birdguy

My computer is almost as old as I am. No cameras Charlie. And I still do my writing on an old version of Word Perfect. Noel

A senior's senior slip trusting his memory. Noel

Welcome to 1984. James Orwell was a prophet. But his book didn't say much about mischievous technology. I could say more about his book but I'll just leave it. Noel

Amazing! But how many passengers can it carry? There's not much I will miss when I pass on. Space travel, SST airliners, self driving automobiles. But I will miss the world of aviation. My only hope is that if I do come back there will still stick be and rudder aircraft like my beloved Luscombe 8E. If not I'll stay where ever I happen to be. Noel

My generation loved them. We used pretend we were giving our friends holy communion by placing the wafers on each others tongues. But my favorites still are Good and Plenty licorice candies and Cracker Jack. I can't find them in the stores here so I order them from Amazon. Noel

Funny Mike. But it got me wondering. If I jumped into a robotaxi and said, "Follow that car!", would it? Noel

Will it alert you if you have to go and direct you to the relief tube? https://wingsandwheels.com/installation-maintenance/pilot-relief-system.html Noel

Yahoo LifeA woman boarded a United flight and realized she was the...A Reddit user boarded a United Airlines flight, only to discover she was the sole passenger on board, prompting a private safety demonstration, the use of weight-balancing sandbags, and a cockpit tour

That was a Fish and Wildlife service pickup. I had one at my disposal when I was a volunteer at the the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge east of Roswell. Noel

In a Cybercab world will we still be able to own and drive our own automobiles because we enjoy driving them? Will I be able to take a Cybercab to my favorite trout stream, have it wait for me for several hours while I am flyfishing, and then take me back home again? Noel

I may have posted this before. I don't recall. If I did it must have been some time ago. But here it is. I was in about the 7th grade. It was after school and I was going to a friend's house along Van Ness Avenue, the street that all the automobile dealerships were on. I was almost to the corner of Sacramento Street when I saw her. I think it was the Studebaker dealership but there she was standing to one side of the floor. I went inside and walked right up to her and put my hand on her side. A dealer walked up to me and said, "How do you like her kid? Do you want to sit in her?" I didn't say a word, I just nodded and stepped into the cockpit of a Luscombe 8A. It was beautiful. I had no idea then what the instruments on panel were for or any idea how one might fly in her. But I gently put my hand on the stick and curled my fingers around it. I moved it back and forth sideways and fore and aft. I luxuriated in the smell of her. I noticed the rudder pedals and scrunched down a bit and moved then forward and back with the toes of my shoes. After a while I got out of her and just walked around her touching her here and there. I had never seen a real airplane this close before, but suddenly I was in love. As I started towards the door of the dealership one of the salesmen yelled, "Come back anytime kid!" The next afternoon I went to the library and picked up some books on airplanes and how they worked. I went to the dealership every day after school. I would sit in the airplane and walk around her for a while and then go home and read my airplane books. I learned how an airplane flies. How the controls worked. One day after school when I was loving my beloved Luscombe, a man in an elegant suit and tie came over and said, "What's your name kid?" I told him, "Noel." "Well, Noel, climb in and I'll show you how it works." He told me he had flown P-47s in the war. Then he proceeded to demonstrate the controls for me. He told me what all of the instruments were for. We climbed out of the cockpit, and he walked around the aircraft while I followed, and he moved the ailerons and rudder and elevator and explained what the aircraft did when those controls moved. I just got my first flying lesson. The next afternoon I went to the dealership and my beloved Luscombe was gone! I went inside and one of the salesmen told me the boss had taken the wings off and moved it to an airport on the Peninsula so he could start flying. My heart was broken but I still have my books. I started buying flying magazines with my allowance and eventually found a picture of a Luscombe I cut out and taped to the wall beside my bed. As time went on, I graduated from the 8th grade and went to high school. Then after a summer working high up in the Rocky Mountains in Glacier National Park I came back home and joined the Marine Corps. Four years later, after I got out, I got a job as a file clerk for the Southern Pacific Railroad in their claims department. I was still living at home with my parents in Mill Valley. I took the bus to San Francisco every morning and when it went through the underpass of Highway 101 on the way to the Sausalito bus stop, I could see Commodore Center across the road. And next to the dock on floats was a beloved Luscombe. Not the yellow one I had seen when I was in the 7th grade but a blue one. One Saturday I borrowed my dad’s car and went over there. I found out I could learn to fly that Luscombe on the GI Bill. I signed up and they helped with the GI Bill paperwork and in two weeks they called me to schedule my first lesson. My introduction to flying was in a Luscombe 8E on floats. Side-by-side seating and the stick instead of a yoke were familiar since I already had several hours sitting in one a decade earlier. And the instruments that that gentleman had explained to mere still etched in my mine. I had about eight hours of flying time with my instructor. Then one day after my lesson we taxied to the dock. My instructor told me to keep the engine running. He opened his door and stepped out onto the pier. Then he pushed the aircraft away from the dock and said, "Give me three circuits." I taxied out to the middle of the bay lined up with the wind. In front of me I could see the Bay Bridge, Treasure Island and downtown San Francisco. I pushed the throttle to firewall and soon gained enough speed to roll onto the step. A half minute later I was off the water and gaining altitude. I was scared to death. My fate was in my own hands. I was alone and it was up to me to get that airplane safely back on the water. And that I did...three times. I taxied back to the dock where my instructor was waiting for me. He grabbed the wing strut and then tied the aircraft to the dock. I cut the engine, opened the door, and climbed out (onto the dock). My instructor shook hands with me and told me I was now a pilot. I was so proud I thought I was going to bust! We went into the building and the office where everyone congratulated me, and my instructor pull my shirt out of my pants and cut off the shirt tail. Then he proceeded to tack it up on the wall along with the shirttails of all the others who had soloed before me. I was so proud. I went home and told mom and dad I had soloed. They might not have realized what a big deal it was. But I knew… that day I became a pilot. I did my solo cross countries to San Luis Reservoir and Clear Lake. San Luis Reservoir was fun because I flew by the San Francisco and Oakland airport and would sometimes see a DC-3 or DC-6 landing or taking of. And I felt a kinship to the pilots who were flying them. The hours I have flown Cessnas 152s and 172s and Piper Cherokees and even a Piper Aztec have not diminished my love for my beloved Luscombe. I think our first loves remain in our hearts forever. People ask me what it feels like to fly. To be up a few thousand feet above the ground in a small airplane alone…by yourself. I don't think any pilot can explain that to someone who has never done it. The closest I have ever read or heard along those lines is the poem 'High Flight' by John Gillespie Magee Jr. and no matter how many times I've read it, it always kind of chokes me up when I get to the end. High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr. “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air .... Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew— And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.” Noel

Am I correct in assuming there will be no passenger carrying models? Noel

I seldom took cabs anywhere. I preferred to drive myself. I enjoyed driving, Even in heavy traffic it gave something to do. But a sterile Cybercab? Maybe for invalids and lazy people who never learned how to drive. But today at 92 after having given up my car because I don't consider myself a save driver anymore? Maybe...but I would like a human driver I can have a conversation with. And maybe a Cyberwife who doesn't talk to much or give me household chores to do. Noel

There are exceptions to every rule and sometimes common sense overrides a rule. I'm sure everyone of us has violated a rule once or twice when circumstances demanded it. I know I have violated rules when serving in the military when common sense overrode some rule or regulation. Have we now become so rule bound that we throw common sense out the window? Noel

Perhaps. But when the Dewitt Clinton started carrying a car with passengers along wooden rails at 20mph who dreamed of 300mph passenger trains. Or when the Wright Brothers made the first powered flight at Kill Devil Hills that one day SSTs would be flying between London and New York. I don't think we've even scratched the surface of going into space yet. 200-300 years from now SpaceX will look primitive. Nobody knows how far we might progress or what might be waiting around the corner from us...something we haven't noticed yet. As a species we might just be crawling along in diapers. Who can say yay or nay? Noel