)? Terrible Twos Take To The Skies (“TTTTTS”)?

As Joe Biden is discovering, sometimes it is best to put children in a cage…

And, in case anyone wants to see just how effective masks (for which we will fight to the death, if necessary), lockdowns, and vaccines are against our viral nemesis, here’s Sweden (unvaccinated, unmasked, unlocked) versus Israel (fully vaccinated (older/vulnerable), masked, and locked-until-recently; source):

From the above, applying the principles of coronascience, we can infer that masks, lockdowns, and vaccines work so well that applying these interventions in Israel stops a plague 2000+ miles away in Sweden.

Full post, including comments

Thank Karen for your double mutant coronavirus?

by philg

After seeing “‘Double Mutant’ Coronavirus Variant Detected in San Francisco” (US News) and similar headlines, I called up a medical school professor friend to ask a variant of my September question: When we wear masks, does the coronavirus thank us for our service?

In that September article, I pointed out that a non-evolving virus is better off if masks don’t work:

Coronavirus is thankful when we wear masks because our misplaced faith in masks leads us to delay taking effective action against the virus, e.g., building shade structures and holding school outdoors (changing the calendar in northern states so that the school year is during the warm months), decluttering retail stores, etc.

[Update: my new example of why faith in masks spreads coronavirus… the government having told them that a bandana (which, in fact, is not worn) is highly effective PPE, people are happy to pack themselves cheek-to-cheek in a 100% full airliner. If “scientists” hadn’t sold the public on masks, it wouldn’t be legal for airlines to operate 100% full flights (flown by non-white-males) and consumers wouldn’t want to get on such a flight. Without faith in masks, the coronanxious would stay home, which is where they can actually be safe.]

and also that coronavirus might be better off if masks do work and people wear them correctly and consistently:

Consider what happens in an unmasked “give the finger to the virus” population, such as Sweden. The virus flourishes for about three months and then fails. Compare to the slow burn of the mostly-masked U.S. and the not-fade-away of completely-masked France…

Maybe the masks protect enough people that the virus can sustain itself at a low-to-medium boil. Especially in a geographically large area in which epidemics have been on different schedules, the virus keeps finding mask-protected populations to infect. The virus stays topmost in our minds, our hearts, and our media. Shouldn’t coronavirus then thank us for our service to it?

What about an evolving coronavirus, which is what we plainly have now? If we’d let the virus rage in the spring of 2020, at this point there wouldn’t be any humans left without antibodies to the not-Chinese Wuhan edition of the virus. If we assume that shutdowns and masks work, the result is that there are always going to be pockets of humans with no resistance and among whom a mini- or maxi-plague can rage. Isn’t that situation more conducive to mutations than if we’d gotten it all over with in spring 2020 and swept up?

I ran this question by my medical school professor friend. “Your thinking would have been conventional in epidemiology through 2019,” he responded, “but is unacceptable today. Another way to look at this is that humans and the virus, without these interventions into the ecosystem, would have coevolved. Think about what happens when people try to manage forests, putting out fires as best they can. Mostly what they accomplish is preserving a tremendous amount of fuel for a fire that will far exceed their ability to control.“

So… if you get infected with one of these double- or triple-mutant viruses after your vaccination, thank your nearest Shutdown Karen?

(Speaking of vaccinations, is the above irrelevant now that vaccines exist against the pre-mutation virus? I don’t think so. There are a lot of countries that are unlikely to achieve high vaccination rates. Even if the vaccines were guaranteed risk-free in a letter from God, why would people who live in countries with low COVID death rates, e.g., in Sub-Saharan Africa (map), want to go to the effort, inconvenience, and expense of getting it? Due to travel restrictions, folks from these countries have been mostly excluded from Europe and the U.S. so they wouldn’t have gotten exposure to the original non-Chinese Wuhan version of the virus. So the mutant coronavirus can always find a naïve population in which to multiply happily and we will have our travel shutdown to thank for that.)

Evidence against the above hypothesis… Brazil. The country did have a raging plague, unmitigated by orders from the president, and now is home to variants. On the third hand, Brazil was not, in fact, unmasked and open like Sweden. The president didn’t lock down the country, but the legislature and state governors were free to order masks, close schools, and generally lock things down. (example) In fact, lockdowns were so severe that researchers trying to obtain blood samples in May and June 2020 for antibody tests often couldn’t get them. (Lancet article: “By contrast with the federal government, most state governors and city mayors enforced closure of schools, shops, and non-essential services, and recommended the use of face masks.”)

Evidence for the above hypothesis… Sweden, yet again! The Swedes let the plague rage in the spring and it disappeared for the summer (i.e., the Swedes weren’t continuously incubating coronavirus) only to reappear in late November, just as the Swedish MD/PhDs said that it would. There is no “Stockholm variant” or “Swedish variant” of the coronavirus. The fearsome variants are all coming from Church of Shutdown countries: UK, South Africa, and Brazil (as noted above, a Church of Shutdown nation despite a heretic being president). From the Wikipedia page on the South Africa lockdown:

… all gatherings except for funerals were prohibited. Restaurants, taverns, bottle stores and all other stores not selling essential goods were to close during the lockdown period. [unlike in Maskachusetts where alcohol and marijuana were “essential”!] Schools, already closed a week before the lockdown period, will not reopen until after the lockdown. Non-exempt people are only allowed to leave their homes during this period to access health services, collect social grants, attend small funerals (no more than 50 people) and shop for essential goods. … South Africans were ordered not to take their dogs for a walk during the lockdown, though they may walk them around their house or apartment building

All borders of the country are closed during the lockdown, except for designated ports of entry for the transportation of fuel, cargo, and goods. International and domestic passenger flights are prohibited, except for flights authorised by the Ministry of Transport, for the evacuation of South African nationals in foreign countries, and for certain repatriations

Enforced by the military, this turned out to be the perfect environment for breeding a variant.

Separately, perhaps because I have so often used my phone from the Harvard Medical School campus, Facebook seems to think that I am a physician. Here’s an ad that the 68,000 folks at the American Medical Student Association wanted me to see:

They will teach me how to turn a “pregnant person” (remember that men can be pregnant) into a not-pregnant person via pills. As Uncle Joe Biden said, “If you don’t love abortion, you ain’t a doctor”? Separately, why does the physician have lighter skin than the patient? Isn’t this ad perpetuating stereotypes? Why not go all-in and show the darker-skinned patient with Medicaid and EBT cards?

Also in recent medical school news… “A Medical Student Questioned Microaggressions. UVA Branded Him a Threat and Banished Him from Campus.” (Reason):

“Thank you for your presentation,” said [Kieran] Bhattacharya, according to an audio recording of the event. “I had a few questions, just to clarify your definition of microaggressions. Is it a requirement, to be a victim of microaggression, that you are a member of a marginalized group?”

Adams replied that it wasn’t a requirement.

Bhattacharya suggested that this was contradictory, since a slide in her presentation had defined microaggressions as negative interactions with members of marginalized groups.

As in the former Soviet Union, at University of Virginia dissent is a sign of mental illness:

Meanwhile, the Academic Standards and Achievement Committee met to to discuss the concern card. This committee voted to send Bhattacharya a written reminder to “show mutual respect” to faculty members and “express yourself appropriately.” The committee also suggested that he get counseling.

On November 26, this suggestion became a mandate: The student was informed that he must be evaluated by psychological services before returning to classes.

The author of Medical School 2020 went through a lot of these, but wisely kept his own counsel!

Related:

Full post, including comments

Book review: Ferry Pilot

by philg

FERRY PILOT: Nine Lives Over the North Atlantic, by Kerry McCauley, is about taking transoceanic trips in planes that were engineered for $50 hamburger missions (now $500 thanks to the inflation that the government tells us does not exist…). These planes might have only one piston engine, one alternator, one battery, one attitude indicator, etc. In other words, many single points of failure and each point reasonably likely to fail during a 10-hour leg.

The book opens by quoting Marco Polo: “An adventure is misery and discomfort, relived in the safety of reminiscence.”

Icing is a persistent enemy:

The turbulence started almost immediately. I tightened my seat belt and concentrated on the instruments in a futile attempt to keep the plane on its assigned heading and altitude. Shortly after entering the clouds, a frosty haze of ice started building up on the windshield. I looked out the side window and I saw that a layer of rime ice was building up on the leading edge of the wings and the landing gear. Picking up ice really got my attention because encountering icing conditions in a small plane like the Cessna 182 is considered an emergency situation because the anti-ice systems are almost nonexistent. They consisted of a heated pitot tube to keep the flight instruments functioning and a windshield defroster that will do next to nothing in heavy ice. I wondered if I could open the side window and scrape at it with my fingernails if the ice got too thick. As ice accumulates on the leading edge of the wings, the airflow gets disturbed, reducing their ability to produce lift. Add to that the increased weight of the ice itself accumulating on the exposed sections of the airframe and it doesn’t take long before the plane is going down, whether you like it or not. And if your windshield is still iced over when you break out of the clouds then you won’t be able to see anything as you try to pick out a place to crash. I don’t know, maybe it’s less scary that way. As I penetrated deeper into the clouds the layer of ice continued to build. Normally, the correct response to flying into icing conditions would be to immediately turn around. But I decided to keep going. I figured if the ice got too bad I could just descend to the warmer air over the Mediterranean where the ice would melt quickly. (Okay, “should” melt quickly.) It was a plan. Not a great plan, but a plan.

After being in icing conditions for fifteen or twenty minutes the wings had picked up about two inches of bumpy rime ice. The 182 had been slowed by twenty-five knots, but so far I was able to hold altitude. Suddenly, there was a sharp BANG from the front of the plane followed by intense vibration. … After landing I inspected the front of the aircraft and discovered the source of the vibration. The cone-shaped spinner attached to the propeller had a two-inch strip of metal missing around the edge of the propeller. The damage was probably caused by ice building up unevenly on the spinner, causing an imbalance. When it finally let go, it took some metal with it. I felt bad about the damage.

Flying over the maximum design weight is conventional.

At 25 percent over maximum gross weight, the heavy Cessna didn’t exactly leap into the muggy night air.

A night flight over the Sahara Desert doesn’t go as planned due to the failure of the single alternator:

I trimmed up the plane, engaged the autopilot, made a few navigation notes, then took out a Tom Clancy novel and tried to get comfortable. I was feeling fat, dumb and happy. A condition that lasted for about three hours. I was just starting to get into the groove of an all night flight when out of the corner of my eye I saw an ominous red light wink on. Curious, I leaned forward and read the words LOW VOLTAGE under the glaring red light burning on the instrument panel.

I pulled back on the yoke, climbing for a better look, and there laid out in front of me was what I’d been praying for all night, the city of Abidjan. I yelled out in joy at my luck. I’d flown 1800 miles over Africa, at night, with no electrical power and still managed to somehow find my way.

(Our hero author had been reduced to using dead reckoning, a compass heading, and a flashlight to see the attitude indicator (“artificial horizon”) for hour after hour.)

He ends up having to fly through a lot of thunderstorms, either because he’s already three-quarters across the Atlantic Ocean or because he’s over some African nations without good aviation infrastructures (GPS was new at the time that he was doing his flying and the Africans did not operate their VORs consistently).

“In reference to flying through thunderstorms; “A pilot may earn his full pay for that year in less than two minutes. At the time of incident he would gladly return the entire amount for the privilege of being elsewhere.” – Ernest K. Gann

My mood darkened as I stared out at the impressive light show laid out in front of me. I didn’t bother looking at the map for an escape path. I needed to go east and the storms were in my way. As I approached the storm wall I felt tiny and insignificant, like an ant at the base of a skyscraper. The boiling mass of dark gray towered above me, topping out at 40,000 … feet? … 50? … higher? The tops didn’t matter to me. I was heading for the middle. Tightening my seat belt I studied the flashing clouds, looking for a weakness. Not seeing any breaks in the wall I picked an area with the least amount of flashes, kicked off the autopilot and dove in. Strong turbulence slammed into the plane as soon as I penetrated the cloud wall, tossing me around like a rag doll. A strong downdraft made it feel like a trapdoor had opened beneath me. The little Cessna lost a thousand feet of altitude in just seconds. Loose items floated around the cockpit as I shoved the throttle to the stops and hauled back on the yoke trying to arrest the uncontrolled descent. In spite of my efforts I was still going down at fifteen hundred feet per minute. Then just as suddenly, an updraft grabbed the plane and pushed me down in the seat as the altimeter spun back the other way. This cycle repeated several times while lightning flashed around me like a crazy strobe light show. The sound in the cockpit was deafening as heavy rain pelted the windshield and airframe. I slowed my airspeed down as much as possible to prevent structural damage. (The words “in-flight breakup” echoed in my mind.) Holding a heading was impossible. Suddenly, I burst out of the clouds and found myself in clear air with massive thunderheads towered above me on all sides. The difference was incredible. One minute I was desperately fighting for control of the plane in severe turbulence, the next minute the air was smooth as glass.

Understanding systems is critical. When he can’t transfer fuel from the ferry tank that has replaced the back seats, he is able to figure out the problem and move 90 gallons of 100LL with lung power.

The owner was colorful:

On the leg from Bangor to Goose Bay, I heard two Canadian pilots from Quebec speaking French on the frequency Pete and I were using. The Canadian pilots were having a nice long conversation that was, I have to admit, kind of annoying. I knew if they were bugging me they had to be driving Pete crazy. One of the first things I learned about Pete was that there was a long list of things he hated: the FAA, customs officials, female pilots, stupid people, and, strangely enough for the owner of an international ferry company, foreigners, especially the French. … “Hey, why don’t you two learn to speak English?” Pete said over the radio. “FUCK YOU!” One of the French speaking pilots replied. Without missing a beat Pete replied, “Good! You’re learning!”

He describes the famous NDB approach to Narsarsuaq, Greenland:

The minimums:

Not for the faint of heart! (The GPS-based procedure is easier, but still gets one down only to 1700′ over the airport; a standard instrument approach at a flatland airport goes down to 200′ above the runway.)

Even though this was my tenth trip to Narsarsuaq, and Pete’s umpteenth, we were still slightly unsure if we’d picked the correct fjord until we saw the familiar sunken ship halfway in that marks the correct path.

#StopEskimoHate

After checking in to the Hotel Narsarsuaq, with its huge Polar Bear statue in the lobby, we headed to the Blue Ice Café for dinner. The food was fantastic and seeing that we were only flying about four hours to Iceland the next day, Pete and I decided to stick around and shoot a few games of pool. Meanwhile, the bar started filling up with local Inuit men and women. About ten o’clock the party started to get a little rowdy, and the Danish workers who were in the bar got up and left. The two airport employees we were talking to told us that they never stayed at the bar very late because the Eskimos who frequent the bar had a tendency to get roaring drunk, and fights broke out almost every night.

I can recommend FERRY PILOT: Nine Lives Over the North Atlantic to anyone who flies little planes (and the book is included for Kindle Unlimited subscribers). If you’re a Cirrus pilot you’ll gain a better appreciation for the redundancy that we do have: two alternators, two batteries, two or three attitude sources, a parachute.

Related:

Full post, including comments