The High Sky Wing

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday.

And yes, Santa is a round motor guy!!!

While cleaning out my newsletter file, I ran across the following opinion provided by CAF Col Dick Christiansen, of Lincoln, NE.  Somehow I never had room for it in the regular newsletter, so I am reproducing it for you now.

“We gotta get rid of turbines; they are ruining aviation.  We need to go back to big round engines.

“Anybody can start a turbine; you just need to move a switch from ‘Off’ to ‘Start’ and move it back to ‘On’ after a while.  My PC is harder to start.  Cranking a round engine requires skill, finesse and style.  On some planes, the pilots are not even allowed to do it.

“Turbines start by whining for a while, and then give a small lady-like poot and start whining louder.  Round engines give a satisfying rattle-rattle, click-click BANG, more rattles, another BANG or two, more clicks, a lot of smoke and, finally, a serious, low-pitched roar.

“We like that.  It’s a guy thing.  When you start a round engine, your mind is engaged and you can concentrate on the flight ahead.  Starting a turbine is like flicking on a ceiling fan:  useful, but hardly exciting.

“Turbines don’t break often enough, leading to aircrew boredom, complacency, and inattention.  A round engine at speed looks and sounds like it’s going to blow at any minute.

“Turbines don’t have enough control levers to keep a pilot’s attention.  There’s nothing to field with during the flight.

“Turbines smell like a Boy Scout camp full of Coleman lanterns.  Round engines smell like God intended flying machines to smell.

“I think I hear the nurse coming down the hall.  I gotta go.”

Click on the link and then double click on the video.

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