Technology is Incredible...

It didn't take days to plan - indeed, planning took about as long as
reviewing the charts and drawing a line

Okay, so maybe "days" was a bit of an exaggeration. However, for my
first "real" cross-country flight ("all the way" from Wisconsin to
Missouri in a rental Cherokee 140, back in '95, for our tenth wedding
anniversary) I do recall having all the charts out on the dining room
table for days before the flight, studying them for best routing, and
looking for good, identifiable landmarks. VORs were, for me, entirely
secondary to pilotage in getting to Branson -- I wanted uniquely-shaped
lakes and rivers!

As for the navigation being "part of the fun", I guess I got over that
a long time ago. Now, I just want to enjoy the flight as safely as
possible, and get there expeditiously. For us, that means GPS direct.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

VORs were, for me, entirely
secondary to pilotage in getting to Branson -- I wanted uniquely-shaped
lakes and rivers!

I still do. The fun of VFR flying, especially low level cross country
flying, is visual navigation. The damned GPS takes all the fun out of
it.

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

My first real cross country was from Lock Haven to Vancouver in 1966. I
delivered a new Super Cub and had a total of 43 hrs and a brand new private
pilot's certificate.

I did have all the charts, but didn't spend ANY time drawing lines on them.
I do remember looking down from the DC-8 going across the country that it
all of a sudden looked like a kind of long way.

Karl
"Curator" N185KG


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ps.com...
It didn't take days to plan - indeed, planning took about as long as
reviewing the charts and drawing a line

Okay, so maybe "days" was a bit of an exaggeration. However, for my
first "real" cross-country flight ("all the way" from Wisconsin to
Missouri in a rental Cherokee 140, back in '95, for our tenth wedding
anniversary) I do recall having all the charts out on the dining room
table for days before the flight, studying them for best routing, and
looking for good, identifiable landmarks. VORs were, for me, entirely
secondary to pilotage in getting to Branson -- I wanted uniquely-shaped
lakes and rivers!

As for the navigation being "part of the fun", I guess I got over that
a long time ago. Now, I just want to enjoy the flight as safely as
possible, and get there expeditiously. For us, that means GPS direct.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Mxsmanic wrote:
....

now of course, way back then, we would never have heard of
Mxsmanic.... every progress comes at a price. :-)

--Sylvain

On 10/30/06 2:20 PM, in article ,
"Mxsmanic" wrote:


Now compare that to the rate of change in aviation. What can you do
today in a cockpit that couldn't be done when you were born?

Join the Mile High Club.
--
Jeff 'The Wizard of Draws' Bucchino

Cartoons with a Touch of Magic�
http://www.wizardofdraws.com

More Cartoons with a Touch of Magic�
http://www.cartoonclipart.com

On 2006-10-30, Mxsmanic wrote:
Now compare that to the rate of change in aviation. What can you do
today in a cockpit that couldn't be done when you were born?

Well, it'd be a bit cramped, but that made my dirty mind work overtime
:-)

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

Jay Honeck wrote:

Nothing that guy and I just did was possible -- or even existed -- when
I was born.

fair enough; but (as I like to remind my dad who is a retired postal
worker), way back then, you could send mail (aka 'snail mail' nowdays),
with a reasonable expectation that it would arrive reliably within a
few days; heck, Roman soldiers posted on the Hadrian's Wall could
exchange snailmail to/from Rome significantly faster and more reliably
than is possible today (including packages)...

--Sylvain

On 2006-10-30, Jay Honeck wrote:
Only in the 21st century:

There was an article on the PM programme on Radio 4 last year about one
of the last World War 1 vets dying aged something like 105 or 106 years
old.

When he was a child, there were no airplanes. He probably didn't have
electric lights in his house (although they existed). Between being
middle aged and dying, the entire semiconductor went from not existing
at all to the Pentium 4 processor running at over 3 GHz. Aircraft went
from the Wright Flyer to the Boeing 777, and it reached the 777 when he
still had ten years left to live. Entire types of technology were
invented, reached their peak, and then made totally obsolete while
he was a pensioner.

He saw an entire basis for civilization - the Soviet empire - rise and
fall within his lifetime.

He got to see how future predictions were almost entirely wrong all the
time, and technology improved in some directions out of all recognition
while hardly moving in others. In the 50s and 60s, they were all
predicting flying cars - but a mechanic transplanted from 1935 to today
would be pretty much totally at home with the airframe and power plant
of many of today's light GA aircraft. Yet all the futurologists totally
missed the cell phone - we already have better phones than Star Trek
forecast for their communicators.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

Dylan Smith writes:

He got to see how future predictions were almost entirely wrong all the
time, and technology improved in some directions out of all recognition
while hardly moving in others. In the 50s and 60s, they were all
predicting flying cars - but a mechanic transplanted from 1935 to today
would be pretty much totally at home with the airframe and power plant
of many of today's light GA aircraft. Yet all the futurologists totally
missed the cell phone - we already have better phones than Star Trek
forecast for their communicators.

The futurists are almost always wrong. They assume that the areas
with high rates of change or low rates of change will continue to have
high rates of change or low rates of change in the future. They
assume that what seems important now will remain important in the
future, and that things that are ignored now will continue to be
ignored in the future. This is rarely the case. Very often the
changes occur where they were least expected, and the domains that are
expected to change mightily end up barely moving at all.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Jay Honeck wrote:
Only in the 21st century:


I've been involved in the Internet from the dim times. I wrote
one of the early routers in 1983 or so. Still for a while it
was purely an academic/military thing and while we expected
computer networks to progress we really thought we were going to
get plowed under by the ISO (telephone company centric).

I remember two major turning points.

The first is when I was looking for an IRC relay and the closest
one I could find was in Slovakia (if you told me that I'd be using
the outgrowth of a military network to talk to Slovakia back in
'83 I'd have though you were daft).

Second, was not too long after the web started getting some popularity
I was watching the Indy 500 and at the end of the first commercial for
Valvoline, www.valvoline.com appeared on the screen. I figured it had
finally hit the masses if they expect some couch potato sports fan to
know what a URL was.