Posted by: Chris Davis | September 3, 2010

A Shocking Story (aka the Tazer Story)

Following up on our fun story last week I thought I would pass on another one to kick off this holiday weekend.  Have a great Labor Day.

To give you some background information, Rex, the author of this story is in his mid 40′s about 6’4 and 220 lbs and contrary to this story, he is quite an intelligent person.

Dear Friends,

My wife is fond of saying that my last words on this earth will be something akin to “Well, I have out done myself once again.”  No doubt you will see this true story chronicled in a Life Time movie in the near future.  Here goes.

Last weekend I spied something at the Pawn shop that tickled my fancy.  (Note: Keep in mind that my “fancy” is easily tickled.)  I bought something really cool for my wife.  The occasion was our 22nd anniversary and I was looking for a little something extra for my sweet girl.  What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse-sized Tazer gun with a clip.  For those of you who are not familiar with this product, it is a less-than-lethal stun gun with two metal prongs designed to incapacitate an assailant with a shock of high-voltage, low amperage electricity while you flee to safety.  The effects are supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse affect on your assailant, but allowing you adequate time to retreat to safety.  You simply jab the prongs into your 250 lb tattooed assailant, push the button, and it will render him a slobbering, goggle-eyed, muscle-twitching, whimpering, pencil-neck geek.  If you’ve never seen one of these things in action, then you’re truly missing out-they are way too cool!

Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home.  I loaded two AAA batteries in the darn thing and pushed the button.  Nothing!  I was so disappointed.  Upon reading the directions (we don’t need no stinkin’ directions), I found much to my chagrin that this particular model would not create an arch between the prongs.  How disappointing!  I do love fire for effect.  I learned that if I pushed the button, however, and pressed it against a metal surface that I’d get the blue arch of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs that I was so looking forward to.  I did so.  Awesome!!!  Sparks, a blue arch of electricity, and a loud pop!!!  Yipeeeeee!  I’m easily amused, just for your information, but I have yet to explain to her what that burn spot is on the face of her microwave.  Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn’t be all that bad with only two triple-a batteries, etc., etc.  There I sat in my recliner, my dog looking on intently (trusting little soul), reading the directions (that would be me, not the dog) and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh and blood target.  I must admit I thought about zapping the dog for a fraction of a second and thought better of it.  She is such a sweet pup, after all.  But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised.  Am I wrong?  Was I wrong to think that?  Seemed reasonable to me at the time.  So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses perched delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, Tazer in another.  The directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a loss of bodily control; a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water.  All the while I’m looking at this little device (measuring about 5″ long, less than 3/4 inch in circumference, pretty cute really and loaded with two itsy, bitsy AAA batteries) thinking to myself, “no friggin’ way!”  Friggin’ way – trust me, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

What happened next is almost beyond description, but I’ll do my best.  Those of you who know me well have got a pretty good idea of what followed.  I’m sitting there alone, the dog looking on with her head cocked to one side as to say, “Don’t do it buddy,” reasoning that a one-second burst from such a tiny lil’ ole thing couldn’t hurt all that bad (sound, rational thinking under the circumstances, wouldn’t you agree?).  I decided to give myself a one-second burst just for the hell of it. (Note: You know a bad decision is like hindsight– always twenty-twenty.  It is so obvious that it was a bad decision after the fact, even though it seemed so right at the time.  (Don’t ya hate that?)

I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and HOLY *********!!!!  I’m pretty sure that Jessie Ventura ran in through the front door, picked me up out of that recliner, then body slammed me on the carpet over and over again.  I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, soaking wet, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position.  The dog was standing over me making sounds I had never heard before, licking my face, undoubtedly thinking to herself, “do it again, do it again!”

(Note: If you ever feel compelled to mug yourself with a Tazer, one note of caution.  There is no such thing as a one-second burst when you zap yourself.  You’re not going to let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor.  Then, if you’re lucky, you won’t dislodge one of the prongs 1/4″ deep in your thigh like yours truly.)

SON-OF-A-***** that hurt!  A minute or so later (I can’t be sure, as time was a relative thing at this point), I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape.  My reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace.  How did they get there???  My triceps, right thigh and both boobies were still twitching.  My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, as my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs. give or take an ounce or two, I’m pretty sure.  By the way, has anyone seen my testicles?  I think they ran away.  I’m offering a reward.  They’re round, rather large.  Miss ‘em…… sure would like to get ‘em back.

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Posted by: Tom Chappell | August 27, 2010

The Dilution Effect

Frequently, we have clients that form partnerships to share in the ownership and usage of individually or corporate owned aircraft.  This is a growing trend in the current economic environment.  In fact, such an arrangement makes a lot of sense by diluting the fixed costs of owning a private aircraft.  Such things as insurance, maintenance expense, hangaring costs, etc. are much more affordable when split two ways.  Economically, this ownership concept makes sense.

Along with any good plan comes issues.  In this example, one problem is the dilution effect on the two partners from a liability insurance standpoint.  If one partner is negligent and someone is injured, both partners could be sued.  To insulate the owners, we often see the formation of a single LLC or a corporation to own the aircraft.  Each party could have a 50% interest in that entity.  I am not suggesting that this corporate veil cannot be pierced but it will, at least, slow the process down.

Another approach is to have the two partners own the aircraft under separate corporate names or to form an LLC for each owner and have those entities own the aircraft.  Either way, both owners are exposed to law suit.  As an example, we have two owners that have a 50% interest in the aircraft.  Assume a lawsuit ensues and both parties are named in the suit.  The liability limit of the insurance policy must be adequate to defend both parties and to pay any judgment that might be handed down.  In other words, both must be protected under the one insurance policy and one liability insurance limit.

If you feel comfortable with a $10M liability limit but you have a partner that also must be defended, you effectively don’t have full use of the $10M you purchased.  The simple solution is to purchase higher limits.  So if you raise your $10M to $20M you will each have the desired $10M limit, right?  Not so fast.  Although this makes sense, it is the courts that will decide how the liability limit will be used.  Certainly $20M is much better than $10M, but things may not play out as simply and easily as you plan.

The real solution is to purchase as much liability insurance as you can reasonably afford or as you can qualify for from underwriters.

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Posted by: Chris Davis | August 27, 2010

Arrows & Ether

This has to be one of the funniest stories that I have read in a long time.  I was literally laughing out loud while I read it so I thought I would pass it along to get you started on a great weekend.

Author Unknown:

Around age 10 my dad got me one of those little compound bow beginner kits.  Of course, the first month I went around our land sticking arrows in anything that could get stuck by an arrow.  Did you know that a 1949 Farmall H tractor will take 6 rounds before it goes down?  Tough sumbich.  That got boring, so being the 10 yr. old Dukes of Hazard fan that I was, I quickly advanced to taking strips of cut up T-shirt doused in chainsaw gas tied around the end and was sending flaming arrows all over the place.  Keep in mind this was 99.999% humidity swampland so there really wasn’t any fire danger.  I’ll put it this way- a set of post-hole diggers and a 3 ft. hole and you had yourself a well.

One summer afternoon, I was shooting flaming arrows into a large rotten oak stump in our backyard.  I looked over under the carport and see a shiny brand new can of starting fluid (ether).  The light bulb went off.  I grabbed the can and set it on the stump.  I thought that it would probably just spray out in a disappointing manner…lets face it, to a 10 yr old mouth-breather like myself,  ether really doesn’t “sound” flammable.  So, I went back into the house and got a 1 pound can of Pyrodex (black powder for muzzle loader rifles).  At this point, I set the can of ether on the stump and opened up the can of black powder.  My intentions were to sprinkle a little bit around the ether can, but it all sorta dumped out on me.  No biggie… 1 lb. Pyrodex and 16 oz. ether should make a loud pop, kinda like a firecracker you know?  You know what?  Screw that I’m going back in the house for the other can.  Yes, I got a second can of pyrodex and dumped it too.  Now we’re cookin’.  I stepped back about 15 ft. and lit the 2 stroke arrow.  I drew the nock to my cheek and took aim.  As I released I heard a clunk as the arrow launched from my bow.  In a slow motion time frame, I turned to see my dad getting out of the truck…OH SHIT he just got home from work.  So help me God it took 10 minutes for that arrow to go from my bow to the can.  My dad was walking towards me in slow motion with a ”what the hell” look in his eyes.  I turned back towards my target just in time to see the arrow pierce the starting fluid can right at the bottom, through the main pile of Pyrodex and into the can.

When the shock wave hit it knocked me off my feet.  I don’t know if it was the actual compression wave that threw me back or just the reflex jerk back from 235 fricking decibels of sound.  I caught a half a millisecond glimpse of the violence during the initial explosion and I will tell you there was dust, grass, and bugs all hovering 1 ft. above the ground as far as I could see.  It was like a little, low to the ground layer of dust fog full of grasshoppers, spiders, and a crawfish or two.  The daylight turned purple.  Let me repeat this…THE FRICKIN DAYLIGHT TURNED PURPLE.  There was a big sweet gum tree out by the gate going into the pasture.  Notice I said “was”.  That thing got up and ran off.  So here I am, on the ground blown completely out of my shoes with my Thunder Cats t-shirt shredded, my dad is on the other side of the carport having what I can only assume is a Vietnam flashback:

ECHO BRAVO CHARLIE YOUR BRINGIN’ EM IN TOO CLOSE!!  CEASE FIRE DAMNIT, CEASE FIRE!!!!!

His hat has blown off and is 30 ft. behind him in the driveway.  All windows on the north side of the house are blown out and there is a slow rolling mushroom cloud about 2,000 ft over our backyard.  There is a Honda 185, 3-wheeler parked on the other side of the yard and the fenders are drooped down nearly touching the tires.  I wish I knew what I said to my dad at this moment.   I don’t know.  I know I said something.  I couldn’t hear anything.  I couldn’t even hear inside my own head.  I don’t think he heard me either… not that it would really matter.  I don’t remember much from this point on.  I said something, felt a sharp pain, and then woke up later.  I felt another sharp pain, blacked out, woke later… repeat this process for an hour or so and you get the idea.  I remember at one point my mom had to give me CPR so dad could beat me some more.  Bring him back to life so dad can kill him again.  Thanks Mom.  One thing is for sure… I never had to mow around that stump again.  Mom had been bitching about that thing for years and dad never did anything about it.  I stepped up to the plate and handled business.  Dad sold his muzzle loader a week or so later and I still have some sort of bone growth abnormality either from the blast or the beating, or both.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, get your kids into archery.  It’s good discipline and will teach them skills they can use later on in life.

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Posted by: Jeff Rhodes | August 4, 2010

Low Tech Left Seat

In the past weeks we have seen serious accidents involving a number of Cirrus aircraft.  Several of these accidents appear to involve loss of aircraft control on the part of the pilot.  One Cirrus overran a 4,000 foot runway and crashed into the water.  Another SR-22 appears to have stalled and spun following a high and fast approach, long touchdown, and go-around attempt resulting in a steep climb.  An SR-20 attempted a fast, downwind landing, bounced severely, and departed the left side of the runway and impacted trees after the initiation of a go around (left turning tenancies at low speed / high power / high AOA).   The week also saw – very publicly – Jack Roush’s landing accident in Oshkosh, where a well known, high-time pilot lost control of and stalled a small corporate jet, just feet above the runway.   All of the pilots involved in each of these accidents presumably had attended an insurance company required training course in their respective aircraft and all had hundreds of hours in the make and model. 

In the aviation insurance business we see many losses associated with poor energy management techniques.  Stall / spins, runway overruns, bounced landings, and loss of control accidents lead to millions of dollars of hull insurance payouts every year.  As illustrated this week, they can also lead to injuries and loss of life.  As new high performance personal and corporate airplanes become more and more automated and advanced, better equipped, and better performing, it is more important than ever to train and be proficient in the basics of putting an airplane in the proper point in space at the right time and at the right speed. 

I speak to aviation underwriters frequently about underwriting trends for low-time pilots transitioning to turbine or high performance aircraft as well as veteran pilots going through recurrent training or moving to another model.  These days, simulator training rules, as it allows pilots to experience situations too risky to recreate in an actual airplane.  The sims also allow pilots to quickly and efficiently check off the maneuvers in which they are required to demonstrate proficiency.  Initial and (at least) annual recurrent training for turbine aircraft isn’t going anywhere and I believe that it has contributed to a marked increase in the safety of corporate aircraft over the last two decades.   Even the required training to fly a Cirrus, while not simulator-based, is quite thorough and requires the use of a Cirrus approved instructor following a factory-approved transition course.

But, like the Cirrus and Premier jet accidents described above, all too often we see aircraft lost and people hurt or killed because of approaches flown way too fast or way too slow.   Accidents during near-to-ground maneuvering (often in VFR conditions) seem to be the result of rusty or poor pilot technique and lack of basic airplane handling skills.  Maybe part of our personal recurrent training plan should include some regular seat of the pants basic training.

My suggestion would be to find a school and go get that glider add-on.  Or, take an aerobatics, a mountain flying, seaplane, or a tailwheel transition course.  These kinds of activities help “200 knot straight and level” pilots brush up on – or maybe experience for the first time – techniques like energy management and feel of the airplane in all corners of a performance envelope.  We get to remind ourselves about stall buffet, the effects of torque, P-factor, low speed turning tenancies, and spins.    These things have all been engineered out of the airplanes we fly on a regular basis.  We only see them when something goes wrong and too often, we have forgotten the proper way to deal with them when it counts.

 

This is certainly no-frills training, and many pilots feel put upon to “waste time” in a low end trainer.   While so much of our high performance training is dedicated to their use and function, modern avionics and flight management systems seem to have eroded modern pilots’ aptitude for basic aircraft control.  When you spend some time practicing the basics, the procedures and techniques that the “hard way” has reinforced will keep your muscle memory and mental awareness where it really needs to be all the time.  

When we see licensed pilots losing control of high performance singles, corporate turboprops, or light jets in good weather and with no mechanical problems, we know that they have not been effectively taught or practiced the basics of aircraft control and energy management.  As capable and modern as our airplanes are, we must remember to continually tune up the decidedly low tech piece of “equipment” sitting in the left seat.

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Posted by: Chris Davis | July 22, 2010

Captured Vision

The following post is a recollection of a recent formation flight that took place over the hills and valleys around Moontown Airport. The author, Peter Van Staagen, is a friend of mine who goes by the call sign “Squatch” which you may recall from an earlier post entitled God’s G. Pete is one of those pilots who always strives for perfection and continuously hones his skills to make himself a better pilot. To those of us who share Pete’s drive and passion, his story sparks memories of our own where training and persistence paved the way to an unforgettable moment in time.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Read More…

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Posted by: Chris Davis | July 2, 2010

I Fought For You!

On this 4th of July weekend we want to thank all veterans past and present…for fighting for us. We have not forgotten the sacrifices made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTb6qdPu8JE

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Posted by: Chris Davis | July 2, 2010

God’s G

God’s G is about one of the many adventures that we get into at a little old grass strip in northern Alabama by the name of Moontown.  Alan (the author) is a Captain for United Airlines as well as being a veteran combat pilot.  I have learned most everything that I know about formation, aerobatics, and advanced flying skills from these fellows and feel honored to call them friends.  They are a great group of guys and a ton of fun to fly with.

Clear Skies & Tailwinds! Read More…

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Posted by: Jeff Rhodes | June 21, 2010

Prior Planning Prevents Potential Predicaments

Large scale disasters, like the Gulf oil spill, often serve to remind us of important lessons.  While we hate to see damage and destruction befall others, business owners should learn from their mistakes and take precautions to avoid them themselves.  While a Nebraska-based air charter operation may not be at much risk from crude oil on the beach or hurricane-driven storm surge, every business is subject to various sorts of large and small scale disasters that can shut down its revenue-generating operations long enough to do serious harm. Read More…

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Posted by: Chris Davis | June 14, 2010

Kaydet Kate meets Greezy Joe

All too often we take for granted the freedoms that we have been blessed with in this country, but every now and again an opportunity comes along that allows us to say thanks to those who pay the price for those freedoms.  My chance to say thanks came this past weekend by way of an old Stearman that we affectionately call “Kaydet Kate”. Read More…

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Posted by: Jeff Rhodes | May 17, 2010

Watching Discovery

I drove down to Cape Canaveral to watch the Space Shuttle Discovery launch in the early morning hours of Monday, April 5, 2010.  This was one of those things that I was going to do “one of these days” for twenty years.  With only four shuttle missions left, the time had come.  Cameron (6), my dad (60), and I loaded the car on Easter Sunday about 5 PM, picked up Scott Penner and his oldest son, Lane (4) and hit the road for the Cape.   Our destination was Jetty Park, at Port Canaveral.  As the name would imply, this park was on the jetty where the cruise ships exit Port Canaveral into the Atlantic.  About eight miles south of the launch pad, it looked like it would be a good place. Read More…

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