Power and Motoryacht

[Scarlett]

If you haven’t seen the March issue, get it. It has a great article on the 2 navy ship collisions in detail. Amazing bunch of mistakes by the Navy personnel and lots of blame. A combination of ships becoming to complicated and training being to little. John

[racclarkson@gmail.com]

Thanks for the heads up. It is a good read.

Lowest common denominator in both incidents appears to be the placing of greater value on political correctness and poorly supervised learn-at-your-own-pace video games. It is cheaper--if you don't place a value on the loss of life and property damage. Social promotion doesn't work, and the US military shouldn't be a sociologist's laboratory.

You can bet we'll be in trouble if we get in a conflict with Russia or even the DPRK. We probably have better stuff, but I wonder how many training days those guys sacrifice for diversity or transgender sensitivity training. They are training killers, and we are training to not offend. Frankly, it's not working because I am offended.

How does this happen? The article's analogy of pilot training is right on. I know a father and son who keep detailed flight logbooks of all their flying hours and are always talking about interesting approaches, etc. Trouble is, they've never been at the controls of anything (if you don't count their video gaming joysticks). I'm talking about a man in his sixties! If I'm lying, I'm dying.

[Westfield 11]

How is simulator training a bad thing? And what's wrong with playing with flight sims.....? If you cannot afford to own your own plane or afford the rental time to maintain proficiency they can be quite useful. Flight students apparently find them to be very helpful.
And if you don't, for whatever reason, have a pilots ticket, good sims can be very immersive and an enjoyable pastime as well as a shared father-son hobby. One that can continue to be enjoyed for decades after one is physically unable to pilot a real aircraft......

BTW one of the highlights of my time with McDonnell-Douglas was the hour spent in the C-17 simulator one night in Long Beach. I even got a try at a takeoff, go-around and landing.

[Scarlett]

Robert, in that article they talked about how new officers got SWOS training before being sent to a ship, but now they don’t. Well I was a Naval Officer in the early 1970’s and I did not get that training either. For me being on the bridge in charge of running a 600 foot ship was not really any harder than running mt 25 foot boat, after all a contact is a contact no matter how big the boat is and when I have a radar or visual contact I pay attention to it.

[racclarkson@gmail.com]

How is simulator training a bad thing? And what's wrong with playing with flight sims.....? If you cannot afford to own your own plane or afford the rental time to maintain proficiency they can be quite useful. Flight students apparently find them to be very helpful.
And if you don't, for whatever reason, have a pilots ticket, good sims can be very immersive and an enjoyable pastime as well as a shared father-son hobby. One that can continue to be enjoyed for decades after one is physically unable to pilot a real aircraft......

BTW one of the highlights of my time with McDonnell-Douglas was the hour spent in the C-17 simulator one night in Long Beach. I even got a try at a takeoff, go-around and landing.

Wow! I think the point I was trying to make was these folks equated video games with actual piloting skills.

Multiple Choice:

Q. Someone with 3,000 hours on Nintendo has...

a) No problem with a C17 simulator
b) An instrument rating for the space shuttle
c) A bunch of frequent flyer miles
d) Absolutely no actual flying experience at all, but a great family life

Hell, they probably go IFR on rainy days. These guys told people about their flying experiences. I'm pretty sure you need some actual hours in a real airplane before being licensed and honing your skills with appropriate simulations. The key word being appropriate. I'm thinking the C17 simulator over in Long Beach was a might more sophisticated than the X-box in the split-level ranch in Bamberg, SC. But the father/son bonding thing was probably accurate.

The most important thing anyone can know, in my opinion, is knowing what you don't know. These guys have no clue. I took the son, 40-ish, to a live pigeon shoot one day. He considered himself a pretty good wing-shot and wanted to go. I warned him about the pigeon game and the license plates from way out west and the calcuttas worth tens of thousands. He shot shot five practice birds and said he was as good a shot as any of them. I haven't seen him since.

[racclarkson@gmail.com]

Robert, in that article they talked about how new officers got SWOS training before being sent to a ship, but now they don’t. Well I was a Naval Officer in the early 1970’s and I did not get that training either. For me being on the bridge in charge of running a 600 foot ship was not really any harder than running mt 25 foot boat, after all a contact is a contact no matter how big the boat is and when I have a radar or visual contact I pay attention to it.

Good point. On your boat you are the only one responsible, so you rely only on yourself. It's the reliance on others (in any endeavor) that can lead to surprises.

[jim rosenthal]

Two of my close friends are professional pilots- one flies rotary for USN, the other fixed-wing for Jet Blue. They both have a LOT of simulator time, but also a lot of stick time. I think simulators are quite useful (and they are being used more and more in my field as well) but nothing replaces actual experiences. We learn more from our failures than we do from our successes.

[Bob Bradley]

Two of my close friends are professional pilots- one flies rotary for USN, the other fixed-wing for Jet Blue. They both have a LOT of simulator time, but also a lot of stick time. I think simulators are quite useful (and they are being used more and more in my field as well) but nothing replaces actual experiences. We learn more from our failures than we do from our successes.

I would imagine that in flying (and, I would assume, parachuting), you only get so many chances to learn from failure.

[racclarkson@gmail.com]

I would imagine that in flying (and, I would assume, parachuting), you only get so many chances to learn from failure.

I have a friend who took up skydiving. I always kid him about buying a used chute. But he's a CPA and pretty tight.

[Scarlett]

That’s like we used to kid our pilot friends during the Vietnam war about how they liked flying a jet built by the lowest bidder.