Walking on the Moon

After reading Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, I needed to go back and read the first book in the series in the hopes of having some blanks filled in as well as seeing how the characters from the second book fit in the first.

I enjoyed the Oryx and Crake, even knowing the broad outlines of how it came out.  While I was looking for the appearance of the characters from Flood, I was really surprised by how tangential their involvement was here.  This was a mixed bag.  On the one hand, it makes each book a more distinct experience; on the other it heightened the feeling that these few characters more than represented the whole society, but completely were the whole society.  The same feeling of an unrealistically cramped world was here.

Still, there is plenty to enjoy in Oryx and Crake.  The same large issues shape a world populated by real characters.  This is a world we may yet see, right through to its end.  Though there will probably be more people in it.

Recommended.

If you haven’t read any of Joseph Ellis’s history writing, but think you might like it, Founding Brothers is a good book to try.  It’s shorter than his biographies of Adams, Jefferson, or Washington, but showcases his techniques and insights well.

Ellis has an eye for the illuminating historical moment that focuses attention on a figure’s strengths and weaknesses, and can use that moment as a jumping off point to lead the reader through the tangle of history that brought them to it.  It’s an interesting and effective technique.  Brothers showcases it to good effect.

His scholarship and writing bring the facts of the situation to the reader clearly, and his informed speculation breathes life into the proceedings.  He makes an excellent tour guide to the early days of America.

Recommended.

The Year of the Flood relates events in Oryx and Crake from a different perspective. This is a tricky bit of business.  Both books are near-future works of science fiction relating a societal collapse, so being able to get two books out of the same sequence requires the world to be sufficiently rich that there are two compelling viewpoints from which to view the events.  Even when that’s the case, the writer is still presented with the problem of creating two sets of interesting characters.  Fortunately, the writer in question is Margaret Atwood, so this all goes pretty well.

Atwood’s strengths and weaknesses are all on display here.  The world is extrapolated from today’s world in ways that expose the underlying ideals, ideas, and ideologies that shape it.  Characters are iconic, but with enough life in them that they aren’t just tokens to be moved through some intellectual bingo game.  On the down side, the iconography and some Dickensean coincidences make the world seem small.  The ideas are all big, but the cast seems small.

A large focus of Flood is the hybrid Christian/Environmental Fundamentalist cult, God’s Gardeners.  Atwood does a great job showing how the ideas underlying such a belief system could come to be, how individuals could get drawn into it, and how one would practically run such a thing.  It’s an eye opening set of ideas, put forth in a diverting narrative.

Strongly Recommended.

Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City is a strange piece of alchemy.  It’s a history of two basically distinct occurrences in Chicago in the late nineteenth century – the Chicago World’s Fair and the emergence of America’s first serial killer.  Either one of these is a pretty fascinating topic, and Larson writes well enough to make either hypnotizing. It’s very difficult to understand how he makes the two accompany each other so well, especially when the narratives basically never touch.

Each side of the coin is well researched and presented accessibly, and the events are particularly diverting.  The World’s Fair was a major event in Chicago’s history – not to mention the world’s.  A broad cast of characters brought a series of wonders to the eyes of the world, and as with any undertaking of that scale, the stories of how the magic happened is at least as diverting as what happened.

On the other side, Larson details the ruthless murders of tens of women by a man who seems to have killed simply for the enjoyment of doing so.  He also defrauded a series of people to finance his murder spree, but doesn’t seem to have been motivated primarily by material gain.  The story is gripping and detailed.

These are two great stories to tell, and in Larson’s capable hands I’d be delighted to read either one.  What really amazes me is how well they compliment each other.  Larson tells each in parallel, with a few chapters or sections of one story giving way to the other.  Because the two don’t interact Larson can choose how to pace them.  I was continually surprised by how often I’d come to a switch between one storyline or the other and be initially perturbed at being interrupted only to get sucked back into the other almost immediately.  To tell one history that well is impressive; to weave two together is amazing.

Strongly recommended.

David Cross’s I Drink For A Reason is a collection of short essays that cover a wide range of topics with a humorous tone.  That describes a lot of books, and the execution completely determines the quality of the reading experience.  For me, this was not a great experience, but not awful either.

Cross has an acerbic delivery of some reasonable thinking, but nothing the left me with lasting impressions.  I take that back, I thought his essay on breaking up was something special.  Everything else was diverting enough, but fairly light.  An enjoyable book to spend some time with , but pretty insubstantial.

I know I said I was moving these, but I had forgotten one more book I read last year, Wil Wheaton’s Memories of the Future. I’ve put up a short review on Bell, Book, and Candle.

Some long overdue reviews up on Bell, Book and Candle.  Specifically reviews of The Last Founding Father and Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  These will be the last reviews posted to BBC directly.  Further reviews, including all the stuff I’ve read this year to date, will be blogged directly.  So you have that to look forward to.

I finally had some time this weekend to go out and play in the plane a little. I’ve been meaning to check Bakersfield Municipal out more thoroughly since I stopped by on my last uncontrolled field tour. Today was the day.

The flight out was pretty, but hazy.  Honestly I was surprised at how little traffic was out.  Usually the basin is hopping on the weekends, but there were a couple times today when the radio was quiet long enough that I thought I might have lost comms.  No such luck, though – just quiet.

The other bummer is that I’ve had a cold this week and between climbing over the Gorman pass and descending back into the Central Valley my ears filled right up with phlegm.  Yes, I know this is a charming fact to share with you all.  It hurt a little, but mostly it took me a few minutes to clear them back out so I could hear normally again.

Anyway, Bakersfield is a really well kept-up field.  All the landscaping is pretty and the runway and taxiway surfaces have all been well maintained and, as far as I can tell, recently repaved.  It’s a very pleasant surprise to see such a beautiful little airport.

I actually had trouble finding the restaurant.  Despite the fact that the field is really well marked, I missed the building that held the place.  I stopped off on the FBO and a couple folks outside gave me great directions.  Should you ever be looking for the restaurant at Bakersfield, taxi all the way to the departure end of runway 14 and take a left.

The restaurant itself was unique and interesting.  It wasn’t so much a cafe as a bar with food, but it was a large, well lighted sports bar with a definite bias toward motor sports.  There was plenty of racing gear on display and for sale, and when I sat down the Speed Channel was on.

However, the place didn’t give off the vibe of being a pure sports bar.  It was pretty early in the day when I was there – around 11 – but there were a couple tables of families there and quite a few older couples and groups.  I got much more the feeling of a neighborhood haunt than the young men’s hangout that sports bars often seem to be.

I had a good turkey sandwich, but I probably should have aimed at the burgers, which seem to be a specialty.

Overall it was an excellent experience, and the place could easily become a favorite.  Recommended.

As part of tuning up to go east this Christmas, I went out Sunday and did one of my favorite training exercises: an uncontrolled field tour.  An uncontrolled filed is one with no tower to direct traffic, and often no weather information available beyond a windsock at the field (though others have full automated weather broadcast continuously).  While an uncontrolled field is usually less busy than a towered one, they do force the pilot to pay more attention to the world outside the window, knowing that no tower controller will provide another pair of eyes.  Air Traffic Control is also not going to provide traffic advisories or the like in the pattern at an uncontrolled field.  The runways are often shorter and narrower, too.

I did my first tour several years ago when I was feeling uncomfortable about my uncontrolled field radio and pattern entry work, and I reprised it last weekend just to polish that corner of my skill set.  Basically, I go up into the central valley and hop between 8 fields.  Once I’m in the valley, I don’t get flight following, and stay down around 2500′ feet between airports.  I operate primarily by pilotage, and drill those skills as well as pattern entries and uncontrolled radios.

It was a lot easier this time than last.  I think my approach and landing skills have gotten a lot better.  I was much more comfortable getting on and off even the shorter fields in the mix this time.  Here’s a quick recap.

The first field I wanted to hit was a new one for me: Bakersfield Municipal, near the south edge of Bakersfield.  I flew through the Gorman pass and went through some strong up and down drafts.  I lost a couple hundred feet of altitude on more than one occasion by encountering a downdraft that I couldn’t out climb.  I reported them to ATC, but all they can do is warn people.  Once in the Central Valley, the winds eased off, and operations were straightforward.

Bakersfield Municipal from the tiedowns

I didn’t stop long at most of the fields, but I did take a picture or two at most.  I took most of them from the cockpit with the plane stopped and the engine running, so the quality isn’t great.  That’s a V-tail Bonanza landing at Bakersfield after I got there.  He was headed for the airport restaurant.  I haven’t been there, but I’ll be back.  The field looks clean and well kept up.

From Bakersfield it was up to Shafter-Minter airport, which I found by following some railroad tracks.  The other times I’ve been to Shafter I’ve seen biplanes in the pattern, including a couple low passes; no such luck today.  You can see some interesting aircraft on the ramp in the picture, though.

The ramp from Runway 12/30 at MIT

From Shafter, more railroad tracks brought me over to Wasco Airport.  This is a little field used primarily by crop dusters, it looks like.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear someone come into the field as I was leaving the area.  It sounded like a student on a cross country.  Here are a few planes on the ramp at Wasco:

Crop Dusters at Wasco

A Cessna at Wasco

From Wasco, it was a short hop over to Delano Municipal, which had a long runway, continuous weather reporting, and a restaurant and helicopter repair shop on the field.  No one was around over there, though, so I made a landing, snapped a shot of a bunch of helicopter fuselages at the repair shop and set out again.

Helos in for repairs at Delano

The next stop, Porterville, is a favorite airport.  It’s somewhat out of the way, but the food at the restaurant is good, though it has changed hands a couple times.  I planned a stop here for food and gas, but was disappointed.  The restaurant was closed, though I did fuel up, and watch an old Bell helicopter taking some landing practice.

Helicopter practice at Porterville

Restaurant and Terminal at Porterville

From Porterville, I started across the valley to Corcoran, a small field used primarily for crop dusting.  It was narrower than most of the fields I hit that day, and very utilitarian.  I always feel like I’m intruding on someone’s workplace when they’ve just stepped out when I come in and out of there, so I didn’t stay long.  As I turned around to leave, I snapped this shot of the AgTractors at rest.

The usual denizens at Corcoran

The next field on my list was the unattended strip at Lost Hills.  There’s remarkably little at Lost hills, except for a runway and a few tie downs.  I think this is primarily used to bring equipment in and out of the oil drilling sites in the region.  It was easy enough to find from Corcoran by following the 5.  Here’s the windsock (and segmented circle).  As you can see, the sun’s going down, and I really like this picture.  I like how the windsock marks this a point of civilization but feels far from home.

The lonely windsock at Lost Hills

From here, my last stop was Buttonwillow airport, another unattended strip just down the canal from Lost Hills.  I like Buttonwillow much more than I should, partially because I’ve had some cool experiences there.  Today as I was approaching from the north, I heard another aircraft approaching to land, which always surprises me; I always think I’m the only one who knows about Buttonwillow.  It turned out to be a Luscombe, who was straight in.  I let him in ahead of me and took a shot of the setting sun, the Luscombe (the nose is cut off in the thumbnail, but not the full shot), and the runway, which is really getting overgrown a bit.  I really like the runway shot because it again captures the out-of-the way feel of the place.  Try to ignore all the bugs on the windshield.

Sunset at Buttonwillow

Another pilot at Buttonwillow

Runway 11/29 at Buttonwillow

From here it was back to SMO in the fading light for a night landing that didn’t count toward currency.  I imagine that this wouldn’t be much fun for most passengers, but I enjoyed a day of picking my way along at a low altitude, getting into and out of small fields and generally just flying.

How instrument pilots practice their skills can be confusing to non-pilots (or even to VFR-only pilots).  In mid-October Marc Zorn and I went up and did some practice approaches, and Marc took some great pictures that may help make the process easier to understand.  Here’s a short description of what we did.

First to set the stage, the whole LA basin was under an overcast layer with bases at between 1,000′-1,500′ and with tops between 2,500′-3,000′.  Visibility above and below the layer was excellent.  This means we were on IFR clearances all day, but much of our flying was in VFR conditions.  In fact, when we were above the clouds things looked like this:

Flying above the cloud layer

As you can see, as far as keeping the aircraft right side up, these conditions are (almost) as good as a clear day with no clouds at all.  I say “almost” because there are some differences between the cloud deck and a real horizon – a sloped cloud deck can lead to the illusion that the plane’s level when it’s really banked – and because it’s a lot harder to see where the airports are.  In order to practice controlling the plane without reference to the outside clues, the training pilot wears a view-limiting device – usually called a hood – that restricts what he or she can see.  Generally a hood restricts the pilot’s vision to stop at the top of the glareshield (dashboard on a car).  Here I am wearing a hood:

Me under the hood

While Marc is enjoying that gorgeous view, I’m seeing instruments and gray plastic. But, because I can’t see other airplanes Marc is acting as a safety pilot for me.  That means he’s looking out for other aircraft and letting me know if there’s a situation where I should remove the hood and take action.  Of course if there’s an emergency that happens so fast that it’s safest for him to take control of the airplane, he can do that as well.  We talk through the parameters of that on the ground.  A safety pilot needs to be qualified to fly the aircraft, of course.

While we’re above and below the clouds, I’m under the hood and Marc’s looking around (and taking the occasional picture).  Today we have some time when we’re in real instrument conditions – inside clouds.  When that happens, Marc lets me know and I take the hood off.  Here are a couple shots inside a cloud:

Flying inside a cloud

The wing in a cloud

That picture inside the plane isn’t photoshopped.  There’s nothing but white outside, and the plane is being controlled entirely by instruments (and me).  You can see the wings, as the second image shows, but without a horizon to reference, that isn’t much help.

For those of you familiar with the LA airspace, the picture inside the plane was taken just as we were joining the localizer for the ILS approach into Oxnard.  The ILS provides vertical and lateral guidance to the airport – that is it tells the pilot what direction to fly to get to the airport and how high to be at any point on the approach.  It’s a precise system. It can guide a plane to within 200′ (altitude) of the runway threshold, from which point you land by eye.  Today the ceilings were much higher, but after breaking out of the clouds I went back under the hood until the 200′ mark.  Inside the clouds the view looks like this (the blur is the propeller):

Looking out the front in a cloud

At around 1000′, we break out and it looks like this:

Breaking out at Oxnard

The runway is the black strip right above the curl in the cowling between the propeller and the oil door.  It’s much easier to see on the larger image.

If we’re flying the approach in real life, we transition mostly to visual flying at this point; while training I go back under the hood.  We land at Oxnard and then filed a flight plan to another airport and do it all again.  Sometimes pilots intentionally miss an approach (in coordination with ATC) to get more approaches in, but I wanted to practice the transition to visual flying through to a landing today.

So that’s a little bit about how instrument training goes.  Marc took all the pictures in this entry, and I downscaled them somewhat, so distortions are my fault.