Posts Tagged ‘safety’
12 items.
First off, for everyone who doesn’t now what “TCAS” means: It stands for “Traffic Collision Avoidance System“. It’s an instrument that scans for other aircraft with transponders and warns you if your flight paths appear to be getting you too close to each other, in order to avoid mid-air collisions.
It’s a great thing to live in times like these. Despite all the horrible news about accidents and crime, we’ve never lived in a safer time, at least here in the western world.
But sometimes, I wonder if 100% safety is a reasonable goal in all aspects of life. Everyone who’s 40 years or older has probably reminisced with friends about our childhoods, where we would ride our bikes without helmets or kneepads and could roam free throughout the neighborhood and only had to be home when the lights came on.
But now that I’m a dad, I look around my old neighborhood and wonder how much leeway I will going to be able to give my kids. For starters, there’s way less kids out and about to play with. Then there’s way more traffic, and while I trust that 95% of all drivers are responsible and attentive, it only takes one who isn’t to cause a catastrophe.
I read an article recently about how kids nowadays grow up with so much structure and so little risk, that they don’t achieve the resilience and independence they need when they’re adults.
I’m sure nobody wishes any harm on anyone else, but where do we go as a society, if there are no negative consequences for our actions, and if there are, people aren’t able to handle them? When you make bad decisions about your job, friends, finances, health, etc. and it become’s society’s duty to shield you from the fallout, it must inevitably lead to an ever increasing and intrusive nanny state.
But I don’t want to open the can of worms to start a political discussion here. I guess it’s incumbent on us parents do lead by example and take on the responsibility to raise our kids right. I sure plan to give my kids as much opportunity for unstructured play and discovery of their physical and mental limits as I can. Although I know that such plans are easier stated than implemented. I’ll let you know in 30 years how it all turned out! 🙂
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Safety Posters at your local airport, hangar, maintenance shop, and/or FBO! What are your thoughts? Do they work? Do we need more? Do we have too many?
We have attempted making them funny before and received some good responses on the ones we came up with. But not enough interest to justify printing a bunch of them. Also, the entities we approached thought they were a good idea, but must have not liked them that much because nothing ever came from it. Personally I believe that Chuck is the perfect ambassador when it comes to aviation safety. Mostly as an example of what NOT to do, but still. Many people use Chuck in their slide shows at presentations. Would it be feasible to revisit the Safety Poster idea?
We couldn’t resist to have Chuck need even more clarification on the subject. But, hey! It’s for aviation safety! I hope all of you have learned a little something with the last two strips. I am sure you all have also heard the old saying “You can never have too much fuel on board … unless you’re on fire”.
There are probably even more sayings about the subject. Feel free to post them underneath.
Also, I think it’s great to see that Chuck hasn’t given up on his Corsair project yet. If there is one thing you can NOT say about Chuck, it is that he gives up easily.
Well, to be perfectly fair, if Julio starts to distinguish between different types of flying, we could also start to differentiate between different types of driving. Driving a regular car on a Nevada highway is probably orders of magnitudes safer than driving a moped in Hanoi, for instance. Those of you who ever visited Vietnam and crossed a street there know what I’m talking about.
And how come we never talk about the dangers of walking? I remember a chapter in one of the “Freakonomics” books about drunk walking, and how it is more dangerous than drunk driving, per distance covered. (Of course you’re less likely to hurt others when walking and, of course, nobody is advocating drunk driving!) Still, I wonder how dangerous sober walking is. Probably still less dangerous than sleeping in your bed, which is how most people die.
I think I learned the word “olfactory” from the novel “Perfume” by Patrick Süskind. I can really recommend that book! And for those of you who prefer movies, there’s even a really good movie adaption. It was really big here in Europe, but I wonder if it made its way over the pond to the States. So few movies make it big in that direction!
And although the movie was really great, with stunning camera work, I feel like the book does a better job with describing the world of smells the main character lives in, something that’s hard enough with language, but even harder to do with images.
Anyway, now I can show off with that word every now and then. And that’s the main goal of reading, right? To be able to sound like a pretentious snob by using lingo the plebs don’t understand and throw around phrases like “I guess the movie was fine, but I really preferred the book”. I think I have managed to do both in this blog!
Well, here we continue with the Swiss Cheese Model. I’ve hit upload before I started writing this little blog entry to go along with it, so I better be quick now. Uhm. What else can I write about this subject? Maybe that as a kid I used to live on spread cheese and liver sausage. I was not a big fan of “normal” cheese though. To this day, I still don’t eat it that much. Are there any cheese fetishists among you? If so, what’s your favorite type?
For those who have the image of a pretty blonde dairymaid bob up in their minds, who is posing with a big wheel of cheese next to a cow, in front of a beautiful backdrop of the Swiss alps, when they hear the words “Swiss Cheese model”, you are on the wrong track. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the “Swiss Cheese model of accident causation is a model used in risk analysis and risk management, including aviation, engineering, healthcare, etc.”
I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but the basic essence of this model seems to be: If you want to be safe, get cheese with tiny holes and cut it into many layers. Or something along those lines.
Well, it seems like Hans found yet another way of trying to save money. I am pretty sure Julio will keep him in line though. I have fought many battles over the years where the owners tried to save money and the mechanics tried to do what is right. I like working for those companies where the mechanics win that particular battle. Stepping over a dollar bill to pick up a dime never pays in the flying business.
I have seen many shady operators in my day I would never work for no matter how much they paid me. It always shocked me how long some of them were able to stay in business especially in a field that is scrutinized as much as aviation is. Have you ever worked for a shady operator?
Here is some interesting trivia that I stumbled across recently, that is only slightly related to todays comic strip. You know, whenever somebody wants to make English sound old in a cartoon or movie, they use “Y” instead of “th”, e.g. in “Ye Olde Shoppe”. I always thought that that was because they really pronounced it as a “Y” back then, but nay! It actually turns out that, in the old days, there was an additional letter, called “Thorn”, which came from the Nordic languages and was pronounced “th”. It looks like a combination of a small p and b: þ. But the first printing type fonts were imported to England from Germany and Italy and didn’t contain that letter, so it they used the “Y” instead. Interesting, huh?
Personally, all I have to deal with is the paperwork for my car and house. Oh, and taxtes etc. But whenever I drop by at Mike’s office, I can see the tons and tons of folders and manuals that come with operating a helicopter. It’s amazing! Of course, those are complicated and sensitive machines and it’s good that there are regulations in place for them. But it’s one of the less known facts that you probably spend more time in the office than in the cockpit as a helicopter pilot.
Oh, and you can’t read it, because the image is scaled down for our website, but at the sheet in the bottom right corner it says “Caution! Wear protective gloves when operating screwdriver!”
