Proficient Pilot: Time flies

This is when I was flabbergasted to learn that AOPA Pilot had agreed to purchase my first magazine article for the princely sum of $75. Mrs. MacDonald, my English Composition teacher in high school, would have been similarly shocked. She could have told you that I barely squeaked by with a C and never did learn the difference between a split infinitive and a dangling preposition. Given access to my class yearbook, she likely would have annotated that I was the least likely student in her class to become a writer.

Reading some of my early material makes me cringe and would seem to validate Mrs. MacDonald’s appraisal of my literary prospects. Writing, I have been told, is a skill that improves with time, but that adage did not seem to apply to me. Despite the passage of much time, I still do not consider myself a particularly good writer. Ernest Gann and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry arranged words to form literary strands of pearls, and my best does not compare to their worst. Their talent, however, continues to set lofty goals to which I continue to aspire. I would like to think that I have become a decent craftsman, not so much because of innate talent—which I do not have—but perhaps because I have a sense of what pilots enjoy reading.

I continue writing and, hopefully, improving because it enables me to teach in an exceptionally large classroom. (Not everyone agrees with all that I say, but that is another story.) Writing also gives me an entrée deep into the industry I so love. How else could I have arranged to fly some very exotic aircraft—such as a high flight in an Air Force U–2 Dragon Lady? The rewards far outweigh the frustrating agony that comes from staring at a blinking cursor while trying to develop a topic. (This is a backhanded way of asking—begging—for subjects about which to write in future columns.)

Most rewarding are occasional letters detailing how something I wrote might have made someone’s flying safer. Conversely, there are readers spring-loaded to jump on my errors. One cannot write for the public and be thin-skinned. Paraphrasing a printer’s axiom, “Everyone makes mistakes, but writers publish theirs.”

I created my first monthly quiz, “Test Pilot,” for the March 1994 edition of AOPA Pilot, three years after I had begun writing my monthly column. Although the quiz (see p. 39) continues to gain popularity, some readers complain that it is too difficult, that they rarely get a passing grade. But “Test Pilot’s” purpose and challenge is to teach. If the questions were easy, they would serve little purpose other than to assuage the egos of those who take the test each month. Rarely do readers correctly answer all the questions in a particular quiz. When they do, I have failed as a teacher.

My goal each month is to carefully craft questions that either entertain, fascinate, or educate in a useful manner. Believe it or not, the quiz is as difficult for me to create as the questions might be for you to answer. It helps, however, for me to have been a trivia nut, a lifelong affliction. When I was a teenage flight instructor, I always enjoyed discovering and sharing nuggets of information. The owner of the flight school where I worked, Paul Bell, enjoyed telling others that I knew more [stuff] that nobody cared about than anyone he knew. But he was wrong; people really do care about this stuff.

I confess to having made a few mistakes in “Test Pilot” over the years, even though I go to great pains to avoid them. I atone for such errors by personally answering every corrective email that I receive.

The easiest way for me to research the answer to a question is to simply ask the question in a quiz and then intentionally publish an incorrect answer. Some of you are bound to know the real answer and then take great joy in sending it to me. This method of research works like a charm (just kidding).

I also enjoy researching questions submitted by readers. One question that has remained unanswered for years asks, “A standard key-operated magneto switch is labeled OFF R L BOTH START. Why is the right magneto selected to the left of the left magneto and vice-versa?” Bendix, original manufacturer of the switch, says that no one is available who remembers why the switch was labeled so incongruously.

Do you?

barryschiff.com