Way of the Wing

@daveenglish.com

213 Followers 240 Following

👨🏼‍✈️ Airbus & glider pilot. ✈️ Posting my perpetual pursuit of piloting perfection. 🇬🇧 Really English. 🖥️ Online at www.WayoftheWing.com.

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between work and play; labor and leisure; mind and body; education and recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.” Lawrence Pearsall Jacks Education Through Recreation, 1932.
“I’m still learning. It’s a never ending process.” New Rich Stowell Podcast. Great stick and rudder discussion from a master instructor who has over 35,000 spins in 240 something single-engine airplane types. Forty years of flight instruction yields some valuable insights: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/sportys/episodes/Stick-and-rudder-skills-for-modern-pilots–with-Rich-Stowell-e3km35h Questions include which control turns an airplane? What would you change in flight instruction? What have you learned about flight instruction from learning martial arts? “The checkride is an event. Learning to fly is journey.” “The learning is in the struggle.” You can go to www.RichStowell.com and download a whole bunch of great stuff for free. Lot of actionable stuff to read on a rainy day.
“He was going to work on it until he got it. Maybe never, but he would know as he got near it. It was a job. Maybe for all his life.” Ernest Hemingway
AI generated picture of a pilot of the month coffee cup.
Darren Pleasance, COE AOPA, in the cockpit.
“The attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of vital concern. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond — a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art — which IS art.” Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea, 1906.
Neil Armstrong, last public presentation, Starmus, 24 June 2011, island of Tenerife. Quote is from the 2014 book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space.
AI generated picture of Leonardo da Vinci sitting in a modern airliner.
Adapted from EUROCONTROL (2013). From Safety-I to Safety-II. A White Paper. Normal curve of performance showing accidents & incidents on the spectrum with routine and exceptional performance.
Winsuit flyer high over the countryside.
Seaplane landing on water
Greater Boston Soaring Club L19 Birddog tow plane
Seaplane over a foggy San Francisco
Amber Forte diving in a wingsuit