Education Through Aviation
Bill Pritchett, Education Director
“There’s a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright brothers’ first flight.” —Buzz Aldrin
Buzz hits us in the face with this statistic. Sixty-six years is but a grain of sand in the hourglass of time, especially when you picture in your mind’s eye the technology of the Wright brothers’ first flying demonstration of controlled flight, and putting a human being on the surface of the moon.
The history of aviation, the birth of the AMA, and technology generally provide an amazing path of folks who were not afraid to try, fail, learn, and if they survived, do it all again until it worked. The fascination with flying has been around for a long time. Many still have that same look of amazement in their eyes when something travels overhead. I’ve taken a little license to cherry pick some dates and events that fill in a couple of blanks between, and after, what Buzz mentions:
- 1903-Wright brothers first flight
- 1911-First US transcontinental flight
- 1919-First nonstop transatlantic flight
- 1927-Lindbergh’s first solo nonstop transatlantic flight
- 1933-Wiley Post’s first solo around-the-world flight
- 1936-AMA established
- 1936-Congress establishes Civil Aeronautics Board
- 1946-Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier
- 1958-FAA established
- 1961-Yuri Gagarin first human in space
- 1971-First space station operational
- 1981-Space Shuttle Columbia launched 20 years to the day after Yuri’s flight
- 1986-Voyager circumnavigates earth nonstop on single load of fuel
- 1990-B-2 Bomber, F-117 Stealth fighter using composite materials
- 1995-First CAD-designed airplane, the Boeing 777
I’ve stopped at 1995 because the crazy acceleration of technology in time graphically shows the exponential growth of all things flying. There are a couple of things that are personal highlights from this list.
Wilbur Wright died in 1912 at the age of 45. Orville, however, lived until 1948 and was 76 when he passed. So, Orville Wright (now think really hard about what he did …) watched film and read newspaper accounts of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier. That’s crazy …
I vividly remember sitting on the floor in front of the color television at my grandparents’ house in 1968 on December 21, watching the first crewed spacecraft to leave the Earth’s orbit, reach the moon, orbit it, and return safely to Earth. That was Apollo 8.
The reason it sticks with me is my grandfather. He was one of the smartest, most well-read people I’ve ever known. He graduated from the sixth grade. He rode a horse to school as soon as he was tall enough to get on and off, and if there would be any meat for dinner it would be what they could hunt.
Yet there we were, watching the Apollo 8 mission going around the moon on his color television. What a journey his life was. What a journey we’re on still …
Remember how recently we all had video cameras, cameras, etc., and now we have our cell phones? Model aviation is undergoing the same exponential increase in technology, performance, and flight outcomes. I’m loving the ride!
Raise your hand if you know what a flight plan is. Okay, everyone put down your hand. My guess is that we generally know that all commercial, and probably most general aviation flights, begin with a flight plan. The general aviation flights that don’t are those 60-minute, fly-around-and-look-around moments. Or, the $200 cheeseburger most general aviation pilots like to go get on that perfect weekend afternoon. For the thousands upon thousands of flights that remain, a flight plan is generated first.
As pilots in model aviation, how can we use and/or benefit from a flight plan? I think it’s a huge component.
Boring holes in the sky is something I’ve never called a good time. Maybe I’m weird, but not knowing what’s next isn’t any fun for me. Pattern, or Precision Aerobatics, took care of that for me a long time ago.
Even if my next flight isn’t through the entire schedule, I’m going to have a plan in my head of which turnarounds need work and which center maneuvers can be improved and then put up a flight that puts me through those maneuvers three or four times. That part is called practice, so to close out this month, I’ll offer some thoughts on practicing.
If you want to improve, pay attention now. It’s common to think that the number of years that you’ve been doing something would have an impact on your skill level, but study after study in areas of everything from basketball to woodworking to shooting to painting proves that it’s not the case. If it were the case, we’d see more 90-year-olds in NASCAR, but we don’t. So, if the number of years that a musician, for instance, has been playing, teaching, learning, and writing doesn’t matter, what does?
It’s the quality, type, and frequency of the practice that you do. Perfect technique, frequent sessions, and deliberate practice focusing on specific aspects of your technique will get you better, quicker results than just slugging it out over time. Practice makes permanent, not perfect.
This is fantastic, exciting, liberating news, because it means that it doesn’t take decades to improve. With the right tools and directed focus, you can do it in a few flights per day, and see dramatic changes in only a couple of weeks.
Focusing on perfect technique lets your brain develop an automatic default where you’re thinking of maneuvers and not “how-to-make-it.” You should see the emphasis on “perfect” as a gift. It means that you can get more benefit out of two or three flights per day than you can from putting up eight to 12 flights in an all-day marathon. You might as well be cutting down a tree with an unsharpened axe.
Accomplished RC pilot Nick Maxwell said, “You don’t work on something until you can do it. You work on it until you can’t miss it!”
Fly and have fun!
