>As you get over the end of the runway (you should be somewhere >around 10 to 15 feet high) change your view to look down the

That's a little low isn't it ?

Most ILS will put you 50' above at the threshold, (3 degree slope).

When flying a usual VFR circuit you could be even higher than that if descend steeper than 3 deg.

Mike

>As you get over the end of the runway (you should be somewhere >around 10 to 15 feet high) change your view to look down the

That's a little low isn't it ?

Most ILS will put you 50' above at the threshold, (3 degree slope).

When flying a usual VFR circuit you could be even higher than that if descend steeper than 3 deg.

Mike

I'm in Toronto, flying out of Brampton (CNC3).

My cousin has a cottage about 20 miiles north of Kingston.

I've made two flights there in the past couple of months, to overfly his cottage. Man, just a 'couple' of lakes north of Kingston !

Hoping to have my float rating this summer and take a floater up there.

btw there is a website called 'www.canadianaviation.com'.

Mike

If you want to know the math behind it check out this page
http://www.best.com/~williams/avform.htm

Mike

Compared to $200+ for a Pitts or $700+ for an Extra 300L at Air Combat .. granted an Extra is not the same as a Citabria by any stretch of the imagination

Mike

I went to Grimsby Aviation 905-945-6161
CNZ8, Ralph Meyer is the instructor, $130 hr, in a Citabria. He's a really nice guy, seems to know what he's doing (I sure don't at this stage !)

CNC3 has a Cessna Aerobat, Ken Lam and Geof Hamblin teach aero there. The Citabria is a much better aerobatic plane (inverted fuel, stick, instead of normal Cessna yoke.)

It flies about the same speed as a 172.

Go for it.

Mike

Well I had my first aerobatic flight last Saturday. It was a blast !

Unfortunately I did get queasy, and felt that way for a few hours afterward.

Flew in a Citabria. I want one ! It's a 'low end' aerobatic plane, but plenty of fun when you're just starting.

It was interesting to do some brisk pullups / pushovers and see what the G meter was reading. Around 2.5 to 3+ and about -1 to -2 or so. Ya, I know nothing to an experience aero pilot, but

Pulling around +3 g coming out of the bottom of a loop, ...I could sure feel it !

I just did a couple of rolls / loops and spins, and my stomach had had it for the day, (this was after a couple of each demo'd by the instructor), so around 30 mins of acro or so.

I found that the roll seemed to be happening the quickest, but even when I flew it, I managed to stay oriented pretty well, rolling out pretty smoothly.

The loop seemed pretty easy, but I'd llke to see what it looked like from the ground !

Finally we did the dreaded spin. Actually after the rolls and loops, I was feeling pretty calm about the spin. It even seemed to be a lot slower than the previous spins I had experienced. Everything's relative I suppose.

Going back for more this weekend, weather permitting.

As Clint McHenry says in his video "I always thought that the fact you could use a plane to GO somewhere was just a pleasant bonus !"

Mike

I fly out ouf of NC3 also.

I sent an email to the webmaster of www.bramfly.com and suggested that aeroplanner be added to the 'other links' section of our web page.... no response ... oh well.

Mike

Better to be too high than low !

Have you been taught about the 'target in the windshield' ? i.e. if the runway is moving 'up' the windshield your going to land short... if it's moving down you'll fly over that point.

Most light planes landing dist is around 1000' feet, so if you're either over an average runway (3-5 thousand), you want to sight in on and make sure that you'll reach at least the first third of the runway. I would never try to put it 'on the numbers' unless it was an extremely short field and there were no other options.

Mike

Mike

1) You would make a control input, then see an hourglass
on your MFD (needless to say the plane wouldn't respond)
until / (if ?) the hourglass went away. When the plane
finally started to react, you would see a 'progress' bar
synced with your turn / descent....

- (or even better, after a control input absolutely nothing
would happen for about 5-7 seconds)

2) You would lower the flaps or landing gear, and "Are
you sure?" would appear on the MFD

3) After adding a new piece of avionics gear, all other
avioncs would cease to operate.

4) The MFD will display "This plane has performed an illegal
operation" when you are at DH/MDA.

5) After pressing the NRST function on your GPS, you will see
a 'searchlight/flashlight' looking for waypoints.

6) When viewing the airport details on your MFD, another screen
will 'pop up' in front displaying this weeks' specials in
the pilot shop.

7) You would be tracking a VOR / ILS, when all of a sudden the 'NAV'
flag would pop on and 'network connection lost' would be displayed.

8) You would taxi to position and apply power for takeoff, no reaction
from the engines, the MFD will display "You need to upgrade your software"

9) You would be on short final, all instruments would go off except the
MFD which would display "Your license has expired".

10) You would turn the ignition to start and the MFD will display "Please
enter your OEM registration key".

You can save the page locally to your hard drive and it should still work.

Mike
http://www.visi.com/~mim/nav/

Mike

AVSIG member Val Barrett knows all about downwind turns. <g>
We used to do a lot of water skiing in Japan, had a couple of boats we'd tow up to Kawaguchiko (Lake Kawaguchi), near Mt Fuji. At one point, we were going up there several times a week, with up to 30 people. Val owned one of the boats, in which I later became a partner. Those were the days, my friend...

Anyway, one day someone shows up with a parasail rig, no instructions.

We were pretty savvy about skiing safety, but this was new. We did not think about safety releases, just tied one end of the 1,000-foot rope to the towboat, the other to the parachute harness. Good solid bowlines, too, figgered we didn't want 'em coming loose.
Came time to launch Val, and he wasn't real happy about it, like most pilots, he doesn't like heights. But a couple of the girls had done it just fine, and the pressure was on. By then the wind had come up to maybe 10 or 15 knots, which made the pickup right straight into the wind really easy, Val shot up in the air like a Titan missile, and of course, we were using full power to make it wors...ahhh, better, of course. Better, that's it. I think Schiller was driving, that time, but I might have been.

So all of a sudden, Val's WAY up there, a little tiny dot, rope about 80 degrees. He's making lots of noise, but we can't hear him. <g> We throttle back, still going straight ahead down the lake, only doing about 10 to 15 knots waterspeed, I guess. Nice day, little breezy, and we can just barely see Val up there at 1,000', little tiny arms waving, so we waved back. (He was waving, "Down, Down, DOWN," but, <ahem> we sorta didn't get that. If the rope had been long enough, we'd a' put him in orbit, I guess. Later, onlookers on shore said they could hear him yelling the whole time, but with the motor noise...

Uh, oh, we're running out of lake here, so we start the turn back. Plenty of room, we'd gone down the right side, so we started the left turn. Meanwhile, Val had probably had about 20 knots of wind "up there." We got about 90 degrees into the turn, and gee, the rope and parasail were still downwind from us, at about 9 o'clock! The rope isn't nearly as tight as it was, and Val seems to be losing a lot of altitude. Holy wind factors, Batman, "HIT IT." So we managed to make the run around the end, full-bore, doing about 40 knots, and barely made it out in front of our hapless towee.
Straight downwind, and Val isn't doing so well now, he's down to about 100' and sinking (not to mention yelling). We're doing 40 knots waterspeed, but even we can feel there's not much airspeed, and that's all we've got, we're wide open.

Gee, what's he doing now? He's got both hands up in the shroudlines, and his feet are "retracted," and you just know he'd retract his ass, if he could.

Why, my stars alive, I do believe he's tryin' to climb the shroud lines! He's down to about 3' above the water, and while he ain't got much airspeed left, man, that water is flat MOVIN'.

We honestly didn't know what to do, cutting the power would have given him a major dunk at 40 knots, and we'd done enough barefooting to know how that hurts. By common consent, we were just trying to get far enough downwind to turn back. Val's dyin' back there, and so are we, but we're laughing so hard it's a wonder we didn't run into something.

He finally hits, bounces, hits again, and the water opens him up, and his legs are now trailing behind. Looked pretty good, he was planing along pretty stable on his belly and legs, head up, glaring at us, eyes like a pair of lasers. Gee, this didn't look too bad, maybe if he could just hang on like that, we could make the turn and do it all over again!

But something went unstable, and the next thing we knew, Val was a submarine. You could see the towrope disappearing into the water, a huge boil (that was Val), and then the shroud lines coming out, with the chute still trying to pick him up. That's when we decided it was ok to stop. Well, actually, the drag didn't give us much choice, we really slowed down when Val went under.
Boy, was he MAD! Schiller and I were dying from laughter (which didn't help) and had to cruise around him in circles until he cooled off.

Nuthing to the deadly downwind turn? Don't tell Val that! <giggle>

This is a reply to a message from Ray Tackett [PNE/N99]
AVSIG Forum,
Hangar Fl

Why not have military training strictly in restricted airspace that GA cannot enter ?

Or fly at altitudes that GA do not ?

Why be allowed to fly greater than 250 knots under 10,000 ?

Most GA planes glide range from shore is a couple of miles. Why can't mil jets fly outside that ? ... Take them about 5 mins max probably to fly beyond GA range ?

Just seems to me that a Ferrari can stay out of the way of a Volkswagen easier than vice versa

Mike

A Short Story by Stan Johnson

One time I was hired to ferry a blue and white 150 Cessna across some of our "deep South" states, and I stopped for gas at a red dirt and brown grass strip that was...well .... rustic. What happened was all my fault because I didn't really need gas. It was just that when I flew over the place and got a look at it, I landed because it sure enough looked like my kind of airport. And it was. The one runway, about 2500 feet and more or less east and west, ran uphill at a rate perfect to slow an airplane without using the brakes. Trees lined the north side, and at one end about half a dozen crazy tilt weathered wood hangars leaned in various directions in a zigzag line through a briar patch B'rer Rabbit would have
loved. Across the runway from the hangar row was a fairly nice house, and scattered around through a grove of tall old pine trees were several hand hewed log buildings that more than likely still had a few damn yankee musket balls stuck in the wood. Most of the length of the runway on the south side was taken up with a pasture where I could see a pair of milk cows, several goats, some Hampshire-Duroc cross hogs and a mule. The mule was a kind of dun bay.
A split rail fence enclosed the pasture and came up almost to the airplane parking place. And there were chickens everywhere. Red chickens, white chickens and a whole bunch of multi-breed, mixed bag chickens. Rolling up the runway I saw the FBO come out of the house,
and he met me at the edge of the strip with taxi instructions--the most important of which was to watch out for the chickens. He said three different guys had managed to prop-chop two laying hens and a rooster already that summer, and his wife was really getting irate about it. Funny thing about airport chickens is that they get to where airplanes don't bother them, and they quit reacting like a normal chicken that thinks an aircraft is some kind of hawk so they don't run and hide, and you have to watch how you taxi. At least that's what the guy told me, and I figured he knew. So I got parked without anything foul happening to the fowl, and we pushed the plane back to the gas pump. Well, it wasn't really a gas pump, exactly. What it was, or had been, was a Dodge fire truck pumper that had been converted to pump gasoline. It was a 1932 model the FBO told me. Dodge used to make a lot of fire trucks. Anyway, the Dodge was upon blocks where it had broke down about 12 years ago come September, and it was in an unhandy place because you couldn't taxi around it. We had to tail the 150 in between the truck and the rail fence with most of the right wing hanging over the fence and sticking out in the pasture. I asked the guy what he did with low wing planes that wouldn't clear the fence, and he said that was a problem and that he didn't like low wing airplanes very much. I took off for the sanitary facilities which were housed in an under the pines co-ed outhouse with a door that stuck two inches short of shut. The FBO went to start the Dodge pumper. We both had to chase chickens off seats before we could start our respective jobs. I never saw an airport with so many chickens on the loose. Back at the airplane I paid for 12.3 gallons of 80 octane and would have left except right then some guys from town showed up to see who had landed. This was the kind of airport where some guys from town always showed up when a strange airplane landed because visiting with a passing through pilot was a major social event. They were pretty impressed with the fact that the 150 was only five years old and said they hardly ever got new airplanes like mine at their airport, especially not ones with nosewheels up front. So we all hunkered down to talk a bit, and all that people activity attracted the interest of the livestock in the pasture and pretty soon all the critters were looking over or through the fence

--waiting to see if there was any chance of getting fed the FBO said. Then he said that as long as they were there, he might as well feed them 'cause he had to do it sometime. So we all got up to feed the animals. In the South it is taken for granted that visitors help out at chore time. We trooped over to one of the log buildings that was a corn crib and filled some bushel baskets with ear corn and carried them over to where we could sling the ears out in the pasture. The man had some pretty good looking livestock except the mule only had one good eye. The mule was greedy too. People who think hogs are the only animals that eat like pigs have not seen a mule eating corn on the cob. He'd get an ear turned long ways in his mouth and kind of suck the kernels off--sort of the way people eat popsicles. And, he didn't want to share with anything else, especially the clucking chickens that were naturally right in there picking up dropped grains. You could tell that the mule felt the same way about chickens as the FBO did about low wing airplanes. Now, I don't know if the mule had good aim, or it was just a lucky shot, and it really doesn't make any difference because the results were the same. What happened was that all of a sudden, Blap!..the mule let fly with a hind leg kick and caught a Rhode Island Red hen a solid lick. You could hear it thump. The impact lifted the plump old bird in a squawking, feather trailing arc that just cleared the top rail on the fence and sailed her through the airplane door I wished I hadn't left open, to finally pile her up in a crash landing on the Cessna floorboards. She flopped two or three times like hurt chickens do, and then she died. None of us knew what to think for a minute except the FBO, and what he was thinking was about his wife. I never met the woman, but she must have been a holy terror--at least when one of her hens got hurt. He started in about how was he going to carry the dead bird off and bury it without her seeing him, and I could tell he was worried for real. With my natural inclination to come to the aid of a fellow aviator in distress, I told him we could leave the hen in my airplane, and I'd toss her out somewhere over the woods. He said held sure appreciate that and shook my hand. So, we all stood around and talked some about how none of us had ever seen a one eyed mule kick a chicken into an airplane before, and then I fired up the 150 and flew away. I was maybe 50 feet off the ground when I found out the chicken wasn't dead after all. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her twitch a time or two, then flop a little, then she showed rapid improvements in health. I don't know much about the overall recovery powers of chickens in general, but that hen went from apparently dead to very much alive in about the time it took to climb 75 feet. Now, I'll tell you something about chickens. When they get upset, there's something in their nervous systems or hormone output or something that reacts just like giving them an enema. And this chicken was a whole bunch upset. I mean to tell you, if you ever want to see a chicken that's upset, just find yourself one that's been kicked cold by a mule and then woke up in an airplane. It wouldn't have been too bad if she had been content to sit on the floor and worry about her diarrhea, but she didn't. Any farm kid can tell you that chickens don't fly good under their own power. I can tell you that they don't fly good as airplane passengers, either. She started hunting for the exit; and, when chickens start looking for an exit, they don't just stroll around. They flap, flop and flog anything that gets in their way. Especially people. It can get to be a bit distracting when you're trying to fly an airplane. I managed to keep her kind of beat off my body by swatting her with a sectional chart while I thought it all over. The obvious thing to do was go back and land, but then the FBO might have caught it from his wife, and he was a nice guy that I didn't want to get in trouble on the home front. So I decided that if the hen couldn't fly good out in the fresh air, she was going to have herself a sudden stop free fall. I sat real still until she paused for a pit stop on my shoulder, and I got my hand around her legs. It was then I discovered something I'll bet a lot of pilots don't know: there is no practical way to pitch a full grown Rhode Island Red laying hen out of a Cessna 150. The side windows on a 150 can be opened in the air, but not far. There's a little hinged arm that is fastened to the window frame at one end and the door frame at the other end so that the window only goes out a few inches. The opening is big enough to stick your arm through, or empty an ashtray, or drop an apple core out, but it isn't anywhere near big enough to stuff a chicken through. Especially one that has suddenly decided maybe she doesn't want to be out there after all. Now, I've flown dozens of 150s, and at least half of them will have one or the other--and often both--of those little hinged window holders busted so the window will open up against the wing. Naturally on the one me and the chicken were flying, they were both as sturdy and attached as the day the airplane had first seen the light of day back over in Wichita. Airplanes never break when and where you want them to, but I thought that I might help this one along--if I could pound on the offending hinge thing with something solid. The only solid thing handy was my right shoe, a size 10 1/2D dark brown loafer. Slightly scuffy. With the window open I drew back and took a mighty swipe at the hinge rod. I should have had a better grip. A brown shoe will slip right through an opening that's too small to allow passage of a chicken. When I scooched the 150 around to the left a little, I was able to watch 50% of all the footwear I owned turn in slow tumbles until it went through the top of a dogwood tree. I knew it was useless before I started, but I tried to open the door. 150 doors will open in flight. They just won't open very far. I don't know how many idiot TV shows and B run movies I've seen where the hero and the bad guy are up in an airplane, and they start beating up on each other and end up half hanging out of the airplane while the door gently flips around wide open. That's Hollywood, though, and this was real life. And in real life, King Kong couldn't budge a lightweight aluminum and plastic Cessna door more than about an inch and a half --what with all that slipstream breeze that whips by a flying airplane. Even in full-flap-just-above-a-stall slow flight, the door only goes two inches. By the way, if you ever feel the need for some real flying coordination practice go try full-flap-slow flight while you try to open the door with one hand and hold a mad hen with the other. It's interesting. So anyway, we flew along together for awhile, and I guess things could have been much worse. At least the chicken was the only one excited enough to have diarrhea. So far. If I hadn't torn the chart all to pieces beating on the hen, I would have checked for an airport. As it turned out, by pure luck, I found one by just seeing it without knowing it was there, and we landed quick. This place had a paved runway and a real airport office and real gas pumps, but it was still a southern airport. And one thing you can say for southern FBOs is that nothing much fazes them. I climbed out of the airplane with only one shoe, carrying a Rhode Island Red
in one hand and brushing chicken manure off my "I'd Rather Be Flying" T-shirt with the other, and all the FBO who met me on the ramp did was ask me if I needed gas. I told him I really didn't need any fuel, but that I was kind of wondering if maybe he'd like to have a chicken. I was going to give her away, but the guy came right back and said it depended on how much I wanted for her. I told him about 35 cents would do it, and he wanted to know if something was wrong with her. I said that she had seemed pretty healthy most of the time since I 'd had her. He didn't happen to come right out and ask if she had been kicked by any one eyed mules lately, and I saw no reason to bring it up. I just said the chicken wasn't making too good an airplane flyer, and he said he kind of guessed that from the looks of things, and he took her for 35 cents. I know I should have held out for at least $2.00, but I wasn't in much of a mood to dicker. He paid me with two dimes, two nickels and five pennies that I took across the road to the Dairy Queen and spent on an ice cream cone. The ice cream made my teeth hurt. -------- end ---------- If you enjoyed this story by Stan Johnson you can find ten more in Stan's book "Just Plane Stories". Contact Julie and Joe Dickey at 55 Oakey Av., Lawrenceburg, IN 47025-1538 for more information. Or you can Email them at - jdickey@seidata.com. The cost of the book is $5.00.

"Each restricted and advisory area within Canada has been assigned an identification code group which consists of

1) the nationality letters 'CY'

2) 'A' = advisory, 'R' = restricted, 'D' = danger (over international waters)

3) a 3 digit number identifying the area,
first digit is the area in Canada :

101-199 British Columbia
201-299 Alberta
301-399 Saskatchewan
401-499 Manitoba
501-599 Ontario
601-699 Quebec
701-799 New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland
801-899 Yukon
901-999 Northwest Territories

4) For 'A' (advisory) areas, one of the following letters in brackets:

A - aerobatic
F - aircraft test area
H - hang gliding
M - military
P - parachuting
S - soaring
T - training

E.G. CYA113(A) = advisory area #113 in B.C for aerobatics.

There will be an inclusive altitude range given on the chart. (This altitude does not
seem to shown on the charts here on aeroplanner.) E.g. CYA523(A) (43.894034598, -80.5013940606) which is the aerobatic area that we use, is marked to 'to 6000 cont days' on my vfr chart.

Here's a link to the C.A.R. 's http://www.tc.gc.ca/aviation/regserv/carac/CARS/html_e/doc/nav-20.htm

"Dulles Tower, flight 301 looking for higher."
=====================================
From our "so far, so good" file:

A Huey Cobra practicing autorotations during a military night training exercise had a problem and landed on the tail rotor, separating the tail boom. Fortunately, it wound up on its skids, sliding down the runway doing 360s in a brilliant shower of sparks. As the Cobra passed the tower, the following exchange was overheard:

Tower: Sir, do you need any assistance?

Cobra: I don't know, tower. We ain't done crashin' yet!
===================================
Approach: Beech 998, you're showing two thousand feet and intermittent Mode C. Say altitude.

Beech 998: Beech 998 is intermittently at two thousand feet.
=================================
At a recent software engineering management course in the U.S., the participants were given an awkward question to answer. "If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control software, how many of you would disembark immediately?"

Among the ensuing forest of raised hands, only one man sat motionless. When asked what he would do, he replied that he would be quite content to stay onboard. With his team's software, he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone take off.
====================================
Pilot: Request a flightlevel between FL210 and FL250

ATC: Roger, you can have either 230 or 250...which would you like?

Pilot: Affirmative.

ATC: Affirmative what?

Pilot: Affirmative...SIR?
===============
A F-15 was escorting a C-141 into Tel Aviv during the war. The F-15 pilot said, "Bet you wish you could do this!" and moved way out front and did a nice barrel roll for all to see. A little later when the F-15 was back in position behind the C-141, the pilot said, "Bet you wish you could do this!" After several minutes the F-15 pilot finally radioed, "So?" The C-141 pilot replied, "I just went back to the lav and took my morning relief!"
==========================
During the heat of the space race in the 1960s, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ball point pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of about US $1 million. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on earth.

The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil.

==================
A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new game.

Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water's edge.

Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match.

Then, the paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin colony and over fly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall over gently onto their backs."

===========================
The pilot of a small freight/mail plane was getting a little complacent in his phraseology, probably because of the rather dull routine of his late-night run. Every weekday at 0215 he would stop at a small airport and check in with: "Good morning Jones field, guess who?"

The lone controller was bored too, but insisted on proper terminology and would lecture the pilot on proper radio technique every morning. The lessons fell on deaf ears and the pilot continued his daily "guess who?" callups.

That is, until the morning the radio crackled: "Jones Field, guess who?" The controller, well prepared, turned off all the lights on the airport and responded "Jones Field, guess WHERE!" establishing proper communications from then on.
=================
An oldie, but a cutie:

During a cross country flight, a new private pilot began looking for an airport where he could refuel. As his fuel condition worsened, he added gas stations with suitable landing areas to his search list, and he finally spotted a gas station, right alongside a straight highway with remarkably few obstacles.

As he taxied up to the pumps, old man in the rocking chair near the doorway seemed totally unaffected by the sight, and the young pilot finally had to ask: "I don't suppose you get many airplanes here at your station, do you?"

"Naw," the old man said, gazing idly into the distance while he pumped. "I reckon most of 'em gas up over yonder," he continued, pointing, "at th' airport across th' highway."

=========================
"There appears to be some confusion over the new pilot role titles. This notice will hopefully clear up any misunderstandings.

"The titles P1, P2 and Co-Pilot will now cease to have any meaning, within the BA operations manuals. They are to be replaced by Handling Pilot, Non-Handling Pilot, Handling Landing Pilot, Non-Handling Landing Pilot, Handling Non-Landing Pilot, and Non-Handling Non-Landing Pilot.

"The Landing Pilot is initially the Handling Pilot and will handle the take-off and landing, except in role reversal when he is the Non- Handling Pilot for taxi, until the Handling Non-Landing Pilot hands the Handling to the Landing Pilot at eighty knots.

"The Non-Landing (Non-Handling, since the Landing Pilot is handling) Pilot reads the checklist to the Handling Pilot until after the Before Descent Checklist completion, when the Handling Landing Pilot hands the handling to the Non-Handling Non-Landing Pilot who then becomes the Handling Non-Landing Pilot.

"The Landing Pilot is the Non-Handling Pilot until the "decision altitude" call, when the Handling Non-Landing Pilot hands the handling to the Non-Handling Landing Pilot, unless the latter calls "go-around", in which case the Handling Non-Landing Pilot, continues handling and the Non-Handling Landing Pilot continues non-handling until the next call of "land" or "go-around", as appropriate.

"In view of the recent confusion over these rules, it was deemed necessary to restate them clearly."

=========================

We're not sure if this actually happened, but we thought we'd share it anyway...

According to Reuters, the dazed crew of a Japanese trawler was plucked out of the Sea of Japan earlier this year clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship. Their rescue was followed by immediate imprisonment once authorities questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. To a man they claimed that a cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struck the trawler amidships, shattering its hull and sinking the vessel within minutes.

They remained in prison for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force reluctantly informed Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its cargo planes had apparently stolen a cow wandering at the edge of a Siberian airfield, forced the cow into the plane's hold and hastily taken off for home.

Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was ill-equipped to manage a frightened cow rampaging within the hold. To save the aircraft and themselves, they shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as they crossed the Sea of Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet.

=================

His aircraft badly bashed by tall corn, the pilot was doing his best to explain to the FAA guy why there was no fuel in the tanks. Suddenly his tale was interrupted with a crucial question.

"This really wasn't the field I picked out," he said. "I realized I was too high to make the first one so I had to take this one. I was on short final when it hit me. I didn't know whether to land WITH the corn rows or AGAINST the corn rows. What is the standard corn field landing procedure?"

Without batting an eye the inspector replied, "The standard corn field landing procedure is to buy gas at the airport."

=======================================

I turned on the 10 O'clock channel 9 news here in LA recently, and saw where a single engine plane (identified as Aero Commander) went down short of the Burbank airport. Both people on board survived. The pilot was lucid as he was being cut out of the wreckage and said he ran out of fuel over Eagle Rock and was trying to make Burbank.

Remarking about the lack of fire, the Fire Marshall in charge of the rescue said, "They are just lucky there was no fuel on board."

While working as a volunteer at our local Boy Scout Council office, one of the professional staff -- who was wearing street clothes instead of her usual uniform -- was talking about the International Phonetic Alphabet.

She said that she had learned it some years ago and proceeded to recite it. "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta..." But, when she got to the letter "U," she stumbled and asked for help.

I offered a hint: "What aren't you wearing today?"
"Underwear?" she replied.