Rod’s Books Available on Your iPad or iPhone

All of Rod Machado’s books are now available as custom iPad and iPhone (3GS and 4, not 3G) applications, with unique capabilities. These are far more than just ordinary e-books for your iThing. With these apps, you will receive book updates any time Rod makes changes. No more having to purchase a new book every year to keep up with major changes in aviation. While you’re at it, check out all of Rod’s new downloadable videos by clicking here.

Making It Personal

Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale describes the confusion that James Bond initially felt as a new “Double-O” agent who’s licensed to kill. Bond’s troubles stemmed from his doubts about whether or not he was actually fighting for the cause of justice and doing good for humanity. He was so disturbed by his dilemma that he considered quitting MI6 until his French colleague, Mathis, intervened.

“When you get back to London,” Mathis said, “you will find there are other Le Chiffres [bad guys] seeking to destroy you and your friends and your country…. And now that you have seen a really evil man, you will know how evil they can be and you will go after them to destroy them in order to protect yourself and the people you love….Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.”

Mathis instructs Bond that to do his job well, he has to make it personal. This is how to protect the people he cares about, rather than concern himself with whether or not he’s on the side of right or wrong. I think there’s a lesson there for all pilots.

Several years ago, I was preparing to give a flight review to a highly experienced pilot. We met for a ground review and then reconvened at the airplane. “Don’t worry about the preflight,” he said, “I’ve already done it.”

I replied, “Great, I’m just going to have a look around myself if you don’t mind.” Apparently he did mind, feeling insulted that I didn’t trust him enough to do a preflight. He didn’t know that the preflight is something I take personally, always insisting on seeing for myself that the airplane is airworthy. It’s how I protect myself and the passengers in my charge. Most reasonable people understand this.

Perhaps at a younger age I might have felt conflicted as to the propriety of preflighting an already preflighted airplane, or I might have foregone that choice to avoid bruising another pilot’s ego. I no longer face that dilemma, because my decisions are not just about me. They’re also about the people I wish to protect. The safety of my passengers is something I’ve made personal, and it governs every aviation decision I make.

On the other hand, pilots sometimes make decisions on the basis of saving face, avoiding shame or guilt, or a misplaced allegiance to machinery, social entity or employer. Decisions motivated by these factors tend to make people behave in less safe ways.

An example involves a pilot I knew flying a Cessna 210 while critically low on fuel with a load of passengers. He was unable to find his destination airport at night in reduced visibility. Instead of declaring an emergency and obtaining help, he poked around the area, hoping to spot the field before his engine quit. My guess is that he was trying to save his airplane or save face, instead of trying to save passengers. The airplane eventually crashed and everyone on board perished.

Decisions made on the basis of protecting people are often far better decisions, regardless of whether they’re right or wrong in the eyes of the law. Why? Because people are important; FAA sanctions and flying machines are much less so. Had the Cessna 210 pilot been concerned enough for his passengers to ask for assistance, he might have been sanctioned by the FAA, punished perhaps for improper flight planning. But his passengers, who didn’t get a vote, would probably be alive. That is clearly a more favorable outcome.

When you make the protection of people in your charge something personal, you’re more likely to behave properly, irrespective of how that behavior looks in the eyes of a higher authority.

On March 10^th, 1967 Captain Bob Pardo and his wingman Earl Aman were the last of 44 F4 fighters on a bombing raid into North Vietnam. Pardo and Aman were both hit by enemy fire. Pardo continued the strike but Aman’s aircraft was hit again and was leaking fuel badly. Upon reaching 20,000 feet on their way home, it was clear that Aman’s aircraft didn’t have enough fuel to reach the closest refueling tanker.

At that point, Pardo had enough fuel to reach the tanker but he didn’t want to leave Aman and his backseater, Lt. Bob Houghton to their uncertain and probably unpleasant fate. As Pardo says, “How can you fly off and leave someone you just fought a battle with? The thought never occurred to me.” So Pardo decided to try something that, to his knowledge, had never been tried before. He had Aman jettison his drag chute and tried inserting his radome into the drag chute compartment of Aman’s F4 so as to push him. Wake turbulence made this impossible to do, so Pardo suggested Aman shut down his engine and extend his tailhook. Pardo and his backseater, Lt. Steve Wayne, were able to connect a flange on their windscreen against Aman’s tailhook, pushing him for 15 to 20 second at a time before sliding off, reconnecting and pushing again.

Pardo pushed Aman and Houghton into friendly Laotian territory where both bailed out successfully. Realizing that he was too low on fuel, Pardo and Wayne also ejected safely into Laotian territory. All four men were safely returned to base.

Clearly, Bob Pardo wasn’t motivated by the propriety of his actions. As Mathis instructed Bond to do, Pardo made the safety of his fellow pilots personal, and everyone was better off for it.

All of Rod Machado’s books are now available as custom iPad and iPhone (3GS and 4, not 3G) applications, with unique capabilities. These are far more than just ordinary e-books for your iThing. With these apps, you will receive book updates any time Rod makes changes. No more having to purchase a new book every year to keep up with major changes in aviation.

Every word and illustration is there, for your reading and viewing pleasure. It’s all in vivid color, and easily portable. This is the optimal way to take Rod with you anywhere you go.

Each book has a detailed and easily referenced table of contents that provides direct access to any topic, and there is a comprehensive search feature that provides instant reference to specific words or phrases along with the page numbers, title and subchapter where those references are located. Bookmarks? You bet. You can bookmark any page for reference, too.

Read a full page at a time in portrait mode, or go to landscape mode for a larger view of a little less territory. Turn the page with at the flip of a finger, just as you do with a paper book, and enlarge any spot with the pinch gesture.

Purchasing any book app allows you to read it on both your iPad and iPhone. For those without an iPad (you know you want one, right?), you can read the book on the iPhone. This does require a bit of finger spreading, but for many pilots the iPhone is their go-to mobile device. Pocket or Pad, the choice is now yours. Click here to visit app page.

Student pilot flight training can make you do odd things. The proof is in the number of times I pulled back on my car’s steering wheel in an attempt (usually futile) to climb over other cars. This always embarrassed me in front of my passengers, who would respond with derision at my delusion. I simply ignored them and adjusted my leather helmet, scarf and goggles.

Well, the mocking is over and in its place is the healing power of sweet revenge—a revenge best served told. That’s why I’m telling everyone about the benefits of the car that can climb over other cars—the flying car.

Today’s technology makes it possible to combine the essential qualities of an airplane with the practical features of the automobile. Won’t this mean that all the good stuff on a car comes standard on your aircraft? I don’t see why not. It is, after all, part car. So a pilot will be able to toot his own horn while airborne, rather than having to wait to get back to the hangar! Honk your flying car’s horn if you think that’s a good idea.

Imagine the possibilities the next time someone has the urge to merge downwind at a 90-degree angle. Express yourself. Honk! Honk! Honk! A blast of the horn should activate his mental protractor and immediately improve his in-flight geometry skills.

Caution is advised, however. Given the horn’s traditional placement on the wheel, a good honk is sure to result in your flying car suddenly pitching into a nose down descent. So expect a big honking AD for a yoke placard that reads, “Low altitude honking is hazardous to your health,” or, “Honk if you love Jesus, but only if you want to meet him.”

Then again, honking to awaken a slow-mo Piper Cub from its hibernation on the downwind leg might attract birds. I’m thinking big birds, perhaps even geese (they honk too, you know). Well, fear not. You’re armed with BCAS—the bumper collision avoidance system. You’ll never need to worry about goose bumps again because birds are afraid of bumpers, especially when they see them in unexpected places, such as in the air.

Speaking of birds, if one decides to release its secret weapon of mass visibility reduction on your windscreen, don’t fret. Just activate the windshield wipers. I suspect that all flying cars will have them. You’ll be VFR again, in no time.

As a bonus, those wipers swishing to and fro look like radar. OK, they don’t actually work like radar, but they look like radar to your passengers, and that will comfort them. But do brag to everyone on board about your radar altimeter. That would be your flying car’s AM radio. If ceilings force you earthward, you’ll know you’re too low when you lose the signal from a distant station. Pulling up at that time would be advisable, especially if you hear honking from flying cars on the freeway that were smart enough to drive that day.

Did you know that the flying car is four… no, wait, a billion times safer than an airplane? It’s true. Flying cars have anti-skid systems, and what ham-footed pilot wouldn’t find that useful? A skidding turn, after all, is a turn for the worst. When another flying car in the pattern turns without signaling, miffed pilots have every right to lie on the horn. Unfortunately, they often lie on the rudder, too. Since they probably haven’t read their horn placard, they may find themselves 100 feet above the ground in a nasty skid. Should they be concerned? Not as long as they keep their flying car’s anti-skid system properly maintained. Take care of it and it takes care of you—sort of a skid pro quo. And if you believe that driving is safer than flying, how can flying a car not be the ultimate in safe transportation? The logic is impeccable and I shall entertain no challenges on the matter.

Unfortunately, the flying car is such a good thing for pilots that the FAA is sure to rewrite the regulations, once they wise up. In today’s flying car, hit one switch and you’re transformed into an airplane, pronto. Hit the switch again, bingo, you’re a car once more (you’ll definitely want to read the placard next to that switch, the one labeled, Pronto-Bingo). This switch is your new best friend forever, especially when you see an FAA inspector racing over to ramp-check you. Hit the switch NOW! Clink, clunk, snap, bam, you’re a car again. “So sorry Mr. Inspector, I’m a car now and cars don’t need weight and balance papers. Excuse me, but my bumper and I have an appointment with a pigeon.”  So expect to see a regulation that limits the pilot of a flying car from transforming into a car when an FAA inspector runs toward it.

A car that flies is definitely a car with benefits, and some will benefit more than others. I’m thinking GM here. Since the company now has all our money, let’s force it build flying cars. We’ll change the name to GAM (General Aviation Motors) and give the first production models exotic names, such as the “Exhaust Pipe-r Cub,” the “Station-air Wagon” or the “Skyhonk.” You make the call.

Years ago, during a class on human behavior, a psychology professor said that when teachers are speaking, only 11% of the class is actually paying attention to what is being said. On the other hand, 23% of the people are thinking about a personal problem, while 66% are having a sexual fantasy. According to the professor, no matter what he said that day, at least two-thirds of the class was sure to have a good time.

Isn’t this the problem that most folks have? No, not sexual fantasies. I mean paying attention to the thing that most deserves your attention. In the classroom, it’s the dialectic that deserves your attention. In a car, it’s the road that deserves your attention. Flying an airplane also demands that we pay attention, but not necessarily in the way we normally think. After years of pondering this, it’s now clear to me that those with an extraordinary ability to keep themselves safe in the air do so because they—there’s no other way to say this so I’ll just say it—mimic the behaviors of what the self-help literature calls the enlightened individual.

Whoa! Hold on Kwai Chang Caine. I know you’re thinking, “Don’t shimmy that Sholin up my sleeve. This is aviation pal, and its subjects are ruled by laws, equations and test tubes. So back off, Monkman.”

Not to worry. I share your sentiments, having gone through my “New Age” stage in my early 20’s. My kick in the karma came at a seminar where an unemployed engineer claimed to channel a wise, 30,000 year old spirit. For $20 a pop, you could ask the spirit anything. So I asked him to sing a song from the Late Pleistocene’s Top 10 radiocarbon list. I realized that I had just lost 20 bucks when I heard something similar to Mowtown’s Four Tops. Perhaps I really heard the Four Triceratops. Who knows?

No, none of that jumbo for you, but only the best mumbo from me.

The fact is that the term enlightenment has both historical and respectable roots and this makes it an idea worth exploring. My thought is that a person’s enlightenment in any realm of life (be it aviation, car racing, or muffin making) has nothing to do with his or her ability to speak sotto voce from the lotus position. The answer is (thank goodness) more practical than that. The enlightened person is someone whose situation-specific behavior is guided by a single dominant and permanent thought that both informs and influences his behavior in a meaningful way.

Either because of practical experience or proper training, a person acquires the habit of sustaining one important thought in the background of his consciousness without having to work at keeping it there. His or her behavior is now permanently moderated by this idea. Let’s call it “background awareness.”

For instance, research on consistently happy people—I would certainly call these individuals enlightened in the area of life—indicates that their permanent and dominant thought—their background awareness—is that of gratitude. These individuals are seldom unhappy, because they sustain an awareness of the good things (relatively speaking) that they have in their lives.

Of course, it goes without saying that enlightenment in any area means nothing if it doesn’t further the values of the culture in which the enlightened individual resides. In other words, you may be an enlightened Satanist, but you and your pitchfork shouldn’t plan on receiving an invite to Friday night Catholic bingo.

So, just what does all this have to do with you, the pilot of an airplane?

In my opinion, pilots with an extraordinary ability to fly safely—enlightened pilots—have also learned, either through directed training or the good fortune of having had an appropriate role model, to sustain one extremely important thought as part of their default background thinking.

What is that thought? It’s one that produces self-referential thinking. Said another way, it’s the type of thought that compels a pilot to objectively evaluate himself, his airplane and the environment in which he’s flying. It’s as if, by thinking the proper thought, the pilot has an “OOFE”—an out of fuselage experience—and is now able to examine all three critical conditions as an independent flight observer.

For many pilots, mentally stepping outside their fuselage begins with the thought, “What’s happening to me?” If a single thought can be the catalyst that initiates an awareness of one’s environment, an evaluation of the airplane’s performance and an honest assessment of a pilot’s present mental acuity, this has to be it. I can think of no other idea that so completely informs a pilot about his or her present level of in-flight safety.

When this thought becomes a dominant and permanent part your background consciousness, then you’re certainly closer to cockpit enlightenment than most other pilots.

The important question is, “How do you make this thought a permanent part of your background thinking?” While there are many paths to the same endpoint, the simple answer is that you force yourself to think “What’s happening to me?” until it becomes part of your reflexive behavior. In this instance, practice makes permanent.

Unfortunately, other than constant practice, there is no easy way to cockpit enlightenment. There’s no Zen-koan question to accelerate the process. Besides, if I asked you, “What is the sound of one cylinder firing?” I know you’d say, “That sounds like a rental.”

Copyright 2010 by Rod Machado