Lauren Paine article in SA

[LettersFromFlyoverCountry]

Huh. I must be hanging out with the wrong people. I've never -- not once-- gotten a discouraging word regarding RVators. When I land in small airports, the old-timers come out to see the plane and I tell them all about it. If there are kids around, they get to sit in it. Want to put fingerprints on a finely polished airplane? Go ahead.

Enroute, I'm courteous to the controllers and the other people in the air.

The thing is: I'm a pilot and I built an airplane and it's known as an RV. I'm not in a cult. I don't get defensive automatically because someone has appeared to insult my tribe.

I saw nothing wrong in Lauran's article that bothered me. There are jerks out there and some of them fly RVs.

Some pilots may transfer their personal experiences with RV pilots to the RV community at large. Meh.

I just don't have time to worry about that sort of thing anymore.

In our social media world, I swear people get up in the morning looking for the outrage of the day. There are people you're going to agree with and people you aren't. Fly right. Don't be a jerk. Makes sense to me. If people don't like me because I fly an RV, that's perfectly fine with me. One less set of fingerprints to buff out.

[Auburntsts]

Originally Posted by LettersFromFlyoverCountry

Huh. I must be hanging out with the wrong people. I've never -- not once-- gotten a discouraging word regarding RVators. When I land in small airports, the old-timers come out to see the plane and I tell them all about it. If there are kids around, they get to sit in it. Want to put fingerprints on a finely polished airplane? Go ahead.

Enroute, I'm courteous to the controllers and the other people in the air.

The thing is: I'm a pilot and I built an airplane and it's known as an RV. I'm not in a cult. I don't get defensive automatically because someone has appeared to insult my tribe.

I saw nothing wrong in Lauran's article that bothered me. There are jerks out there and some of them fly RVs.

Some pilots may transfer their personal experiences with RV pilots to the RV community at large. Meh.

I just don't have time to worry about that sort of thing anymore.

In our social media world, I swear people get up in the morning looking for the outrage of the day.

Agree 100%. I hang out on various aviation websites like AOPA (aka the Red Board) and Pilots of America (aka POA, aka the Blue board) plus a number of others. Here's my observations:

-- RV's get a bad rap from some mainly because we comprise the majority of E-ABs so we are the magnet for criticism (comes with the territory when you are the majority)
-- It only takes a few to poison the rep for the rest of us. And while, like Bob, I have yet to witness bad RV-pilot behavior and/or stupid pilot tricks, I'm pretty sure it happens.
-- The aviation forums tend to be dominated by a relatively small number of posters compared to the number of registered members. So folks with an ax to grind stand out. RV's aren't the only one's in this boat -- Cirrus owners/pilots seems to catch a lot of criticism too.
-- Haters gonna hate regardless of any logical arguments or positive outreach. The best we can do is to try not to be a contributor to the problem and/or bad perception.

[leok]

I sense there is also something else at work here as well.

'Fighter jocks' have always been the 'wild' branch of aviation. It has always been a perception of the straight and level branch of aviation that anyone going upside down in an airplane is a bit (or a lot crazy). And for them, for their aircraft, it is crazy. For an RV, that is just part of the approved envelope.

It is like George Carlin says, 'Anyone going faster than you on the freeway is crazy, and anyone slower is an idiot.'

I don't see that ever changing.

[sblack]

Originally Posted by leok

I sense there is also something else at work here as well.

It is like George Carlin says, 'Anyone going faster than you on the freeway is crazy, and anyone slower is an idiot.'

.

Man he was brilliant. I'll add "anyone with a nicer more expensive airplane is a rich ***". (Cirrus envy - insert word of your choice).

[Alan Carroll]

Originally Posted by LettersFromFlyoverCountry

Huh. I must be hanging out with the wrong people. I've never -- not once-- gotten a discouraging word regarding RVators. When I land in small airports, the old-timers come out to see the plane and I tell them all about it. If there are kids around, they get to sit in it. Want to put fingerprints on a finely polished airplane? Go ahead.

Enroute, I'm courteous to the controllers and the other people in the air.

The thing is: I'm a pilot and I built an airplane and it's known as an RV. I'm not in a cult. I don't get defensive automatically because someone has appeared to insult my tribe.

I saw nothing wrong in Lauran's article that bothered me. There are jerks out there and some of them fly RVs.

Some pilots may transfer their personal experiences with RV pilots to the RV community at large. Meh.

I just don't have time to worry about that sort of thing anymore.

In our social media world, I swear people get up in the morning looking for the outrage of the day. There are people you're going to agree with and people you aren't. Fly right. Don't be a jerk. Makes sense to me. If people don't like me because I fly an RV, that's perfectly fine with me. One less set of fingerprints to buff out.

Bob,

I?m not outraged by the topic of the article, and in fact I think Lauran was making a very good and important point. However, it seems to me that the published letter is simply divisive, and not ultimately conducive to improving safety. Those targeted are likely to react defensively, as I probably did (I'll try to work on that...). Those not targeted may be left believing the issue doesn't really apply to them.

Like you, I've had nothing but positive personal experiences in 11 years of flying my RV. Lauran's piece leads me to wonder if these experiences are telling the whole story however.

Thanks for your perspective.

[HackerF15E]

Originally Posted by jrs14855

I think for starters you have to break it down into subcategories. Weather, aerobatics etc.

I disagree -- it all falls under the concept of "airmanship". We are talking about decisionmaking and judgment. We are talking about flight discipline.

Unfortunately, this is a topic that non-professional aviation has to struggle with every handful of years; most professional aviation has a set of standards and expectations that come with the job that -- generally -- are followed lest the pilots lose that job. Unfortunately, in non-professional aviation (e.g. GA flying, amongst other areas), we come from varied backgrounds, with varied levels of training, varied levels of experience, and varied beliefs about levels of what constitutes safe behavior in an airplane. Because of those variations, it is nearly impossible to have a single, understood standard/example of what "normal" behavior is, especially as pilots progress into flying more and more high performance airplanes that are capable of more high performance things.

The warbird community has struggled with this over the years, especially as the "old guard" of former professional military pilots who were the standard-bearers in the warbird community has died off and been replaced by a large number of non-professional pilots whose actual professions afforded them the wealth to own/operate high performance airplanes. Pilots who have not been trained formally or mentored by pilots with experience high performance flying (the same stuff mentioned in the article -- formation, aerobatics, low-level flying) unfortunately sometimes make the decision to have a go at it themselves. Or, alternately, they've been trained and mentored on how to do this stuff, and they still make the decision to engage in risky or illegal behavior anyway because of the laundry list of "hazardous attitudes". There was a point about 5-6 years ago where every single fatal warbird accident that year was a result of pilot error, and most of it from guys saying "watch this!" and doing things that were far riskier than circumstances dictated or were above their heads trying to do something their training or experience could not support. The warbird community continues to struggle with this today, even having self-identified the issue and having taken steps to tighten up their own training and self-enforcement of good decisionmaking.

Either way, it constitutes bad decisionmaking, bad judgment, bad airmanship. Some (most?) pilots strive to learn and achieve excellence in these areas...but some don't. Some just want to go have a thrill, and think that they're good enough to make it work without killing or injuring themselves or others.

In my opinion, if your take-away from the article is that the author is unfairly pointing a finger at RV pilots, then you've gleaned entirely the wrong thing from it. Such an article should, instead, cause us to look at ourselves and our fellow pilots, and examine if we have those same thoughts and behaviors. He's right that no pilot thinks of himself as dangerous, and none of us wake up in the morning and think, "hey, let's go out and do something stupid today!" Often we can't see it from inside the fishbowl -- sometimes it takes us stepping back and examining things from the outside to see these things. Sometimes it takes a friend, a fellow pilot, a mentor, or even a stranger to comment on what they think of your airmanship and judgment for us to realize that we may be slightly off the ranch.

It has to start with each of us wanting to be good airmen and both learning and exhibiting good judgment and decisionmaking. It extends to when we see bad judgment or poor airmanship out of fellow pilots, having the guts to go speak to them about it.

[Chkaharyer99]

The Lauren Paine article in October 2016 SA did what it was intended to do. Open a dialog on the subject of being courteous.

"cour?te?ous
ˈkərdēəs/
adjective
polite, respectful, or considerate in manner.
synonyms: polite, well mannered, civil, respectful, well behaved, well bred, well spoken, mannerly; gentlemanly, chivalrous, gallant; gracious, obliging, considerate, pleasant, cordial, urbane, polished, refined, courtly, civilized"

More or less.

[BillL]

Originally Posted by HackerF15E

I disagree -- it all falls under the concept of "airmanship". We are talking about decisionmaking and judgment. We are talking about flight discipline.

Well stated.

Originally Posted by HackerF15E

Unfortunately, this is a topic that non-professional aviation has to struggle with every handful of years; most professional aviation has a set of standards and expectations that come with the job that -- generally -- are followed lest the pilots lose that job.

While the vast number of professionals are well disciplined, stupid can not be trained away. Professionals are not immune to this, so lets not single out "non-professionals" Unfortunately, these two lost more than their jobs.

http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/A...ts/AAR0701.pdf

300C (540F) over the turbine inlet temperature limits.

We really should not let a poorly written, and documented article generate strife.

[HackerF15E]

Originally Posted by BillL

While the vast number of professionals are well disciplined, stupid can not be trained away. Professionals are not immune to this, so lets not single out "non-professionals" Unfortunately, these two lost more than their jobs.

Nowhere did I state or imply such immunity; rather, I wanted to emphasize the nonstandardization of experience, training, and other safety-culture mechanisms that simply don't exist outside a formally organized flying environment.

Not a statement of better or worse.

[ccsmith51]

While I haven't had any direct confrontation about flying an RV, I will never forget in 2014 when our group approached Johnson Creek, ID, and announced inbound for landing.

Someone radioed "RV's go home."

We hadn't buzzed the field or anything, we were a few miles out and giving positions as expected.

I'll never forget that. It hung over me a bit the few days we camped there, as we never knew who, or how many, felt that way.