Concentration
Throughout my whole flying career I have preferred short flights. I like to take off, maneuver the airplane, figure out what needs to be done, do it "just so", then land and go read a book. Anything over a half hour or so bored me. Other guys would tell me what they liked was to climb to altitude, put it on autopilot and hang around. The longer the flight the better in their minds, mostly because longer flights meant more money and less work.
Unfortunately for me, longer flights do mean more money, or at least more people that will pay me to fly. So I flew the long flights (that rumble you feel shaking my little metal house is a pair of Chinooks flying by low. ah the sound of power. and it is on my side...but I digress) or I flew short flights over and over and over again. The boredom quotient was the same. How many times can you land at Des Moines or Rockford and stay interested. The short flight were long and the longer flights never ended. Even in Africa when I flew a Caravan from Kinshasa to Kisangani with unknown weather and no good alternate fields, it wasn't really interesting, just slightly scary.
So. I get here and we fly four and a half hour flights, sometimes at night. And I hate flying at night. But what do you know, the flying we do is so precise and requires such a fine touch that the time passes... fast. I can't hardly believe all those hours have passed and I haven't looked at the horizon, or where the horizon would be if I could see it, and sighed, mostly. I get tired of course but my mind is engaged, mostly. Too bad there is a lot of droning around doing nothing in particular during our flights and then I get to sighing again.
Maybe I should learn to fly helicopters. Would that be more fun I wonder.
Unfortunately for me, longer flights do mean more money, or at least more people that will pay me to fly. So I flew the long flights (that rumble you feel shaking my little metal house is a pair of Chinooks flying by low. ah the sound of power. and it is on my side...but I digress) or I flew short flights over and over and over again. The boredom quotient was the same. How many times can you land at Des Moines or Rockford and stay interested. The short flight were long and the longer flights never ended. Even in Africa when I flew a Caravan from Kinshasa to Kisangani with unknown weather and no good alternate fields, it wasn't really interesting, just slightly scary.
So. I get here and we fly four and a half hour flights, sometimes at night. And I hate flying at night. But what do you know, the flying we do is so precise and requires such a fine touch that the time passes... fast. I can't hardly believe all those hours have passed and I haven't looked at the horizon, or where the horizon would be if I could see it, and sighed, mostly. I get tired of course but my mind is engaged, mostly. Too bad there is a lot of droning around doing nothing in particular during our flights and then I get to sighing again.
Maybe I should learn to fly helicopters. Would that be more fun I wonder.
posted by Carl at 1:06 PM
2 Comments:
I think based upon your observations that flying helicopters would be the same as flying airplanes. It is not so much what you are flying as it is what type of flights you make.
I don't know that I agree with that from what little, and I do mean little, I know. Some pilot folks (one of them being Carl) have told me that helicopters require much more active to fly where as planes can some times be passive (i.e., straight level flying once you're at altitude). Helicopters require constant adjustments and corrections at all times. However, I guess it's all relative.
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