{"id":1292,"date":"2013-02-01T19:22:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-02T03:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:59","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:59","slug":"50-the-things-we-do-well-or-not-so-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/50-the-things-we-do-well-or-not-so-well\/","title":{"rendered":"#50 The Things We Do Well (or NOT so well)"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend, Gayle (\u201cToo Calm to Fly\u201d), and I were talking about this the other day:\u00a0 I\u2019ve long been very honest about the fact that when I began my career as an airshow pilot, I may have been the worst pilot in that biz.\u00a0 But I was debuting a comedy act featuring a border collie who parachuted out of an airplane to herd a gaggle of confused ducks.\u00a0 And I was the best dog trainer in the airshow business.<\/p>\n

My skill sets have changed since those air show days.\u00a0 Now I make my living teaching somewhat advanced maneuvers in tailwheel airplanes.\u00a0 I write articles and stories and sometimes perform them for the \u201cBlind Squirrel\u201d collection.<\/p>\n

Gayle expressed the opinion that I am pretty good at flying and teaching.\u00a0 I\u2019m not so sure.\u00a0 I pointed out to her that (no offense to my colleagues) there are probably a lot of flight instructors who teach better than I do, but few pilots write very well and I have a little edge there.\u00a0 \u00a0And my flying skills can be measured: Our airport is a skinny little place surrounded by trees.\u00a0 I have a favorite landing technique that entails descending in a turning swoop that carries the plane between two trees. \"\"<\/a>It then lands by touching down in an arc that runs across the centerline of the runway.\u00a0\u00a0 The other day I was coming back from a flight with one of my absolute favorite and most talented students.\u00a0 I told him that I would never want him to try this particular technique at this airport but offered to give him a demo.\u00a0 I could see him tense in front of me as I blasted between the two trees and gasp as I flared in the turn.\u00a0 And then the inside wheel touched down two feet to the outside of the runway\u2019s edge.\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry, but although no one knew anything was amiss, that\u2019s not where I had planned to touch down.<\/p>\n

When we propose to practice precision flying, we must be precise.\u00a0 And to make matters worse there had been a significant failure a couple of days before.\u00a0 I was shoveling snow from the front of the hangar and the neighbor\u2019s Australian shepherd came bouncing over from across the street to help.\u00a0 His tongue was hanging out and he was a happy dog with his stub of a tail wagging as he faced me, panting.\u00a0 I decided to try out my now-rusty dog training skills.\u00a0 \u201cSit\u201d, I instructed<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

firmly.\u00a0 That dog smiled and panted, remained standing and, in response to my command, drooled a bit.<\/p>\n

If I ever get too full of myself, I will simply remember missing the runway entirely and trying to get a drooling dog to sit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Happy Swooping!<\/p>\n

Brian<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend, Gayle (\u201cToo Calm to Fly\u201d), and I were talking about this the other day:\u00a0 I\u2019ve long been very honest about the fact that when I began my career as an airshow pilot, I may have been the worst pilot in that biz.\u00a0 But I was debuting a comedy act featuring a border collie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}