Precautionary Landing

By lex, on February 14th, 2010

The reciprocating piston engine that powers the vast majority of the general aviation fleet is a marvelous design, achieving acceptable power at minimum weight and maximum reliability. It is also, as a mentor of mine recently reminded me when I was being a trifle inconsiderate in my rate of throttle adjustments, a delicately whirring and clanking mass of mechanical parts and their associated dependencies striving in fierce opposition to each other. There is any number of things trivial and otherwise that can upset that delicate balance, and when it does, well: Things can get interesting.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex