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Oct. 22nd, 2019 08:47 amReading Lawrence Gonzales' book Flight 232 while listening to the Skyrim soundtrack is an interesting experience. Especially if you put the track called "Watch the Skies" on during the chapter that involves the actual moment of impact.
In news that is only related because there is aviation involved, I'm on track for my next night flight on Thursday evening; the weather is slated to be the exact opposite of last Thursday, so hopefully it'll be a simple case of following I-495's tail lights to US 202, then 202 to Orange, then landing without hitting trees or upsetting horses (there's a stable on the piece of property at one end of KORE's main runway), then taking off again and following 202 back to Fitchburg, then taking off again and following tail lights back to Lawrence. I just need to fill out my night three hours and my ten night takeoffs and landings, really.
... look, just because I read about something disastrous caused by horrible engine failure doesn't mean I'm going to assume it's going to happen to me. Terrible things happen all the time. The dice roll every single day, a dozen or a hundred or a thousand times over. Reading about one bad die roll doesn't make my dice roll the same way. I have nothing to fear that I didn't already have to fear; learning more about how things can go wrong doesn't make them any more or less likely to happen. And anyway, what happened to United 232 was due to a specific mechanical flaw that resulted in a specific catastrophic failure; I'm not sure there's an equivalent in the R22 we use at the school. The R22 doesn't have hydraulic controls, it's mechanical rods pretty much all the way. This is not a thing for me to fear.
(This isn't to say that I don't still harbor a Highly Specific Dread of learning the hard way that there is an owl population in that part of Massachusetts, but I'm capable of assessing likelihoods, and honestly I think that out of my list of Highly Specific Dreads I'm way more likely to have one of the beach ones happen than an owl one.)
In news that is only related because there is aviation involved, I'm on track for my next night flight on Thursday evening; the weather is slated to be the exact opposite of last Thursday, so hopefully it'll be a simple case of following I-495's tail lights to US 202, then 202 to Orange, then landing without hitting trees or upsetting horses (there's a stable on the piece of property at one end of KORE's main runway), then taking off again and following 202 back to Fitchburg, then taking off again and following tail lights back to Lawrence. I just need to fill out my night three hours and my ten night takeoffs and landings, really.
... look, just because I read about something disastrous caused by horrible engine failure doesn't mean I'm going to assume it's going to happen to me. Terrible things happen all the time. The dice roll every single day, a dozen or a hundred or a thousand times over. Reading about one bad die roll doesn't make my dice roll the same way. I have nothing to fear that I didn't already have to fear; learning more about how things can go wrong doesn't make them any more or less likely to happen. And anyway, what happened to United 232 was due to a specific mechanical flaw that resulted in a specific catastrophic failure; I'm not sure there's an equivalent in the R22 we use at the school. The R22 doesn't have hydraulic controls, it's mechanical rods pretty much all the way. This is not a thing for me to fear.
(This isn't to say that I don't still harbor a Highly Specific Dread of learning the hard way that there is an owl population in that part of Massachusetts, but I'm capable of assessing likelihoods, and honestly I think that out of my list of Highly Specific Dreads I'm way more likely to have one of the beach ones happen than an owl one.)
