Saturday, January 29, 2011
R.I.P. Florence Elizabeth Jones Drinkwater
I have never seen anything quite so angelic as the body of my mother, gently wrapped in a clean white shroud.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Attitude Indicator
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.- Mary Shafer (not speaking for NASA)
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Right Rudder
Dad's power chair has a little joystick controller on the right arm.
He stopped every few feet, to look up into the trees. I tried to remember if I had EVER got him to go out with me like this before - maybe once before, most of a year ago.
Halfway down the first block, we heard the distinctive droning whine of a Coast Guard helicopter coming from the north. When the bright orange copter appeared over the trees, we stopped, peering at it as all pilots do when a different sound flies over. It's partly to ID the plane, and partly to see if the pilot is doing anything dumb. Dad would never own up to it, but I think he held every flight he saw to his own standards, in the back of his mind. I remarked "That's an Aerospatiale design, I think. With a ducted rotor in the tail. The Coast Guard seems to love them."
Dad nodded agreement, and I could SEE him remembering those test flights.
We watched it until it was out of sight in the south. Nothing dumb happened.
"I remember you told a story, long ago, about a Marine chopper that went down in the Sierra. One of those big old birds with the big radial engine in the nose. There was a guy on board, what was his name? I think you called him the Big Indian?"
"The Chief" Dad said.
"Right. And the punch line was, when the base commander asked what he had used to set the fire which had caught the attention of the rescue flight, the rescue guy had this stricken look on his face, and the commander said Oh, no, he didn't. But he had. The Chief had set the downed chopper on fire, since it was the only thing handy."
Dad shook his head. Maybe a bit of a smile. Definitely. "A Sikorsky something-or-other. I stood on his foot once."
"What?"
"Sikorsky. His foot. Not the real one, of course. In the 50's"
We made it to the park, and trundled around the paths under the trees for a quarter of an hour. "How do we get back?" "You make a 180, right here. I know you used to have a navigator, but you'll have to cope with me now."
Back on the sidewalk, next to the clinic.
"Are you trying to go cross country, up onto the grass?"
A head shake, No.
"Then I think you need a bit more right rudder - you're drifting left of the centerline." That got another chuckle and an actual grin.
I said, "Some of the planes I trained in had electric trim. One of my favorites had the 'hat' on the yoke for elevator trim. I thought that was very slick, but after a while I decided I didn't like it. I liked the manual wheel better - it gave me a much better feel for how much trim I'd dialed in. And how much trouble I might be about to get myself into."
No response.
"Remember in the 195, you told me once you didn't like to use the flaps for landing because they were electric, and you didn't trust the motors to get them up in case of a go-round?"
"Did I?"
"Sure. But my favorite bit in Four Two Charlie was the calls from the tower asking if we needed help, since we looked like we were taxiing sideways, with the crosswind gear."
Another chuckle and smile.
I did a quick guess at what percent of Dad's experience I had. By logged hours, it worked out to around one-twentieth of one percent. In reality, I still had a long way to go to catch up.
[I just realized what his problem with the chair is: the joystick is on the right-hand side. Pilots expect the stick to be in the left hand, throttles in the right hand. I never flew a side-stick, myself, so it didn't strike me as wrong. The C-195 was N2142C. Some guy in Napa owns it now.]
He stopped every few feet, to look up into the trees. I tried to remember if I had EVER got him to go out with me like this before - maybe once before, most of a year ago.
Halfway down the first block, we heard the distinctive droning whine of a Coast Guard helicopter coming from the north. When the bright orange copter appeared over the trees, we stopped, peering at it as all pilots do when a different sound flies over. It's partly to ID the plane, and partly to see if the pilot is doing anything dumb. Dad would never own up to it, but I think he held every flight he saw to his own standards, in the back of his mind. I remarked "That's an Aerospatiale design, I think. With a ducted rotor in the tail. The Coast Guard seems to love them."
Dad nodded agreement, and I could SEE him remembering those test flights.
We watched it until it was out of sight in the south. Nothing dumb happened.
"I remember you told a story, long ago, about a Marine chopper that went down in the Sierra. One of those big old birds with the big radial engine in the nose. There was a guy on board, what was his name? I think you called him the Big Indian?"
"The Chief" Dad said.
"Right. And the punch line was, when the base commander asked what he had used to set the fire which had caught the attention of the rescue flight, the rescue guy had this stricken look on his face, and the commander said Oh, no, he didn't. But he had. The Chief had set the downed chopper on fire, since it was the only thing handy."
Dad shook his head. Maybe a bit of a smile. Definitely. "A Sikorsky something-or-other. I stood on his foot once."
"What?"
"Sikorsky. His foot. Not the real one, of course. In the 50's"
We made it to the park, and trundled around the paths under the trees for a quarter of an hour. "How do we get back?" "You make a 180, right here. I know you used to have a navigator, but you'll have to cope with me now."
Back on the sidewalk, next to the clinic.
"Are you trying to go cross country, up onto the grass?"
A head shake, No.
"Then I think you need a bit more right rudder - you're drifting left of the centerline." That got another chuckle and an actual grin.
I said, "Some of the planes I trained in had electric trim. One of my favorites had the 'hat' on the yoke for elevator trim. I thought that was very slick, but after a while I decided I didn't like it. I liked the manual wheel better - it gave me a much better feel for how much trim I'd dialed in. And how much trouble I might be about to get myself into."
No response.
"Remember in the 195, you told me once you didn't like to use the flaps for landing because they were electric, and you didn't trust the motors to get them up in case of a go-round?"
"Did I?"
"Sure. But my favorite bit in Four Two Charlie was the calls from the tower asking if we needed help, since we looked like we were taxiing sideways, with the crosswind gear."
Another chuckle and smile.
I did a quick guess at what percent of Dad's experience I had. By logged hours, it worked out to around one-twentieth of one percent. In reality, I still had a long way to go to catch up.
[I just realized what his problem with the chair is: the joystick is on the right-hand side. Pilots expect the stick to be in the left hand, throttles in the right hand. I never flew a side-stick, myself, so it didn't strike me as wrong. The C-195 was N2142C. Some guy in Napa owns it now.]
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
On having the same name
I had occasion to post a short story on usenet news, all true, about the time I almost lost my father his job. It involved a small metal box on a three-foot-tall post, next to the place where all the airplanes were parked. And boredom. I was only 6 or 7, after all, and the conversation up by the hangar was boring. Boring.
Anyway, there was a walkway down to the ramp area, and this box on a post. The door on the side of the box was open, a bit. There was this little lever inside.
It's amazing how much noise the air-crash crew at a Naval Air Station makes when the alarm goes off.
Apparently they wrote the whole thing off as an unplanned exercise. I never heard anything about it, and after all, I lived. And they did not fire my dad.
So after the posting, I get an email from a lady named Mary Shafer.* She asks, Are you the Fred Drinkwater from NASA? Because this story is very familar.
Turns out she was in the group up by the hangar that day. And no, I was not the guy from NASA, just his little kid. Same name, though, more or less.
* Ms. Shafer was heavily involved in the SR-71 program at Edwards AFB / Dryden FRC, and this was probably around the time that Ames had an F-104 program down there, hence the connection.
Anyway, there was a walkway down to the ramp area, and this box on a post. The door on the side of the box was open, a bit. There was this little lever inside.
It's amazing how much noise the air-crash crew at a Naval Air Station makes when the alarm goes off.
Apparently they wrote the whole thing off as an unplanned exercise. I never heard anything about it, and after all, I lived. And they did not fire my dad.
So after the posting, I get an email from a lady named Mary Shafer.* She asks, Are you the Fred Drinkwater from NASA? Because this story is very familar.
Turns out she was in the group up by the hangar that day. And no, I was not the guy from NASA, just his little kid. Same name, though, more or less.
* Ms. Shafer was heavily involved in the SR-71 program at Edwards AFB / Dryden FRC, and this was probably around the time that Ames had an F-104 program down there, hence the connection.
ShopSmith
Back in '59 or thereabouts, my father traded in his golf clubs for a ShopSmith Mark 1. (Update: some checking revealed that our ShopSmith is actually a prototype, an even more basic and even more dangerous device than the Mark 1.) Now, there's two things that strike me about this fact - First, that he believed that golf, and the associated society, was not essential to the advancement of a NASA research pilot, even in 1959. This does not surprise anyone. Second, that this machine, which he used for decades to make furniture for our family, was nearly as dangerous as the planes he was flying*. At least, it was dangerous to me, his first-born son. I almost lost fingers in the drive belt, and almost suffered from a ... penetrating head wound ... a few years later. (The lathe chisel, a finely sharpened piece of tool steel about 12 inches long, with a nice ten-inch wood grip, went straight up, thus missing my face by at least four inches. I don't think it went more than 15 feet in the air.)
The thing had an exposed drive belt, with the upper pulley placed right where a bystander might rest a hand in a stupid attempt to stop the blade. There were no blade-guards, pulley covers, automatic brakes, or safeties of any kind. Totally lethal.
On the other hand, it was easy to learn and use, extremely capable, if not terribly precise, and I still lust for it.
In the 60's, at the same time I was using the ShopSmith to make all kinds of hobbiest bits and pieces, we (the neighbor kid and I) were also roaming the area on bikes, totally out of parental control. No cellphones, of course, but I don't think I ever even used a payphone to call home (except for that one time in the Santa Cruz mountains when I ran out of energy about sunset). HW and I used to flip a coin at each major intersection, unless we had a pre-planned destination (like the Hellyer Park velodrome, about 15 miles one-way). We'd be out all day, with no more leave-taking than 'Bye, be back around dinner time.'
My brother was making illegal brandy in the garage, and later exploding propane gas balloons above night games at our high school. All good fun, of course.
Many years later, I had a teen-age daughter. (How do these things happen? I think no one really knows. Cf. 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Chapter 1) Years earlier, I used to joke with the other dads at the school that I was going to solve the looming teen-age boy issue by teaching her to use a shotgun, and making sure this fact was well-known. Turns out I didn't need to actually do that (good thing, too, since I don't know anything about shotguns and would probably have blown off my own hand "teaching" her.) She made a suit of armor which she wore to her high school's freshman 'hazing' day, and evinced a notable (and public) interest in 'pointy, clangy' things - swords, Naginata, etc. Problem solved... (Well, for a while, anyway. It's been out of my hands for some time.)
My son is into golf and math. On the other hand, he can out-ski me on any double-black slope. He's better than me at math, too. Perhaps we have done OK as parents after all, even with the reduced risk of death that's so prevalent these days.
* Apparently this machine was so notorious, it was responsible for the California Supreme Court's version of Strict Liability, back in '63.
The thing had an exposed drive belt, with the upper pulley placed right where a bystander might rest a hand in a stupid attempt to stop the blade. There were no blade-guards, pulley covers, automatic brakes, or safeties of any kind. Totally lethal.
On the other hand, it was easy to learn and use, extremely capable, if not terribly precise, and I still lust for it.
In the 60's, at the same time I was using the ShopSmith to make all kinds of hobbiest bits and pieces, we (the neighbor kid and I) were also roaming the area on bikes, totally out of parental control. No cellphones, of course, but I don't think I ever even used a payphone to call home (except for that one time in the Santa Cruz mountains when I ran out of energy about sunset). HW and I used to flip a coin at each major intersection, unless we had a pre-planned destination (like the Hellyer Park velodrome, about 15 miles one-way). We'd be out all day, with no more leave-taking than 'Bye, be back around dinner time.'
My brother was making illegal brandy in the garage, and later exploding propane gas balloons above night games at our high school. All good fun, of course.
Many years later, I had a teen-age daughter. (How do these things happen? I think no one really knows. Cf. 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Chapter 1) Years earlier, I used to joke with the other dads at the school that I was going to solve the looming teen-age boy issue by teaching her to use a shotgun, and making sure this fact was well-known. Turns out I didn't need to actually do that (good thing, too, since I don't know anything about shotguns and would probably have blown off my own hand "teaching" her.) She made a suit of armor which she wore to her high school's freshman 'hazing' day, and evinced a notable (and public) interest in 'pointy, clangy' things - swords, Naginata, etc. Problem solved... (Well, for a while, anyway. It's been out of my hands for some time.)
My son is into golf and math. On the other hand, he can out-ski me on any double-black slope. He's better than me at math, too. Perhaps we have done OK as parents after all, even with the reduced risk of death that's so prevalent these days.
* Apparently this machine was so notorious, it was responsible for the California Supreme Court's version of Strict Liability, back in '63.
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