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    Bad Altitude: A Skeptic Explores (First-Hand) the Principles of Flight
    Bad Altitude: A Skeptic Explores (First-Hand) the Principles of Flight
    Bad Altitude: A Skeptic Explores (First-Hand) the Principles of Flight
    Ebook59 pages45 minutes

    Bad Altitude: A Skeptic Explores (First-Hand) the Principles of Flight

    By John Gordon

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    About this ebook

    Even though commercial aviation is over a century old, the most experienced airline passengers still have difficulty fully explaining how massive aircraft stay aloft. Many have heard the physics of it and they accept the reality of it. However, few flyers are comfortable reconciling these things at 36,000 feet. This book chronicles the author's diverse and unusual experiences on private, commercial and military aircraft all in the pursuit of exploring the principles of heavier-than-air flight.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 13, 2016
    ISBN9781483587134
    Bad Altitude: A Skeptic Explores (First-Hand) the Principles of Flight
    Author

    John Gordon

    John Gordon has written and illustrated many children's books as well as worked extensively in most areas of illustration. When he's not writing or illustrating, he gives talks in schools and libraries and plays squash.

    Read more from John Gordon

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      Book preview

      Bad Altitude - John Gordon

      me.

      CHAPTER 1 - TOYS AND SADNESS

      The magic started for me with an early ‘50s television series, named Sky King. The star of a show had the same name, Schuylar Sky King. The program always began with a his twin Cessna, Songbird, approaching, then passing overhead, while a narrator breathlessly proclaimed, Out of the blue of the western sky comes…Sky King!

      The show’s genre was basically western. The pilot wore a cowboy hat. The plots were typical good-guy/bad-guy in which nobody gets seriously hurt, though guns were often brandished. It was similar for The Roy Rogers Show. Roy rode a horse, but the series also featured a ’46 Willys Jeep named Nellybelle. It never occurred to me question the time-travel miracle that enabled a cowboy like Roy to have a Jeep and Sky King to have a plane. Obviously, I missed the bigger picture. Regardless, Sky soared in a twin-engine magic machine, swooping over villains like an angry robin tormenting a cat.

      It was not that airplanes were an unusual sight near my hometown, Omaha, Nebraska. Offutt Air Force Base and the Strategic Air Command headquarters were just to the south. Eppley Airfield, our municipal airport sat slightly east. Military, commercial, and private aircraft were common in the fresh skies above Omaha. Plane sightings were so frequent for me that, when vacationing on Uncle Rod’s Minnesota farm, I was amused when my rural cousins would abruptly halt all sound and movement to study the glint of a distant airliner.

      Still, the Songbird was a marvel, but Sky, the skipper, was the main attraction. He was the first pilot I had seen, albeit on television. Or so I thought at the time. He was the first to confront me with the notion that there actually were people in those tubular aluminum machines hovering magically overhead. Sky King caused the magic; he was, therefore, superhuman.

      Like most kids, I bought and built lots of cheap plastic airplane models. Also like most kids, I crashed them or shot them to shards with my air rifle. With mom’s help, I did become a young aviation champion, of sorts. That claim requires that you view kites as objects of aviation. (Hang gliders later confirmed that notion.)

      Dad brought home some souvenirs from the war in the Pacific: a rifle (which I never saw), a couple of small wooden boxes, some glossy photos of Japanese soldiers in barracks, and a Japanese flag. No idea how he acquired these things.

      The local YMCA hosted a kite day. Demonstrating her usual creativity as well as her disregard for the recently conquered Japanese aggressors, mom made a kite out of the Japanese flag. Today, that would result in media scorn and hundreds of enraged picketers at your driveway. Back then, the prevailing attitude toward the Japanese was, #%& ‘em! (The coded word rhymes with duck, in case you didn’t figure that out.)

      The kite, with its huge red dot, had stitched sleeves for the supporting balsa struts. It was unusual and amazingly well-crafted. My kite won eleven ribbons on that momentous day. That kite was certainly the most unique—no Nazi kites competed—and it flew the farthest and highest. Way to go mom! You should have been an aeronautical engineer.

      I knew one boy who had a large model plane made of balsa and cloth. It had an acrid smell and a real engine. My friend said it could really fly, though I never saw it untethered from his bedroom ceiling. Let ‘er fly. I urged him. In retrospect, this was clearly a case of selective outrage. While imploring him to set his expensive bird free, I was crashing and mutilating my own cheap specimens.

      About that time, I learned that my father had been a private pilot. My dad, a pilot! But he’s just a…dad, I thought. After World War II, he had used his G.I. Bill education benefits to take flying lessons at

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