Tranquility Below

Well, it has certainly been a long while. Unfortunately, I have not kept up on my goal of keeping this site up to date. I guess that’s part of the fun, you never know what you are going to read, nor when you are going to read it.

Things are much changed since I have last left you and I do have new stories to tell. I am now a First Officer at a major U.S. Airline flying the Boeing B-757-200, B-757-300, B-767-200ER, and B-767-400ER aircraft. Amazingly, I get to fly four different airplanes at my new job. Just one of the few challenges of this career.

My lack of updates stems from ever changing schedules, time-zones, and destinations. Training for a new aircraft is time consuming and takes up much of whatever may be left for a wandering thought. A new job also involves coordination of all aspects of your life that can take away from the imaginings of an infrequent writer. Training is over, for now, and my schedule has finally settled into a weak semblance of what some may called normal and hopefully more updates will follow.

Most of my new trips take me across the Atlantic to places like London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc. With new flights, new locales, and new people bring new stories. Soon stories of strange sights, hotels, and other points of interest along the way will be put into publication. Until then...

Tranquility Above

As high as my job may take me, there can be a lot of down time. Advancements in flying technology has turned a good portion of my job into that of a system monitor instead of that of a system manager. Contrary to popular belief, I do not have to fly with my hands on the “wheel” all the time. The airplane’s autopilot usually does a very nice job of keeping the aircraft level and on course for hours at a time while cruising miles above the Earth.

A typical flight is divided up into six phases: Takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, approach, and landing. As some of my routes push three hours in length, the cruise phase of flight is the longest, but also tends to have the least amount of “action”. The autopilot is constantly flying the airplane during this time (New regulations now mandate this) and the amount of changes to the airplane’s state is minimal. As you may imagine the other phases of flight are much busier and require constant system management from both pilots. During the climb, descent, and approach phases the autopilot may be used to reduce the workload of the pilots. Takeoff and landings are completely hand flown in the airplane I fly.

Although the cruise phase of flight has a significantly reduced workload, some vital duties are accomplished by the flight crew.

Autopilot Ineptness
The autopilot is not a perfect system. In the aircraft that I fly it is often over stressed by moderate to severe turbulence. At times it can cause the aircraft to go into an oscillation that is very uncomfortable to the passengers. The pilots up front can easily correct this flawed action by changing the autopilot “mode” or simply turn the autopilot off and “hand-fly” the airplane until this oscillation stops.

Now you may start to think the autopilot I use is flawed or even dangerous. It is important to realize that every autopilot system has its flaws: It is designed by humans and operated by humans. Each autopilot I have worked with has its eccentricities that can be amplified by Man or Nature. While some autopilots may be better than others, it is the job of the human on the flight deck to overcome any of these faults that may be presented while flying.

Endless Conversation
Above the entire continental United States all high flying jet-aircraft are required to be in contact with Air Traffic Control. One pilot is designated to maintain this communication. During the cruise phase this usually consist of finding out about the weather ahead of the airplane or trying to go off our flight planned route to get a short cut to our destination. In less busier periods pilots even try to get the current sports scores on baseball and football games. Sometimes we even find the time to share this information with our passengers.

Where are We?
Most jetliners have fully automated and computerized navigation systems. The advent of the GPS has rapidly increased this modernization in today’s jet fleet. Our specific fleet configuration still requires one pilot to monitor older ground based navigation systems to verify our flight computer is maintaining an accurate position. In more advanced jetliners where this task is not required, it is important for both pilots to maintain a mental picture of the aircraft’s current position. This will make emergency situations much easier to deal with. I myself learned very quickly of this when a passenger became ill and we needed to land the airplane at the nearest field were suitable medical attention could quickly aide the stricken passenger.

Most important of all, pilots must be aware of what is below them. We must be ready at all times for that ever present question amongst many frequent fliers: Where are we?
How embarrassing it would be if the pilot said: “I don’t know, somewhere between Orlando and New York!”

What Else
Of course we always monitor other systems in the airplane, such as hydraulics, oil, and the ever more important fuel consumption. These are the basic and sometimes dull duties while cruising along at nearly the speed of sound. Do other extracurricular activities occur while in flight? Sure, you have the occasional shop talk amongst the crew or maybe talk about last night’s game. Beyond that is for a future article.

The Fearless Photon - A Force Carrier Particle

Electromagnetic radiation is a broad term for the emission of electromagnetic waves by electronic devices. There are a variety of different types of electromagnetic waves which are classified by the electromagnetic spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum ranges from radio waves like those that bring music to your car radio, to visible light rays that you see, to powerful gamma rays that speed through interstellar space.

Electromagnetic force is carried, uniquely enough, by a force-carrier particle or boson called a photon. The term photon means packet of light. It is the smallest particle of electromagnetic radiation. It is important to note that the radio waves that hit your car antenna are made up of the very same thing as the visible light rays the we see with our eyes. It is all made up of simple photons.

Force carrier particles, like the photon, are a unique group of elementary particles in quantum physics that have no mass. That’s right, no matter how long you keep that skinny photon on the bathroom scale it will register no mass. No matter how small or massless these photons may be, they do carry quite a punch - in other words, they have energy to give.

The principle that photons carry energy is the basis for your ability to see, the creation of electricity by solar panels, and the technology that powers that ever louder car radio. Visible light photons hit the back your eye and energize special cells that send small electrical impulses along your optic nerve in which your brain interprets as a visual picture. A car radio is nothing more than a photon amplifier. A radio gathers a small amount of energy from photons, amplifies it, and converts it into audible sound.

So what differentiates light photons from photons that are used to carry radio signals? The wavelength of the photon is the answer. Photons live a double life both as a small particle and wave of energy. Radio waves have rather long wavelengths. The waves that your AM radio receives can be almost 1 kilometer long. FM waves are approximately 1 meter long. And the waves of light that you see are about 600 nanometers long.

Wavelength is also a measurement of power. The shorter the wavelength the more powerful each individual photon is. In other words, an individual light photon carries much more energy than a radio wave photon.

Since photons are emitted by almost everything electronic (light bulbs, radios, TVs, etc..) they interact with humans on a daily basis. We are simply bombarded by photons, every second of everyday. There is nothing one can do to avoid this simple fact, nor should one try to. Most items that we use or interact with in life produce very long wavelengths of photons (any wavelength equal to or longer than that of visible light). These photons pass harmlessly through us constantly.

There are however, photons that can and do harm us. This starts with the photons that have a wavelength shorter than that of visible light. The first culprit you run into on the electromagnetic spectrum is ultra-violet radiation. This cancer causing photon produced by the Sun and tanning beds has enough energy to break the covalent-bonds found in DNA. This process usually only kills skin cells. However, it may also cause replication errors in DNA that may lead to skin cancer. Next in line on the electromagnetic spectrum are X-rays. These photons have enough energy to penetrate deep into porous materials such as skin and flesh, only to interact and reflect off of more dense material such as bone. This principle allows an X-ray machine to photograph your internal bone structure. X-rays are also extremely carcinogenic and are easily powerful enough to destroy or cause DNA mutations leading to cancer. As you continue to move up the electromagnetic spectrum (shorter wavelength) to gamma rays and beyond you find more and more powerful photons that are capable of harming humans.

Your cell phone, microwave, and radio produce very lazy photons. They do not have enough energy to interact with the electrons, neutrons, and protons that are found in your body. Cell phones and microwave ovens use photons of very similar wavelength. A microwave can cook a chicken very well. So can a cell phone or broken microwave cook you? Absolutely! However, it is the unique shape of the water molecule found in chicken (or you) that allows this to happen. The microwave photons nudge water molecules just right to make them vibrate and resonate, therefor increasing the temperature of the object that carries the water. Usually a microwave is properly shielded and does not leak out the radiation that is cooking the food. Stand next to the microwave all you want, watching that nutritious TV dinner cook will not harm anything more than your caloric intake. Yes, an improperly shielded microwave will increase your temperature (if you start to get warm, back away from the microwave, turn it off, toss it out the window and get a new one!), but it will not alter your DNA or cause cancer.

Disclaimer - Since the microwave and the cell phone use similar wavelengths of photons, there is a scant amount of evidence that a cell phone can raise the temperature (very slightly) near your ear. This rise in temperature can alter the shape of certain proteins found in your body and therefor may, in extremely rare cases, lead to cancer. However, it is not, I repeat not the direct interaction of cell phone radiation with the DNA in your body. In other words, stop yackking if your ear is getting warm.

The amount of electromagnetic radiation that is produced by a transmitter is often measured in watts. The wattage rating of an electromagnetic producer simply quantifies the amount of photons being emitted from the source. Your cell phone on a high power setting will produce about 3 watts of radiation, while a commercial broadcast radio station may produce over one million watts of radiation.

Many sources of electromagnetic radiation are extremely powerful and are very benign, while other sources are very low power, yet very harmful. For example, the radiation produced by a tanning bed is measured by just a few watts. Unfortunately, just a few minutes of exposure to this low amount of UV radiation will burn your skin and may cause a DNA altering event that may lead to cancer. However, radio engineers work next to commercial radio broadcast stations that produce millions of watts of radiation. Yet, radio engineers do not have a higher incidence of cancer nor do they come home burned after a whole day of being exposed to this very intense radiation.

It is important to realize that each individual photon may interact with only one electron, proton, or neutron at a time. No matter how many photons are flying around out there, this is a wait your turn to bump the lepton (electron) or baryon (protons and neutrons). The wavelength of the individual photon is the sole factor in how a molecule (DNA or otherwise) will be affected. Just remember that the light in the room is bombarding you with hundreds of times more photons than your cell phone will ever produce.

Lightning Strikes Here

There are some hazards of my job that I have to deal with on an almost daily basis. One of these hazards includes lightning strikes. During the spring and summer thunderstorm season my flights often bounce between many electrical storms in order to bring passengers safely to their destinations. My friends and family often ask if I worry about being struck by lightning. The short answer: Yes.

Surprisingly, however, I have the most chance of being injured by lightning while pre-flighting my aircraft before departure. The untimely deaths of some airline employees working outside during thunderstorms caused the FAA to strictly regulate when people may be working outside on an airport during a thunderstorm. Lightning striking people on the ground causes many deaths per year. However, lightning striking an aircraft in flight rarely causes any concern at all.

All airliners are equipped with lightning protection devices. These include special grounding wires to duct the lightning away from the aircraft’s electrical system as well as special discharge devices called static wicks that can help dissipate the energy of the lightning strike. There are no devices on an airplane that keep it from getting struck by lightning in the first place.

Although lightning rarely causes severe damage to airplanes it is the job of the flight crew to try to keep an airplane from being struck by lightning. All airlines create certain standards when flying near thunderstorms. Flight crews will fly a certain distance away from a thunderstorm or fly at a certain height over a thunderstorm. Pilots are not supposed to enter a thunderstorm, but, there are particular circumstances where this may occur. Even if a thunderstorm is completely avoided an airplane may still be struck by lightning, as lightning is known to struck up to 100 miles from a storm.

So why are airplanes struck by lightning? The answer may not be as simple as you think.
Lightning occurs when a storm cloud produces an electrical charge. (How this electrical charge is produced and when or where a lightning bolt will occur is a rather in-depth scientific debate and is not yet fully understood.) This electrical charge is dissipated by sending a massive amount of electrons to another part of the cloud or into the ground. This flow of electrons is visually scene as the lightning bolt. These electrons want to find the path of least resistance their “target” charge. Electrons flow easily in metals, hence the copper wire that brings electricity (electrons) to your house. Since there are usually no metallic objects in thunderstorms, there is a special path created for electrons to flow along called a step leader.

Most airplanes are made of metal, creating a prime target for a lightning strike. However, some new airplanes are designed with composite materials and plastics. Electrons do not flow easily through these materials. Unfortunately, these airplanes are not immune to lightning strikes. In fact, lightning may strike these airplanes more often.

Space Shuttles, Plasmas, and You
As most airliners move at very high speeds through the air there is a build up of plasma on or just above the surface of the airplane. Plasma is a material created by the ionization of normal air molecules. Ions are created when one or more negatively charged electrons are removed from a neutrally charged molecule. This leaves a free floating positively charged molecule (positive ion) and electrons (negative ions).

You might remember that the Space Shuttle is surrounded by plasma when it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. As the Space Shuttle streaks through the atmosphere at up to 25 times the speed of sound electrons are removed from the air molecules that pass by the vehicle. This creates the colorful glow of plasma that surrounds the ship as it returns the Earth. Airplanes traveling at more earthly speeds of 500 mph create plasma in the same fashion, although at a much smaller scale. The build up of plasma on a modern jetliner is rarely visible.

Plasma is an extremely conductive material, i.e. electrons easily flow through this material. Basically, the positively charged ions are constantly looking for negatively charged electrons so that they may return to a neutral state of charge. An addition of electrons (electricity) will flow easily through the electrically unstable plasma. No matter what material an aircraft is made out of an extremely conductive blanket of plasma is developed, creating a conduit for lightning to travel through or seek out.

If an aircraft can minimize the creation of the plasma that surrounds it, it may reduce the risk of being struck by lightning. The factors that play a role in the amount of plasma that is created as airplane flies is: materials, speed, and the type of weather an airplane flies through.

While metal itself is a conductive material, it actually can reduce the amount of plasma on the surface of an aircraft. The metal found in an airplane can create a pathway to dissipate the excess charge created by the ionization of air molecules. The negative ions can easily flow out of the air through the metal skin of the aircraft. However, new aircraft made up of certain plastics and composites do not create a pathway to dissipate this charge, so the charge will continue to build up on the surface of the aircraft. Just remember when you rub a rubber (non-conductive material) balloon against your hair (also, non-conductive) there is a great build up of static-electricity, a type of plasma. If you try rubbing a piece of metal against your hair, the amount of static-electricity is much less since the metal can quickly dissipate the charge.

The slower of speed of the aircraft, the less of the plasma build up on its surface. Quite simply, a slow moving aircraft runs into less air molecules to ionize. Pilots can be well advised to slow down in the face of a thunderstorm. A slow moving aircraft produces less plasma, attracting less lightning.

Surprisingly, many airplanes are struck by lightning in a snow storm. Water in the solid form of snow or even its liquid form of rain drops are much more dense then the gases found in the atmospheres itself. An airplane flying into snow or rain runs into more molecules to ionize, hence a greater build up of plasma on the aircraft itself. This fact can easily be seen. An airplane flying through “dry” air (no solid or liquid water) rarely builds up enough plasma to be visible to the naked eye. However, when flying through a rainstorm pilots often report a coronal discharge (sometimes referred to as St. Elmo’s Fire) surrounding the aircraft. This can create a colorful display of blue and green ionized atmospheric molecules emitting from the windows and wing tips of airplanes. Pilots also often report this phenomena occurring just before a lightning strike. The thunderstorm is a double-edged sword: Not only does it create lightning, it produces the rain, snow, and ice that can make an aircraft more susceptible to a lightning strike.

The science of traveling thousands of miles high above the Earth is much more in-depth and complicated than the average passenger may want to imagine. It is the job the engineers, safety experts, and pilots to continually expanded their knowledge of Earth, atmosphere, and technology so that we may continue to travel efficiently and safely.

The Tale of the Unmanned Airliner

Modern wonders will never cease: One of our latest flights came into an airport close to you completely unmanned. This can cause a stir amongst many passengers. Upon entering the main cabin door many of our customers like to see who is going take them six miles above the earth at speeds approaching that of sound itself.

When you first step the door you are introduced to our in-flight crew with a "Welcome aboard, watch your head". You look left into the flight deck that is lit with the glow of five modern cathode-ray tubes (TVs) and filled an assortment of buttons and knobs. Up here in the "Front Office" there are two chairs – the left occupied by the captain and the right for the first officer. On this recent flight, both seats are left unmanned. This is somewhat of a unique circumstance in today’s world, but it is now becoming more and more common.

Many passengers are often concerned. The older generation seems to show the most disdain in this situation. You can see the concern grow as they first see the right seat: Unmanned! Now the left seat: Also unmanned! Can this be done? Is this possible? Will we be safe?

Sixty to Ninety minutes later: A smooth landing with a safe and on-time arrival. The passengers are happy. The younger women say good bye with a small smile and a look of pride. The older generation may make the unusual comment as they disembark: "Well you guys really did do a good job, I was a little worried there in the beginning."

I recently had the great opportunity to sit and drink with this unmanned crew after a hard day’s work. Each one of the crew was tall, blue-eyed, and very pretty... not a man amongst them. They are all very professional, educated, and very experienced (much more than myself). Most likely one of the safest crews around.

In some cases the women did have to work harder and prove themselves twice over to make it in this industry. True, beauty can open some doors in this world. By the time one (man or woman) makes it to commanding a multi-ton jetliner those who truly do not have "The Right Stuff" are weeded out of the ranks.

Today’s Location: Newport Beach, CA
Recent destinations: TPA, RDU, BOS

Airbus Crunch

Nothing like sitting back and relaxing at work, looking out the window of your office....

On this evening my "office window” looked out at about 30 airplanes in line, all waiting patiently to depart for their destination (we were number 31). It was the evening New York John F. Kennedy (JFK) airport rush hour. All the "big boys" (Boeing 767, 777, 747 and Airbus A330/340s) depart at nearly the same hour to fly the night across The Pond so their passengers may arrive (well rested, of course) in the early morning at destinations such as London, Paris, Lisbon, and Copenhagen.

Unfortunately, for the passengers of an Olympic Airbus A340 their flight will be delayed a long while. Some of the brakes on this plastic airplane behemoth decided to freeze up. The captain took it upon himself to maneuver the aircraft back to the gate. The taxiways at JFK are rather narrow and allow for little "wiggle" room. Upon his rushed attempt to turn back to the gate the captain and first officer of the Olympic Airbus failed to realized their long reach. The wing tip of the Olympic Airbus struck the tail of a LTU Airbus A330 sitting on the taxiway just ahead of the Olympic.

Now about 700 passengers will not be going anywhere for a long while.


Current Location: Columbus, OH
Today Aprox. Flight Time: 0

To Start Off...

To blog or not to blog? That is the question.

To blog, I say! Why? Well, why not? Or let me throw in the standard mantra: "Everyone else is doing it!"

My current occupation does require me to travel to far off wondrous places, such as Albany, New York, or Greensport, South Carolina. And in these strange lands I am given long periods of rest at familiar places of hospitality such as Motel 6 or the Ramada. Often the "hospitality" provides free hi-speed internet, a stale bagel, and a mysterious caffeinated liquid. So with these utensils I plan on telling the tale of my travels.

For the most part the stories will be boring, opinionated, and often grammatically incorrect. But you do remember this is a blog right? Hopefully certain friends and family will take interest in what happens in my strange world. Often they ask "What have I been doing the past few weeks, jet-setting across the country?" I tend forget the best parts. "I take off, land, repeat, then rinse," is a standard reply.

Hopefully I will tell tall tales of the time I landed in the face of a hurricane, at night, in heavy rain. (Such a smooth landing it was). Or when two airplanes came rather close together on a taxiway.

Other times I plan on describing current events that interest me. Read quickly, though, they may not interest you.

The plan is to keep myself out of trouble in these distant lands and keep you interested.

....that is only the plan


Location: Columbus, OH
Today's Aprox Flight Time: 0

First Blog

Time to start a new blog, at a new site, my own.