My father was a USN Aviator, and he would sneak me and my 2 younger siblings out for a flight in his T-34 the navy let him use when he did his recruiter stint .
My youngest brother though , about 6 at that time , was prone to air sickness , yet always wanted to go up no matter . Once dad sorted out that at 6 years old, he could not see out of the cockpit anyway . he started just running him around the Taxiways for 5 or 10 minutes .
To this day, my now younger brother a Doctor of Finance no less , still talks about how he used to go flying with our father, my other brother and i just smile and and agree . He still has yet to figure out he only actually left the ground 2-3 times
Worst thing today was the wind. It was very bumpy indeed and that didn’t help. Nor did the outbound tailwind that had us miles away in no time at all but the headwind It turned into on the return leg (post sickness) made it an incredibly long smelly trip back. I felt awful but little man loved it anyway. “I love daddies airplane”
Bless him.
Admittedly it was interesting dealing with an emergency that wasnt exactly life threatening but was definitely distracting to have in the cockpit on a busy day. Conditions were poor and the wind very gusty but I feel I held it together professionally and made good decisions not driven by panic or distraction so I’m actually going to chalk this one up as a partial success in situation management and febreeze saves the day lol
My friend, I have found over these long years and 4 children , any time spent with them , which results in smiles and a child that has a positive experience or a smile and a story that they can tell his friends or co-workers someday about the time they and their father… , is a a winning situation .
SO many kids never get this kind very influential and much needed attention and positive role model experience from their parents these days . We are usually all to busy out trying to grab the next dollar , instead of grabbing those rare and precious moments with our kids. Which, last far longer and are far more valuable to them and us , than and ever can or will be.
I almost feel bad dirtying up this pleasant thread about real flying to answer @BeachAV8R’s question. The 737 is middle of the pack in terms of slipperiness. Same for the effectiveness of its speedbrakes. The planes I now fly (757/767) are cleaner but have more effective speedbrakes. 5000 fpm is pretty easy to achieve when the air is fairly smooth.
Which makes me a little curious about the Max now that I think about it. During the few months we flew it, it quickly built a reputation of being difficult to get down. It is probably cleaner that the previous generation of 737s. The problem was more due to the high idle settings of the new geared engines.
While the concept of turning helicopters into expensive underwater aquariums is tried and tested, the helicopter swimming pool inexplicably returned no google results - I can’t imagine why.
ever can or will be.
