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#21
June 2nd 04, 06:07 PM
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Stealth Pilot wrote:
On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 14:22:56 GMT, "Dude" wrote: While I am admittedly pessimistic, there are a few things that make the average EAA guy different from the average citizen. Number one would be a love of building and flying. EAA people are intimately involved in the way their planes work. They do not see them as a bland appliance that gets them from point A to point B. The guy I am worried about is the one that can't fix his car properly, but thinks he can. Or he thinks that every mechanic is trying to rip him off, and wants to use the cheapest repair he can get by with. Now you want to put him in charge of a plane? For Pete's sake, have you seen the cars on the road? your carbeques caused us some amusement on the trip from sandiego to route 66 :-) :-) and watching something like 3 cars sitting there calling out the road patrol to change a flat tyre was astonishing. my last flat tyre took me 2 minutes to swap on the shoulder of a busy freeway. I'm sure urban americans dont realise how dumb they look to the rest of the first world. :-) relating to aviation. look there is a pervasive view that all owners are into clueless shonky maintenance. the hard evidence is quite different though. South Africans have owner maintenance and discussing this with some of the pilots who have emigrated tells the same story. when an old aircraft enters owner maintenance you can watch it develop over the next few years. the deterioration gradually winds back as the guy fixes more and more of the effects of age on it. many aircraft in owner maintenance end up as stunningly restored showcases that are flown for real pleasure. The Canadians north of you wouldnt stop maintaining their aircraft and in their remoteness could operate an aircraft for it's entire life away from civilisation. Transport Canada changed the rules when the statistics for illicit maintenance proved to be no different than for certified maintenance. The sky certainly hasnt fallen in for them. The brits, we australians and the kiwis all have the same basic pessimism in their regulatory authorities. they all still have a mindset from 1918 when it really was dangerous. most of us just ignore the authorities, close the hangar door, and just get on with it anyway. pilots are not the general unwashed of life. they have all been trained and assessed as competent aviators. isnt it time you had some confidence. all you need to do is put competent information before them and they soak it up. pessimism and aviation are poor bedfellows. Stealth (optimist) Pilot I'd like to address your first gratuitous whack at the way some americans choose to fix a flat tire. Many pay an annual fee for roadside assistance. It's a nice little card that goes into the wife's pocket book that has an 800 number which along with a cell phone gets the nice man out to fix the tire, bring gasoline, get the damn thing started and/or tow it to the garage. It stops the need to leave work and go listen to a diatribe about how SWMBO really should have a new SUV instead of this crappy BMW/whatever. The diatribe is now put off to when you return home and you can listen to it on your own unbillable time. This saves the annual fee in one whack ;-) Gary Thomas 
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#22
June 2nd 04, 07:13 PM
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"Stealth Pilot" wrote in message
... my last flat tyre took me 2 minutes to swap on the shoulder of a busy freeway. Wow! The next time I need a "tyre" changed, may I call you? :^0 The tires needed to be rotated on my 1987 Ford 3/4 ton pickup. I cleared out the 2-car garage/shop and spotted the truck in the center. The overhead lights were brightly lighting up the work area, the compressor was charged and I brought out the floor jack and jack stands. It took but a few minutes to lift all four corners of the Ford off the ground and secure it on the stands. I popped off all the hub caps and set up the impact wrench. Great working conditions! Dry, warm and pneumatic tools - what more could you want? No buttheads talking on cellphones whizzing past three feet away; just the soothing tones of Rush Linbaugh on the radio, "Talent on loan from Glaxo-Smith Kline Pharmaceuticals". Ten minutes later, I finally had the spare tire down from its hiding place under the bed. "Ooh - my back is starting to twinge already, I'd better pace myself. Where's my Bud?" "Okay - spare's ready, now to spin those lugnuts." Twenty minutes later, I have one nut unscrewed about four turns. It has now stopped turning and no amount of force I can apply will budge it in either direction. I believe it has welded itself to the lug. Before you ask, yes - I wire brushed all the lugs and allowed plenty of time for the penetrating oil to do its work. BTW, the rear lugs have an inch of excess thread beyond the nut to allow for the installation of duallies, so four turns is just a small beginning. The hubcaps and the spare tire went in the truck bed. The jackstands were put away and the truck taken to the local tire shop. That was fifty bucks well spent. He even charged an extra fiver to stow the spare. Rich "I'll never go *there* again!" S.
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#23
June 3rd 04, 05:43 AM
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On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 10:13:58 -0700, "Rich S."
wrote: Ten minutes later, I finally had the spare tire down from its hiding place under the bed. "Ooh - my back is starting to twinge already, I'd better pace myself. Where's my Bud?" "Okay - spare's ready, now to spin those lugnuts." Twenty minutes later, I have one nut unscrewed about four turns. It has now stopped turning and no amount of force I can apply will budge it in either direction. I believe it has welded itself to the lug. Before you ask, yes - I wire brushed all the lugs and allowed plenty of time for the penetrating oil to do its work. BTW, the rear lugs have an inch of excess thread beyond the nut to allow for the installation of duallies, so four turns is just a small beginning. The hubcaps and the spare tire went in the truck bed. The jackstands were put away and the truck taken to the local tire shop. That was fifty bucks well spent. He even charged an extra fiver to stow the spare. Conversely, my brother-in-law was in town last weekend, running his Camaro in the SCCA races. I was visiting him on Sunday when he decided to swap his slicks for rain tires. Took him all of about five minutes for all four tires....all I did was roll the replacement units up and pull the removed ones away. Makes a difference when you do it four or five times every weekend. :-) Ron "Rollaway" Wanttaja
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#24
June 3rd 04, 08:31 AM
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"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
... 1. CAN it be done? Hmm...yeah, probably, but the complexity of software that can handle what we consider to be routine decision-making would be phenomenally high. Picture what goes into a current state-of-the-art FBW software (incredibly expensive......figure $80M for basic inner-loop and autopilot through to certification) and take it up 2-3 orders of magnitude. We're talking about stretching the limits of current AI tech, plus testing. 2. WILL it be done? Nope. Not any time soon, anyway. There just isn't a strong enough tech push. 3. SHOULD it be done? Not for GA alone. There just isn't a strong enough need. The tech that you'd need to make it work are the same as those needed to make UAVs trustworthy enough for "hands-off" operation within federal airspace. If it will ever happen, it will start with UAVs, cuz that's where the money is being spent. As long as UAVs are only adhering to their current conops, this tech will never see enough attention to emerge into the mainstream. It will remain the province of robotic deep-space exploration. Pete
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#25
June 3rd 04, 06:57 PM
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Yep. Since we don't have anything logical left to argue about, is this where we switch to name-calling? :-) Why call names when I can "Fart in your general direction."
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#26
June 4th 04, 01:32 PM
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#27
June 4th 04, 03:32 PM
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Is the point whether they are able, or that they will do it?
Many people just do not have the right attitude. Current aviation populations are made up of enthusiastast who care about planes at least on some level. What happens when the average owner is less of an enthusiast and only sees his plane as a transportation appliance? Cars have gotten this way for many people. They just do not see it as an important possession that deserves care and respect anymore. Those people CAN take care of their cars, they just don't. "Stealth Pilot" wrote in message ... On 02 Jun 2004 05:13:22 GMT, (Veeduber) wrote: maybe homebuilders arent average. maybe we should lift the bar on the rest of society, --------------------------------------------------- Much ado has been made of 'National IQ' tests, comparing one nationality against another (yes, Oz is right in there). If such tests have any validity (they don't, but work with me here), then the average intelligence of citizens of industrialized nations is about 100. A key point neatly overlooked in this typical bit of modern-day feel-good 'news' is that if the AVERAGE is about 100 then the MEDIAN is around 85. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the behavior of our society is a closer match to the lower figure than the higher. And that the assertion the 'average citizen' can not be trusted to properly maintain an airplane (or even a car) is probably more right than wrong. -R.S.Hoover the other day in my studies I came across the graph of IQ's you refer to. (thought of you instantly) the graph is of Wechaler IQ's 0 - 70 is 2% of the population. 70 - 85 is 14% of the population. 85 - 100 is 34% 100 - 115 is 34% again. 115 - 130 is 14% over 130 is 2% traditional IQ tests really only test logic, spatial and numeric talents. as Mr Gardiner pointed out there are 8 areas of intelligence. linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, body-kinesthetic, natuaralistic, social understanding and self understanding. so IQ's dont tell all of the story. if we take IQ's from 85 up as being either good with the hands (not fully appreciated in the IQ test) or intellectually able (fully covered by the IQ test) to build and maintain aircraft. 82% of the population are theoretically able to handle learning about and actually maintaining their aircraft. even statistically there is no need for the pessimism about owners maintaining their own aircraft. Stealth Pilot
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#29
June 5th 04, 02:55 AM
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Veeduber wrote:
maybe homebuilders arent average. maybe we should lift the bar on the rest of society, --------------------------------------------------- Much ado has been made of 'National IQ' tests, comparing one nationality against another (yes, Oz is right in there). If such tests have any validity (they don't, but work with me here), then the average intelligence of citizens of industrialized nations is about 100. A key point neatly overlooked in this typical bit of modern-day feel-good 'news' is that if the AVERAGE is about 100 then the MEDIAN is around 85. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the behavior of our society is a closer match to the lower figure than the higher. And that the assertion the 'average citizen' can not be trusted to properly maintain an airplane (or even a car) is probably more right than wrong. -R.S.Hoover BY DEFINITION.... 50% of the world's population are of below average intelligence!! -- http://www.ernest.isa-geek.org/ "Ignorance is mankinds normal state, alleviated by information and experience." Veeduber
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#30
June 5th 04, 07:37 AM
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If one concludes from your data, that the median IQ is arranged to be
100 (which one should) then Bob is suggesting the AVERAGE ought to be higher ------------------------------------------ Not quite. The bell curve defined by Stealth Pilot supposedly represents the distribution of intelligence for the entire human population. This is not the same thing as the numerical mean of IQ scores for a specific population, such as pilots, people on welfare or attendees at a conference on astrophysics. The popular 'national IQ' bull**** appears to use only data from students, a population that is skewed toward the higher end. When the arithmetical average of their IQ's is 100 the news isn't quite as good at it appears and is a completely different subject than the statistical distribution of IQ for the entire human population. I simply pointed out the flaw in comparing one to the other. IQ tests tend to reflect the people who create them. And then misuse them for various purposes :-) As Robert Heinlein pointed out many years ago, in the Kalahari if he survived at all would be as the local equivalent to an idiot on welfare -- a zero on the local IQ test -- because the set of northern European genes that resulted in his 130+ IQ didn't happen to include the ability to smell water. -R.S.Hoover
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