Our Dumb Blog

I’ve got all 100 pieces of information memorized. I’ve taken the test every night this week, and scored 100% the last three times. I don’t think I could be better prepared. If I miss one, I just might shoot myself.

The more difficult test will be the 60 question multiple choice test next friday. I plan to spend most of Saturday studying. We’ve got a couple hours of class and emergency door pulls (where we go out to an airplane and open all the emergency exits) on Sunday. Even on that test, I only need an 80% to pass, which can’t be too hard. Of course, my goal is to ace it. Studying enough to get an 80% and studying enough to get 100% are two entirely different levels of studying. The latter requires some insanity, I think. But, I’m going to have to pass a long oral examination just before sim training starts, so the better prepared I am now, the better I’ll do for that.

I haven’t even started on learning the Emergency Procedures checklist, but it doesn’t look like that’s at all required until our oral exam. So Joanna will be helping me with that one:) Having someone to quiz you makes these things easier.

A local ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association, ie, our union) rep met with us this evening. An hour long presentation with a question and answer session in one of the banquet rooms in the hotel, with a nice steak/salmon/pork dinner. I went for the steak, which wasn’t burned, but wasn’t red in the middle either.

Our rep is, of course, a Mesa pilot. He’s an FO currently finishing up captain upgrade training. He confirmed many of my worst suspicions about how bad working for these guys is going to be, and even pointed out ways in which its going to be worse than I could have imagined.

To sort of illustrate how bad it’s gotten: our contract became amendable (it doesn’t really ever expire) in September. The union let management know in June that they wanted to begin negotiations and got no response. The company finally responded, but hasn’t let union negotiator-pilots on their union-required leave to negotiate.

I suspect I won’t be at Mesa when the new contract is finally hammered out.

And I get to carry all of them around with me.

I’ve been tagged to report what I was doing 10, 20, and 30 years ago.

10 years ago, I had recently finished college and was teaching my younger brother an American history course by driving and camping up the East Coast and down the Appalachians, visiting every fort, battlefield, museum, or other historic spot along the way. We even visited Cara, who graciously put us up while we exhausted every item along the Mall. We headed east from Mobile to St. Augustine, where it all began, and made our way all the way to Maine before heading back again. We even attended an amazing re-enactment of the Battle of Antietam, the largest re-enactment up to that time and still the biggest re-enactment of that battle ever. To make it to the pre-dawn beginning of the second day’s re-enactment, we dozed in a rest stop because all the campsites within a huge radius of the event were all taken already.

20 years ago, I was in my second year both of homeschooling and living in Colorado Springs. My family was very involved in our church and the local homeschool support group, probably the largest in the country at the time. We made frequent trips to the state capital to lobby to legalize homeschooling (folks were getting prosecuted for truancy at the time), and Mom wouldn’t take us to the store during school hours, lest someone ask too many questions. I was foundering around with algebra and reading the first books that included romance that I truly enjoyed.

30 years ago, I was enjoying being a big sister, finally having a younger sister to play with, although she just wouldn’t grow up fast enough! I watched Captain Kangaroo in the morning and in the afternoon Mr. Rogers and “Sunny Days” (though my mom would insist it was called “Sesame Street,” I knew better). We lived next to the Cummings; Mr. Cummings would call me “George” for some reason. Behind and catty-corner to our house was the Reeses’ who went to our church and we were really good friends with. Amy Reese, who would have been one and a half at the time, called my sister Stephanie, who would become her best friend, “Nanny” and me “Nana.” So I guess I’ve been Nana for a long time; my little brother called me that for a while, and my nephew Elliott calls me that now. My very favorite thing to do was to go over to my friends Cara and Janna’s house and play some bizarre combination of “house” and “good guys and bad guys” and make stroganoff out of mud and privet berries and feed it to the zoo animals. Get three big imaginations from three little people, and you can occupy yourselves for hours.

but is this in English?

Each AHRS computer (AHRS 1 and AHRS 2) receives true and vertical speed from the applicable (on-side, either left or right side) air data system, magnetic flux sensor input from the on-side flux detector and compass compensation values from the on-side remote compensator. This data together with rotating piezoelectric accelerometer/sensor data is processed and output to the integrated avionics processor system. This data is routed to the TCAS, GPWS, fuel system and stall protection systems. It is also routed to the flight data recorder through the data concentrator units (DCU).

As one of the guys in our class asked, “So how many flux capacitors are in this thing, and where do we get 1.2 jiggawatts?”

Washington, D.C.
It’s paradise to me
It’s not because it is the grand old seat
Of precious freedom and democracy
No, no, no
It’s not the greenery turning gold in fall
The scenery circling the Mall
It’s just that’s where Mesa wants me
That’s all.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot, since training takes so long. It’s entirely possible I could get awarded JFK or or ORD before I’m done with training and I’d never have to actually see DC. But I won’t hold my breath either way.