Screw Bronze

Commenter Pete Templin broke the news here first: the remarkable author, athlete and rights advocate Dr. Elizabeth McClung passed away at the end of April, after spending years defying doctors' prognoses and anyone's expectations of what or who she was or could do. I met her some years ago through her blog Screw Bronze, stumbling upon an entry after a Google search and finding her to be such an interesting person that I went back to the very beginning of the blog and read it chronologically, over a number of days. As I witnessed her health worsen I compared the dates of the blog entries to the date I was reading them and feared the blog would end abruptly before the current date. It didn't. The writer was still alive, and still her despite what her condition was taking from her.

We talked in e-mail, and I sent her a number of postcards, but none as spectacular as the postcards she sent me. She had a talent for figuring out what would suit people, and make them happy, and she sent postcards to people all around the world, little rays of sunshine to people who wanted them. I felt a little guilty that she was sending me such artfully constructed postcards, and well I tried, but not hard enough. Ten minutes for her was such a great percentage of her productive time in a week that it was the equivalent to my spending hours on something. I started to hold back a bit, because she wouldn't acquiesce to my please to just enjoy what I sent and not reciprocate. That wasn't who she was. The title Screw Bronze is a reference to the frequency with which Canadian athletes achieve third place results in the Olympics. Being in the top three in the world is great, but Elizabeth fought for the gold every time, for herself and on behalf of others, and berated those who didn't to shape up. No excuses. I copied a quote someone posted in memoriam, but now I can't find the attribution. She was "a really amazing woman who went through the fires of hell and described them in detail, and still found joy in life."

We didn't always agree on things. We once got into an e-mail argument that had a serious physical effect on her, and her wife Linda had to intervene to protect her. I know Elizabeth didn't want to be treated like a delicate flower. She certainly wasn't one. She was strong beyond belief. She loved animé and manga and Japanese fandom. I'm not very conversant with these genres, so I'm probably using the wrong terminology. She also liked some aspects of Victorian gothic, but not, to my knowledge, the white make up. A composite image Elizabeth has her wearing a corset, skull earrings and Hello Kitty socks while feeding squirrels from her wheelchair, amid old tombstones adorned with spires and stone angels.

I only met her in person once. I found her as passionate about her ideas and as well informed on the topics she addresses in real life as she is on her blog. She had a seizure while I was visiting, but shrugged it off, "This is normal," I think she said afterwards. Maybe even "boring." If you read on her blog about what other medical issues she had, I suppose a seizure is boring in comparison. She had some memory issues, but also had remarkable coping strategies.

She never wanted a funeral, but on May 19th, what would have been Elizabeth's 43rd birthday, those who wish to remember her are invited to celebrate by sporting a corset and/or a skull (temporary) tattoo and telling people why.

There's a postcard from her on my desk. Amongst the colourful stamps on the back, it asks, "I'm still alive. Are you?" Yes, yes, I am Beth, and more so for having met you. Pledge to be alive your whole life, people. If you have the power to conceive of and express an excuse, you have what it takes to do something positive instead.

Ramblings Including Oxygen

This is a story about helping to train a pilot who was hired to take my job after I leave. I want to keep this job now, but then I want every aviation job. I cried handing in my resignation from a flight instruction job to work at an airline, and I once worked three different flying jobs at once because I loved them all. Crazy girl. My resume is kind of hard to follow, and my tendency to take temporary jobs probably makes it look worse. But look! I get to fly an airplane!

The new pilot isn't on line yet. He doesn't have previous time on the aircraft type, so the insurance company has said he can't fly it until he has logged ten hours. (I happened to have flown the type before, logging time in exchange for using my navigational skills to keep the owner from getting lost. Aviation sluttery has its merits. And wow, modern GPS units have totally devalued my once-marketable excellent navigational skills.) So he is on this road trip to fly the plane and learn the ropes while I serve as the insured pilot in command. He flew the repositioning flight out here from base and handled the airplane well, but doing the part of the job that isn't getting from A to B is going to be more challenging. We've settled the FBO bill for ramp fees and fuel, walked around the airplane, and packed everything into the cargo area. I have pared down my road trip packing list (no computer!) in preparation for this, but at the last minute the boss decides we will leave him behind because we're doing high altitude work, and it may be difficult to get an oxygen refill on this holiday weekend. We literally put him on a bus.

One of the things I like about aviation is something some people might hate: nothing can be taken for granted. The airplane won't give me a pass because I flew it really well yesterday, or because it knows I know how to handle an engine failure better than that, or because it likes the look of my ass. I have to fly it correctly right now for all values of now. And the things that non pilots take for granted during their workday: access to water, restroom facilities, food, oxygen, heat, not having a mountain come through your office window... they all have to be planned.

This airplane is non-pressurized, so we have to bring and mete out compressed oxygen for all flight above 10,000'. (US rules are different, but it's 10,000' here). Technically we can be between 10,000' and 13,000' for 30 minutes without oxygen, but company policy is just to use the oxygen, because it's harder to plan exactly how long we'll be up there than it would be if we were an A to B type operation. Curiously, Canadian air law dictates that High Altitude Training is required for flight crew operating aircraft above 13,000 feet ASL before the first assignment on a pressurized aircraft and every three years thereafter. As far as I can see, this is a huge loophole through which I can fly my unpressurized aircraft at flight level 220. I assume that the framers of that law didn't consider that there are crews out here operating unpressurized aircraft in the flight levels, and not that they really thought only crew of pressurized aircraft need altitude-specific training.

Fortunately my company doesn't stop at minimum training. I was assigned to present a seminar covering the required material. Here's a little table I should know better giving time of useful consciousness at various altitudes without supplemental oxygen./p>

FL 150 30 min or more
FL 180 20 to 30 min
FL 220 5-10 min
FL 250 3 to 6 min
FL 300 1 to 3 mins

These are pretty variable between individuals. The body has an ability to acclimatize, but acclimatization takes weeks and is lost soon after descending so it doesn't really apply to flight. For example, Mt. Everest is pretty close to 30,000' tall--i.e. almost reaches FL300--but humans have climbed it without oxygen. One of my own co-workers spent a week at Everest base camp and didn't become an idiot after 20-30 minutes. I have no idea where I fall. I'm pretty fit, but does tolerance to a low partial pressure of oxygen relate to long distance running and cycling ability? We often work in the 5-10 minute zone of that chart, which is kind of a sweet spot, because I can descend from there to a level where I can breathe indefinitely in five to ten minutes, depending on how viciously I'm willing to cool the engines.

Today, after I called out in (normal) descent, "through ten thousand, oxygen off," my co-worker said, "Taking off oxygen is like taking off ski boots." Oxygen is essential, but nice to get the mask or cannula off after a while.

Oh and before you ask where I am going or about my new job: there isn't one. New guy couldn't handle the lifestyle so I came back to work again. I love the lifestyle. Five fifteen a.m. start tomorrow, so bed now.

Bad Vibrations?

Summer pre-dawn departure. I do the preflight inspection in a lighter hangar, then tow the airplane out onto the ramp. The sky is black, with slightly lighter grey patches where a few stratus clouds reflect city lights back towards me. The fuel truck arrives, its headlights sweeping through the dark patches between the well-lit areas of the ramp. They can't exactly put light standards in the middle of an airport ramp. I take a full load of fuel then check the tanks with a flashlight before calling ready to board. No passengers, just crew. We confirm we've completed all the pre-mission items and then go to prestart checks. Master on, nav lights on, cockpit lights on, put the flashlight down. I prime the engine, clear left, turning number one... Start goes smoothly and I record the time on the operational flight plan then start flicking the switches that distribute electrical power to where it needs to be.

Taxiing in the dark is harder than during the day. There are lights along the edges of the taxiway, but spaced out, and it's difficult to see whether a gap between two lights leads onto the next taxiway, or onto the grass. Once I have my taxi clearance I follow the yellow centre line carefully, especially through the corners and at intersections, up to the hold short line. Cleared for take-off I put in the power and watch the runway lights stream towards me until rotation speed when they drop out of sight. Everything drops out of sight. All I can see is the instrument panel and blackness out the front windshield. A night departure is a bit like a departure into IMC. My eyes drop to the gauges and I see the airplane accelerate to blue line, the single engine best rate of climb speed that I must maintain in the event of an engine failure. That's when I raise the gear, tapping the brakes first so I don't put spinning wheels in the wings, then I accelerate to my two engine best rate of climb and turn on course as I was cleared to. As I level off at en route altitude for our eastbound flight, the horizon ahead of me glows in a faint line, illuminated by the not-yet-rising sun. I take pictures, but looking at them later all I see is black. The eye sees what the cheap camera through windscreen cannot.

The second member of the crew is not a pilot. He has no duties on this repositioning flight. When I glance back I see that he has wrapped himself in one of our survival supplies sleeping bags and fallen asleep. I switch the intercom to isolate so the radio calls won't disturb him. When passengers fall asleep I have the same fuzzy trusted feeling as when a kitten sleeps in my lap. In Fate is the Hunter Ernest Gann describes looking back into the cabin during a tense time on the flight deck and seeing a mother nursing a baby. Trust. It makes me proud, but I feel its weight, too.

The sun climbs higher and my coworker wakes up. He hollers, or throws something out the snack bag at me, I don't remember which, to get me to turn the intercom back on. He has seen something outside that disturbs him. There are little sticks, each not much longer than my longest finger attached along the trailing edge of the wings and horizontal stabilizer, part of the design of the aircraft. He has noticed that one of them is vibrating wildly. They are static wicks, designed to safely discharge any static electrical charge that builds up on the aircraft, preventing it from discharging from a more essential part of the airplane and possibly damaging it. The wiggling one did not appear loose on preflight, but everything falls off eventually, I suppose. I reassure him that even if that wick departs the aircraft, it will not affect the flight nor the continued airworthiness of the vessel.

On landing we inspect it. There is no problem at all with either the wick or its attachment point. On this aircraft the static wicks are coated wire, kind of like pipe-cleaners, but not fuzzy. It's a good design because it means they don't poke me in the head when I'm inspecting the control surfaces, and they don't snap off like the plastic ones when someone accidentally brushes against them. They just bend out of the way. and that's what this one has done. It was bent in such a way that air flow over it made it vibrate. We straighten it out and all is good. Maybe it will decrease our drag. This particular crewmember likes things to be straight. I flew with him for months before I realized he was taking time to ensure that propellers were aligned symmetrically after shutdown, before we left the apron after flight. This attention to detail is part of what makes him good at his job.

Made in China

Li Jingchun, a farmer in China has built what amounts to an art installation or perhaps a plaything, a tribute to his love of airplanes. It's something that he's clearly been inspired to create. It's fun to look at and he has every right to be proud of it, but the media coverage is strange.

Not strange that it's covered at all. I'm assuming the story originated in the PRC, a local man does cool thing story. The same photos and pretty much the same story have appeared in other countries' press. There's nothing wrong with the news featuring a person pursuing an unusual hobby, it's just that the media seems to be unquestioningly accepting that the man built an airplane. An airplane is an aircraft that generates lift by airflow over surfaces that remain fixed while in flight. Look at the picture. Is the media humouring him, or do they really think an engine would solve the issues with this "aircraft"?

It's made of recycled iron plates. There is no camber to the wings or stabilizer. There are no control surfaces or provisions to attach any. The wing surface area is tiny. The propeller is clearly ornamental. Am I just being a spoilsport? I would love to play in Li Jingchun's creation with him. I think it's marvellous. But why does this bother me? There are two reasons.

One is scientific literacy. I'm scared that the people who wrote edited and approved these stories for publication can't tell that's a creative, fun structure inspired by airplane form, and not an airplane. I'm scared that readers depending on media for information will take it at face value that the structure in question is an airplane, thereby discounting the skill and calculation that goes into actually designing and constructing airplanes. Lack of respect for knowledge, skill and engineering leads to lack of willingness to fund education, research and safety.

And the other is that there are people who really do design and build airplanes in their back yards, a project as different from Li Jingchun's as writing a story in Chinese is from creating faux-Chinese writing wallpaper. Many homebuilt aircraft builders don't have access to the education and research that I just whined about in the previous paragraph, but function is inspiring form.

It's not clear whether Ding Shilu's project actually flies, but it appears he designed it himself with some knowledge of aerodynamics. Here's an EAA critique of the might-be airplane.

I don't have this guy's name, or a picture of anything other than his crotch, and his creation isn't an airplane either. It's a freaking gyrocopter. If you think the footage bluescreeened, there's more here, along with someone else in a homebuilt helicopter.

Yang Weiming built his from a kit, and the test flight was reportedly his first solo. Here's video of the flight. While the Gizmodo article suggests that the gyrocopter pilot avoided showing his face because he was doing something frowned on by authorities, the Chinese article implies that the government is quite proud of this activity and puts no restrictions at all on experimental aircraft.

When Omni Was Futuristic

I'm VFR inbound to a controlled airport on a day with a high thin overcast. Beautiful day for flying: no glare, little turbulence, old snow still sparkling on the ground below, but the runways and taxiways perfectly clear. The controller tells me to call ten miles out and asks another aircraft to report "over the OMNI."

How retro. The OMNI? I think the term might be more common in the US than Canada, but it's still pretty old fashioned. Omni means all. A moment here for the non-pilots, because I think I've left them behind in a cloud of terminology a few times recently, and because I still remember the thrill of excitement I felt on first learning how the thing I'm about to explain works. It was like a grade nine physics class come to life and become useful. There's a thing in aviation called Very High Frequency Omnidirectional (Radio) Ranging. Very High Frequency is always and already abbreviated VHF, which is already a type of radio, hence the thing itself is called a VOR. ("Vee-Oh-Arr").

A VOR is two things, one that's on the ground and sends signals and one that's in your plane and receives, interprets and displays the meaning of the signals. The one the air traffic controller referred to was obviously the ground-based one. It sends a VHF radio signal on a published frequency. You know that a radio waves are depicted as squiggles, sine waves oscillating from start to finish, a little repeated radio shape at frequency times per second. That's what frequency means. Now this is the cool part. The same frequency signal is sent out twice. Once starting at the same point all the way around and the second time starting at the same point at north, but offset by one three-hundred sixtieth of the cycle for each degree of the compass away from north the signal is sent.

Now the percentage of you that know how VORs work are either bored or laughing at my obsession with these. It's probably the fifth time I've explained this now aged technology on my blog. And those of you who let your eyes glaze over at anything math or physics related are waiting for this paragraph to be over. But if there's one reader who didn't know this simple, brilliant navigation solution and is now about to grasp it, it's worth boring everyone else. Because the VOR receiver in the airplane measures the difference in phase (how many three-hundred-sixtieths, i.e. degrees, different the two signals are) and displays it as a needle swing. (Nowadays it can be displayed digitally, too, but that's not the super cool part). Do you see it? The difference between the two signals is the bearing from the ground station to the receiver.

I'm sorry if that was never the coolest thing you'd ever heard. I promise to find a more modern piece of technology to rave about soon. But nothing is as elegant anymore, now that everything new has a computer in it. Computers are amazing, but they don't have the simple brilliant simplicity of an airspeed indicator.

Hey look, this flight sim site agrees with me. "The VHF Omnidirectional Range navigation system, VOR, was probably the most significant aviation invention other than the jet engine." True! Jet engines are so amazing that they sound almost as impossible as this perpetual motion air car, but jets are real.

Asteroid Warning Light

Just as there are certain streets I shouldn't walk down, there are certain parts of the Internet to which I should know better than to go, but sometimes I take a wrong turn. As Randall Munroe lamented, "Someone is wrong on the Internet."

I wasn't brave enough to seek out the site the question appeared on to look at the answers given to this individual, and I know it's not fair to call them out. I have no idea how old they are nor what opportunity they have had to learn information seeking and critical thinking strategies. At least they asked.

When I taught meteorology in ground school, I used to go around the room and have everyone name a place water was found in the environment. They were usually enough people trying to be clever that the resulting list included ponds, lakes, rivers, oceans, people, animals, martinis, glaciers, the air itself, clouds, fog and so on. We'd go through the list and discuss the phase of water present in each case. Almost everyone started the class thinking that clouds were composed of water vapour. A lot of them knew that water vapour was an invisible gas in the air around them, but for some reason they rarely saw this at odds with their ability to see clouds.

While there are "clouds of gas," unqualified "clouds" are made of water, in the form of liquid droplets and/or ice crystals. The higher the altitude, the colder the air and the greater the proportion of ice to water in the cloud. The droplets may circulate upward and downward within a cloud, meaning that liquid water may freeze and ice may melt, but more dangerously, liquid water may be cooled below zero celsius yet not immediately freeze. This is dangerous because supercooled liquids tend to freeze on contact with a surface, such as an airplane flying through them. There's a readout on my dashboard giving the outside air temperature, and when that temperature is between about +4 and -15C, an amber light turns on, warning me that I'm in the icing zone. Any visible liquid moisture (clouds, fog, rain) at that altitude could be supercooled, and turn to ice on my airplane.

I don't have an asteroid warning light. Maybe on the Starship Enterprise.

Dressing Up for Leftovers

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An earlier version of this said the carrier was Alligiant. My brain must have riffed off "alleged." Good grief I'm a terrible blogger.

Anyway, these guys received vouchers good for free or very cheap first class airline travel from a family friend. They turned up dressed like paying passengers. Their attire was within the bounds of public decency and they wouldn't get a second glance boarding with regular tickets.

The problem is that they weren't flying on regular tickets. They were flying on buddy passes. The airline wasn't going to make any money off of them. Non-rev buddy travel is the airline equivalent of a restaurant employee being allowed to serve left over food to friends at the end of the night. Once all the paying customers are served, the buddies can have some, as long as they behave excruciatingly well, look so respectable that paying customers never guess they are freeloaders, and understand that they will eat what they are served and that there might not be any left for them.

Restaurant food isn't as perishable as airline seats--an empty airline seat becomes unusable by anyone the moment the door is closed--so if restaurants allow their employees to feed their friends, that's probably only in the form of allowing them to take leftovers home. Restaurant employees would probably get in trouble if their friends came in dressed casually to see if there was any free food available.

"But," you might say, "this is different. The airline has a program set up that allow employees' friends to come and get those free seats. They don't have to wait in the alley out of sight of paying customers until after closing." Well they kind of do. They have to wait in the boarding lounge until just before the flight is closed, and they are in no way guaranteed a seat, even if there are empty ones. And they have to be invisible, or at least completely inoffensive, to paying customers.

I'm going to take the men at their word that they had no idea that there was a dress code for first class travel as a non-revenue passenger. I suspect they received the pass from a family member who got it from the friend, and not directly through a friend, because an airline employee with any sense at all will, "put the fear of God into my BP riders," letting them know "I would CUT you," as comments on my Facebook feed put it. If a non-rev behaves inappropriately, the employee loses non-rev travel privileges. The rules were probably printed on the back of the pass, but I can't really fault the guys for not reading the fine print on the ticket.

Every airline has its own non-rev rules. This site lists them for many airlines. I found US Airways here. Including:

An agent will call you to the podium give you a boarding pass if a seat is available on the flight. Please do not hover at the counter asking to be boarded. If the agent asks you to check your carry- on luggage, please comply immediately. If your flight is sold out and you are not boarded, please wait until the agent is free before asking for assistance. The agent will either help you or direct you to another source for information.

During Travel

Please maintain a polite, appropriate demeanor during guest pass travel and refrain from discussing guest pass travel privileges or the fact that you are flying at a reduced fare.

Dress Guidelines

Guest pass travelers in Coach or First Class/Envoy may wear casual attire. US Airways asks its employees and their pass ride rs to exercise good judgment when selecting their travel attire. Clothes should be in good repair, neat, clean, and conservative. Unacceptable attire in any class includes any clothing that is torn, faded, soiled, wrinkled, cut−off, has ragged edges or holes; clothing with offensive graphics or terminology; and provocative or revealing clothing such as micro/miniskirts, bare midriff, halter, tank, tube or bra tops.

Coach Class: Eligible Pass Riders may wear casual attire, including shorts, blue jeans, sandals, and athletic footwear.

First or Envoy Class: Pass travelers may wear casual attire, including blue or black denim attire, skirts, capri-style pants, and sandals, provided it is well−groomed, neat, clean, and conservative. Unacceptable attire in First Class/Envoy includes tee shirts, shorts, jogging suits, athletic gear, baseball−style caps, athletic shoes, beach footwear, flip−flops including Croc−style footwear.

So jeans are okay, but not t-shirts or baseball caps. They were fine in the regular cabin, but didn't meet the requirements for non-rev travel in first class.

The document at this link describes AA's non-rev dress code for first class, including no denim clothing of any kind or colour, no athletic shoes and no skorts. (Skorts is not a typo. Who knew that the scourge of hybrid shorts-skirts was so great they had to be banned?) Notice that t-shirts are grounds for denied boarding to non-revs in any class on that airline. The price of your free ticket is complying with mid-twentieth century dress codes and being well behaved. Here's an e-how on the subject.

The pair probably wouldn't have upset anyone in first class with their casual attire, but on the off chance that a paying passenger is going to be put off by the presence of an under-dressed seatmate, the under-dressed person darn well better have paid a regular fare. There actually IS a cost of putting someone in an empty seat in first class: the person who paid to sit in the next seat is slightly less satisfied, and first class customers either pay a lot of money for their seats, or fly a lot and earn the miles to pay for the upgrade. Either way, you don't want that person to believe that another airline will give them a better chance at a row to themselves.

It's still possible that the US Airways non-rev dress codes are usually waived, and that gate agent who sent the men away to change was selectively applying the dress code because of personal racial prejudice. I imagine that is what the men's lawyer will have to argue to make the case, although the suit claims that they purchased the tickets. Technically they did, as the buddy passes gave a reduced rate, not completely free travel.

Increased airline loads make it hard enough to use a non-rev pass these days that many employees prefer to buy tickets. That combined with the terrible publicity airlines get from incidents like this might lead to the elimination of the privilege. Too bad.