When I read articles in flying magazines about proper landing technique I read a lot about “stabilized approaches” – which means an airplane with an early established sink rate aligned with the runway that require only very little pilot input to land.

This approach is used by the airlines in their fast and heavy jets since the sixties and produces an almost flawless accident record – so this technique is proven and successful for the airlines.

When I compare it to how I land the tow plane, the mind-set couldn’t be more different. When I land, I’m at no point stabilized – anywhere. First I decent under power at high speed. For landing it’s all about energy management. that involves power setting, and trading altitude and airspeed. The only point to hit is touch down speed over the chosen touch down point. Other constraints are “decending and landing as fast as safely possible” and “minimizing wear on the plane (not pilot)”.

This usually leads to a high speed dive at the top of the green arc under 60% power. The airport requires me to cross the road before the runway in 200ft to avoid striking any obstacles with the tow rope. So I dive in a constant decending turn into my base leg still at the top of the green arc. Closely over the ground, I pull up until I reach the white arc to set flaps. This happens in a push over turn to off-load the flap mechanism. I pull power to idle and hold constant altitude at 200ft AGL while bleeding speed to cross the road. Close to stall speed over the road I push the plane over and either sides slip or dive for the flare for a three point landing.

This scenario repeats itself twenty times over or more per day. The result is a smooth and relatively fast tow operation at our glider club.

While this approach isn’t stabilized anywhere it is safe and at no point do I feel I’m not in control. In fact the wings of the tow plane feel like extensions of my body: just the way flying is supposed to be.

Checklists? That’s for another post. Only so much: I do believe in check lists.

That was the minute I (was) walked out of my current employer’s building – not to come back the next day. After 11.5 years I had decided it was time for a change and jumped on an opportunity that was too good to pass up.

Though I was prepared to quit, I wasn’t prepared for the emotional roller coaster that unfolded from so many colleagues and friends stopping by to say a quick good-bye. I had a hard time to keep my composure and felt almost relief when I finally left the building.

I’m now enjoying a couple of weeks of time off before starting on my new assignment.

Turning my back on a successful company with a career that was successful was the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time! Time will tell if it was the right thing to do.

Yesterday, I found the most venomous spider living in Texas, the brown recluse in my BBQ grill on the patio. Since I had just researched Texas spiders the day before from identifying an unknown species in my yard, I immediately realized that I had to be careful with this one. While not aggressive, the venom of this critter can cause severe injuries to humans leading up to amputation of your extremities. Last year I found a black widow family in my hangar. So now I’ve encountered the two most dangerous spiders in Texas first hand.

After a pleasantly long and rather cool Texas spring, the heat and humidity is finally back. For the next 5 days the forecast says 92F (33C)highs  and 72F (22C) lows at night  with marine layers in the morning. Muggy, yikes!

On May/7th 2010 we experienced a micro crash at the NY stock exchange. The Dow lost 919 points over 1:40min time. It shortly recovered almost all it’s losses. Some stocks’ liquidity (Procter & Gamble, 3M, Accenture) almost completely dried up during this period, causing the value to tank. Accenture went literally to zero before rebounding.

The SEC has launched an investigation into what has caused the volatility and the crash. Many transactions have been undone by now, but not all.

When I first heard of the crash (I only learned about it the next day – hey it was so fast!), I thought to myself: wow, is some hacker testing a new virus, or is China or Russia is test driving new electronic warfare?  I didn’t want to believe that such a glitch could happen naturally in such a big and liquid trading system.

Initial analysis seems to suggest though, that the system is to blame, no attacker. Many hedge funds that provide much of the liquidity pulled to the sidelines and stopped trading, when volatility exceeded a certain threshold. That left a very small market for the many sellers and non-existent buyers – the stocks tanked.

That explanation is fine with me, as I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but this incident was just screaming “foul”! Poor guys who had stop loss orders sitting on their positions, selling many stocks at a loss and not benefiting from the rebound…

Interesting times, no doubt!