Q: How do you make a million in aerospace?
A: You start with a billion
MedEwok wrote:
Runter kommen sie alle
is a German saying fairly wide-spread even among non pilots and means, roughly,
they all come/go down [eventually]
I believe the English equivalent is “What goes up must come down”.
My pet silly proverb is not necessarily restricted to aviation
“If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it!”
as if being cost concious sais anything about a perspective owner’s financial means. Or maybe he got to the financial situation which allows him to consider buying BECAUSE he kept asking how much and made good deals up to this point.
Another one outright dangerous one is “Touch the red and you’re dead!” referring to mixture control.
New pilots start out with a full bucket of luck and an empty bucket of experience. It is essential to fill the experience bucket before the luck bucket runs empty (sic).
This is an old one:
You must learn from the mistakes of others because you cannot live long enough to make them all yourself
Especially true for aviation, which is why accidents should be discussed freely.
I heard a funny one at an FAA safety meeting many years ago on the subject of crashing (and the idea that you keep flying it till everything comes to rest if you are going to crash), that there had been an incident where a helicopter’s tail rotor had failed. The aircraft was still pirouetting across the airfield when tower asked “do you need any assistance”, and the pilot without missing a beat replied “I dunno, I ain’t done crashing yet!”
Runter kommen sie alle
is a German saying fairly wide-spread even among non pilots and means, roughly,
they all come/go down [eventually]
it is advisable to take your feet off the rudder pedals and adopt the brace position a few seconds before impact
I think that advice may, at best, be type-dependent. In the few airplane and helicopter crashes of which I have first- or second-hand knowledge of the pilot suffering no injury, a common factor seems to have been that he (for some reason, they are all male) carried on flying the plane until all kinetic and potential energy had been converted into mechanical work.
Even when an off-airport landing site looks decidedly sub-optimal, one can make a decent job of it if he pays attention:
RobertL18C wrote:
A tailwheel aircraft does not stop flying until it is secured and in the hangar
“There are TW pilots who ground looped once and those who will”
Same for complex gear: “There are RG pilots who land gear up and those who will”
Other: “You know you are in RG up landing when it takes full power to taxi”
aart wrote:
‘Gear up, Flaps up , Shut up’
Free German translation: Höhe halten, Fahrt halten, Kurs halten, Maul halten.
You asked for silly ones. Of course this strictly speaking not a proverb, but more of a mantra from the good old days, before that silly CRM stuff when captains were Captains:
‘Gear up, Flaps up , Shut up’
