Sky Gods

We should always keep discussions clean of personal attacks, political debates…the rest will moderate by itself

On knowledge: seems we have many good technical and wise people on Euroga to figure out facts from bullshits and everybody skygod or not has something to add to that mix…what is useful on this forum is experience sharing, especially from those who “done it”

Also a bit of humor in the forum, we all fly for fun after all? An idea for next fly-in: gathering of all flying Gods !

I’ll bite…

Let’s face it : a lot of us flyers, in this forum and elsewhere feel a sense of pride and achievement in each one of the little (or not so little) steps we have climbed in the aviation ladder.

I feel absolutely privileged to be able to fly the way we do and thank God every day for it. Perhaps we should be We are working on not making it such a privileged situation, but it is what it is. It may end up being a bit less so if we succeed, but privileged nonetheless.

These feelings together are only a very short distance away from making you think you are above more mundane earthbound people. I guess the literality in above also helps/does not help.

The good thing (discussed in this thread) is if you will, there are a lot of steps to climb in aviation so it is not easy to find the top, even if you could define what it is (there cannot be a universal definition, see same ref thread). If you have the right attitude, you can keep on learning with every flight. This happens in all fields but I find aviation is particularly rewarding for this kind of attitude.

To me the biggest people in human history are those that had lots of reasons to believe they were above the rest, but acted like it was not the case, with full respect for others. All catholic saints, by definition, fall within that category (or at least did so at the end of their lives) but also a lot of the truly great historical (like Oskar Schindler ) and contemporary (like Rafa Nadal, to mention a local) people who believed that their role in life was not self-fulfillment (which is only briefly fulfilling) but helping others achieve fulfillment, believing that whatever one is or has achieved should mainly be for the benefit of others, even willing to put your own achievements at risk. I believe he who openly believes himself above the rest is simply showing off his lack of personal fulfillment. I usually do not resent them, since I make that same mistake all too often, (most of us are not saints) but I cant help feeling bad for, rather than against them.

Regardless of whatever mistakes people make or made, whatever achievements we perceive they did, I believe all of us deserve respect and opportunities because we are humans, not for just being great flyers or skiers or being rich or having a better airplane. I firmly believe life has a tendency to, eventually, place each one in the right spot.

EuroGA makes it easier to achieve such ideal by keeping the open, respectful environment, making everybody welcome and respected and ensuring no one is made to feel better or worse for their flying achievements, but rather for their contribution to the collective aviation knowledge base at all levels, from those thinking of taking PPL lessons to those with tens of thousands of flying hours in their logs (there are a few around).

Aviation also has the virtue of being humbling to all those with a minimum amount of self-criticism: raise your hands those who can truthfully say they have made fewer than five mistakes on their last flight. For those who can’t recognize that: well, hopefully you will find your way to grow or else aviation, or forum A, B or C, will not last long for you.

Perhaps one day EuroGA is worth some money to the founders, nothing wrong with that, but the highest value will always be such contributions.I hope it is never lost and I hope to be given a chance to go on trying to contribute.

Thanks and sorry for the long, sentimental dissertation…

[Edit: Wow, I did not realize there were other posts in this thread. I started writing this post around lunch time but could not get it finished until now so crossed all of the other posts.

Timothy wrote:

That is the lovely thing. We all have so much to learn from each other.

MedEwok wrote:

Certainly it should be in the interest of every aviation enthusiast to help other like-minded people on their way as best as they can, furthering our common subject of interest?

Peter wrote:

Apologies; it was meant …

Ibra wrote:

Also a bit of humor in the forum

Thanks

Antonio wrote:

To me the biggest people in human history are those that had lots of reasons to believe they were __above__the rest, but acted like it was not the case, with full respect for others.

Rather than fall back on Saints, I would would like to shout out this guy.

Notice how, at the end, he goes to sit down at his desk in the open office, even though he is CEO of a huge, and hugely successful company.

He died tragically young, and I went to his memorial service yesterday, together with hundreds and hundreds of other people. At the end, the clergyman asked us to stand for prayers, but to start with those who had been mentored by him, then those who had been helped build a business, then those who he had advised, and so on, and it was tear jerking to see each cohort stand up.

And yet, if you met him, he was just a kind, gentle soul who never tried to put his own thoughts ahead of anyone else.

Sorry to harp on, but if we were all like him…

Antonio, do not apologize for your post, for it was quite touching and philosophical in a good way. EuroGA has quite a lot of technical minded people, whom I admire because I lack their skills, but also has its fair share of people with other qualities. It is quite amazing what a collective of pilots from all over Europe and beyond, from all walks of life, David and Peter have assembled on here

The term “Sky God” as I understand it usually referrs to people who will be condescending and patronizing towards others or functionaries in certain clubs which will treat the membership like their personal servants, take tremendous pleasure in making up rules and enforcing them and genrally make life miserable for anyone who questions their self proclaimed authority. Jerks like this are around unfortunately in many forums. If challenged, they will retort to personal attacks (particularly if they realize they are wrong) and will treat any newbie with benevolence until they start asking uncomfortable questions. From that moment on Sky Gods will descend on them and either driven them out or treat them like vermin.

This kind of people do a lot of damage to GA, they demotivate and often cause people to stop flying at all or to have a lot of confidence problems. Unfortunately, sometimes even in forums like these simple questions about getting from a to b asked by newbies are turned into major resarch projects of intimidating dimensions and totally overcooked sum of all fears surface in such discussions. Personally I feel that this is very contraproductive in instilling confidence in those who ask. I do remember one thread here where a participant asked about a simple VFR trip which happened to have some overwater leg included and by the looks of it the answers scared the guy into not doing the trip and caused anxieties which are not much improved even today. That is NOT what we should be doing here in these forums. And sometimes that makes some of us similar to those people we clearly don’t like much.

Peter wrote:

A few haven’t done anything at all (in the GA context, flight simmers) but still like to tell everybody how great they are.

The first time I encountered this term as something describing some kind of vermin was in the forum many of us left to come here. While I know that they refer to people who are simmers and openly pretend to be airline pilots, it does the very large and diverse flight simulation scene a huge injustice. Personally I have been involved in flight simulation since 1983 and in my personal experience, there is no other hobby which has brought more people into aviaiton, be it as pilots in all sorts and qualifications to ground personell and whatever else their function may be.

While in recent years I have not had the time nor the motivation to continue simming, I look back at over 30 years of very satisfying work in the field. For 13 years I was a senior editor of the first German flight simulation magazine (FlightXpress) which now sadly is ancient history, but it was one of the most satisfying things I have ever done. It involved a lot of research, writing, testing and verifying flight models by the use of full flight simulators or actual airplanes, travel to places I’d never gone to otherwise (for instance Guam and Saipan for a project as well as many conferences in the US and Europe),but foremost meeting a lot of fascinating people (amongst them Austin Meyers when he presented his very first edition of X-Plane, Bruce Artwick and Stu Moment (the original inventors of Flight Simulator), Mike Woodley (the man who gave us the very first European Scenery disk and who redefined scenery design by importing various databases such as nav data, landuse, elevation e.t.c) and many more. In the early days I had my own products which I produced (the first Swiss Scenery for both MSFS and ATP amongst them as well as probably the first flight planner capable of handling large jets and ETOPS e.t.c) before becoming a reviewer and a writer. Flight simulation has opened a lot of doors for me and I see that it does this for a lot of people. Kids who came to have their copies signed at Paderborn or Munich today fly airliners and I see them regularly when they prepare to board their Boeings or Airbusses.

it is also almost frightening to see where flight simulation has progressed to since the early days some 30 years ago. I remember sitting in a trainer at Frasca field (produced by the very same company who owned the field and sitting next to Bill Frasca himself) and testing the probably first visual for a GA sim at all which was based on Microsoft FS4. Recently I have flown the probably best flight simulator I ever set my feet in, a supberbely done Caravelle III near Munich, which runs of X-Plane and is a work of pure art. Or I do introductions to airline flying regularly for work colleagues whom I teach the basics of aviation, recently using a very high fidelity Boeing 777-200 sim in Zürich city. That sim is capable of a lot of things even full flight sims don’t do (because they don’t need to). Today, we have sceneries which allow newbies in VFR navigation to prepare flights to an extent never possible before. There are virtual ATC networks which teach youngsters Aviation English to the point where they will fly through the LP and RT exams without ever having attended any further education and often at a higher linguistic standard than some European ATC centers…

As Timothy sais, used correctly, flight simulation can be a huge asset and should be much further embraced by the flight schools and aviation programs and their users are probably some of the most enthusiastic aviation supporters in existance. In the 1990ties we were musing over programs to getting high end flight simmers easier access to real world flying, something which was on a good way when EASA came up and took all the ressources which were needed then. I do notice however that a lot of flight sim applications using the popular “games” are more and more involved in professional training: X-plane has several approved FTD’s in the US and of course the current incarnation of MSFS is produced by Lockheed Martin as Prepare 3D which is the base for a lot of professional sim applications produced by them and others.

So be careful how you look at flight simmers. I have come across many of them who know a great deal more about a specific airplane then I do despite the fact that I have flown the type. Developing a high fidelity sim model today means often 10 or more years of development and going into details which go so deep into the technological innards of the plane in question that even manufacturers get stomped at times at the questions they are asked and by the quality they get back. Some even use those products to train their own staff on (e.g Tupolev Design Bureau had several rigs set up for the TU154 type rating course running MSFS9 with Project Tupolev installed, as that software was much more capable than their own full flight sims (which btw required a crew of 10 engineers to run it).

Me, i can honestly say I would probably not have gotten back into flying real airplanes if it had not been for the time I have spent with flight simulation. Doing that has given me access to a world of knowledge I could not ever have gotten access to the “usual” way. I don’t regret one minute of it.

Whenever I have that apotheosis feeling, 30 minutes in a Pitts Special will bring you firmly back down to earth :)

+1 for Antonio

I have almost zero experience of other forums, apart from looking for information on an aviation forum (think someone with a stammer ordering dried plums ) about 10 years ago. The mental image I had was of hyaenas running in circles faster and faster until one makes a mistake or someone new joins in, then the whole pack would fall upon them and eat them alive. I didn’t want any part of it.

EuroGA provides information, which is what I‘m interested in, rather than a place for people to forcefully air their opinions. An environment where people can ask questions without fear of ridicule is very important.

Aviation does seem to have more skygods in real life than other activities. Flying in the UK in my early twenties I found a closed club of opinionated and negative old men “you can’t fly abroad, above 2000’, in class D” etc. Now I ignore them and do the flying I want to do: lunch in France/Belgium and the occasional trip to the Mediterranean, above 2000’ I’m not skygodding, I’m making a point

Is there a correlation between degree of skygodness and number of first person personal pronouns? I’ve used ‘I’ a lot in this post…

I’ve landed downwind, omitted items from checklists etc. I wouldn’t dream of telling someone else how to fly or do anything else (unless obviously dangerous). As RobertL18C says, it’s important to stay humble.

Capitaine wrote:

The mental image I had was of hyaenas running in circles faster and faster until one makes a mistake or someone new joins in, then the whole pack would fall upon them and eat them alive.

A most wonderful description Capitaine. Actually, a truly wonderful description of what’s been happening over there just recently. Not that the eatee didn’t ask for it, but a very strange behaviour all the same. A behaviour that says a great deal more about the human evolutionary path out of Africa than it does about aviation, IMHO!

Forget the forums. The skygods are all on Facebook now. That GA Aviation Community page being one prime example…..

Snoopy wrote:

Have stopped reading most other forums

What other forums? I have yet to find any other general aviation forum. I know a couple of specialized ones, and they are just fine, but – well – specialized.