The Notebook and the Door Lock
Lieutenant Gray Story #1
There are some people that just leave you with more stories to tell than other folks. Lieutenant Gray (not his real name) was one of those folks. He was a never-ending source of stories from the day he came into the unit until I left. This is the first story of the many he left with me.
Lieutenant Gray came into the Army after completing four years of college. The story was that he had done very well in school and so the Army decided he must be a golden boy and invested a lot in him. His assignment to our unit in Texas was his first assignment after his schooling.
Lt. Gray’s records showed that he had completed flight school, the Cobra helicopter transition and then was sent to the aircraft maintenance officer’s course. That seemed like a pretty impressive amount of money for the Army to put into someone untried and tested. Flight school was nine months long and they used to tell us it cost about a quarter of a million dollars to train us. The Cobra course was normally only given to the top few people in the class.
The maintenance officer’s course was normally only given to experienced pilots because it included a “test pilot” phase. The test pilot phase qualified maintenance officers to test fly aircraft to see what was wrong with them or test them to ensure that everything was completed properly when maintenance finished working on them. Not a job for folks that don’t know what they are doing.
When Lt. Gray arrived in the unit he was assigned to the Cobra platoon. All new pilots in a unit must be given an evaluation to confirm their ability to fly the aircraft and perform the unit’s mission. The evaluation consists of a written test, an oral evaluation to check knowledge and then a flight evaluation to test ability to fly the aircraft. These rides are normally completed in just two days or so. As the Cobra instructor pilot for the unit it was my job to give Lt. Gray a checkride.
Lt. Gray passed the written test with a passing grade. It wasn’t great but he did pass the open book test. The oral evaluation showed he really didn’t understand very much about the aircraft and flying regulations. He could answer the questions that required verbatim answers from the book but when it came to applying knowledge he was really weak. But I was willing to cut him some slack because he was a young pilot.
The flight evaluation portion was by far the most interesting. His flying was really poor but that was exceeded by his lack of judgment. After the first hour of flight time I was well aware that his evaluation was going to be more of a training flight than it was an evaluation. He needed training before he could ever possibly pass an evaluation. I had hoped that he could soon become a copilot but even that looked a long way off.
Over the next couple of weeks I flew four or five times with Lt. Gray trying to help him become proficient enough to pass an evaluation. His comprehension and retention were very poor. Time and time again I would instruct him on how to do a maneuver or procedure and time after time he acted like it was all of it was new to him.
One day when we were scheduled to do more training. I sent him to the aircraft to untie the aircraft and get it ready to fly. After fifteen minutes I had completed the things I needed to do before flying so I proceeded to the aircraft to finish helping Lt. Gray get the aircraft ready to fly.
As I came in sight of the aircraft I couldn’t believe what I saw. All of the tie downs were still on the aircraft and it was still locked up. When I walked to the other side of the aircraft I found Lt. Gray. He was trying to unlock the aircraft.
The canopy doors on that model of Cobra helicopter had door locks similar to car doors. We kept the door key and the aircraft key in a three-ring notebook that had the paperwork for the aircraft. The two keys were on a ring snapped in one of the rings of the notebook.
Lt. Gray was holding the notebook open against the canopy trying to unlock the lock with the keys still in the notebook. He was twisting and turning the entire notebook trying to get the key in the lock and unlock the lock. In utter amazement I asked, “What are you doing?” He replied, “I’m trying to unlock the canopy but I don’t understand how you guys seem to do it so easily.” My answer was an action one as I took the notebook out of his hands, snapped open the rings of the notebook, removed the key and unlocked the door.
Lt. Gray had just spent fifteen minutes trying to unlock the doors with a key in a three-ring notebook. It had never occurred to him to open the rings of the notebook and take the key out of it. And he knew, or should have known, that we have to have the other key on the ring to turn on the aircraft. That key had to be removed from the notebook in order to use it to start the aircraft. At that moment I really began to wonder if there would ever be any hope of getting him trained up to pass a checkride. I knew then and there that making a cobra pilot out of Lt. Gray would be about like making a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. Only a magician would be able to do a job like that.
All of us do some things that we look back on and wonder what we were thinking at the time or what we weren’t thinking. For most of us we learn from our experiences and do better the next time at bat. By the time we reach adulthood we should have most of the basic things in life figured out. I agree with putting warnings on products to help us think before we do something stupid but that can only go so far. I worry about our society when someone spills hot coffee on themselves and wants to sue someone because they got injured. Hot coffee is called hot coffee because it’s coffee and it’s hot. Thus the description hot coffee. By adulthood most of us have figured out that spilling something hot on us could hurt and so it is best not to do it. I just hope the next generation does not totally lose its ability to think and reason. If they do we’ll have an entire society of Lt. Grays!
There are some people that just leave you with more stories to tell than other folks. Lieutenant Gray (not his real name) was one of those folks. He was a never-ending source of stories from the day he came into the unit until I left. This is the first story of the many he left with me.
Lieutenant Gray came into the Army after completing four years of college. The story was that he had done very well in school and so the Army decided he must be a golden boy and invested a lot in him. His assignment to our unit in Texas was his first assignment after his schooling.
Lt. Gray’s records showed that he had completed flight school, the Cobra helicopter transition and then was sent to the aircraft maintenance officer’s course. That seemed like a pretty impressive amount of money for the Army to put into someone untried and tested. Flight school was nine months long and they used to tell us it cost about a quarter of a million dollars to train us. The Cobra course was normally only given to the top few people in the class.
The maintenance officer’s course was normally only given to experienced pilots because it included a “test pilot” phase. The test pilot phase qualified maintenance officers to test fly aircraft to see what was wrong with them or test them to ensure that everything was completed properly when maintenance finished working on them. Not a job for folks that don’t know what they are doing.
When Lt. Gray arrived in the unit he was assigned to the Cobra platoon. All new pilots in a unit must be given an evaluation to confirm their ability to fly the aircraft and perform the unit’s mission. The evaluation consists of a written test, an oral evaluation to check knowledge and then a flight evaluation to test ability to fly the aircraft. These rides are normally completed in just two days or so. As the Cobra instructor pilot for the unit it was my job to give Lt. Gray a checkride.
Lt. Gray passed the written test with a passing grade. It wasn’t great but he did pass the open book test. The oral evaluation showed he really didn’t understand very much about the aircraft and flying regulations. He could answer the questions that required verbatim answers from the book but when it came to applying knowledge he was really weak. But I was willing to cut him some slack because he was a young pilot.
The flight evaluation portion was by far the most interesting. His flying was really poor but that was exceeded by his lack of judgment. After the first hour of flight time I was well aware that his evaluation was going to be more of a training flight than it was an evaluation. He needed training before he could ever possibly pass an evaluation. I had hoped that he could soon become a copilot but even that looked a long way off.
Over the next couple of weeks I flew four or five times with Lt. Gray trying to help him become proficient enough to pass an evaluation. His comprehension and retention were very poor. Time and time again I would instruct him on how to do a maneuver or procedure and time after time he acted like it was all of it was new to him.
One day when we were scheduled to do more training. I sent him to the aircraft to untie the aircraft and get it ready to fly. After fifteen minutes I had completed the things I needed to do before flying so I proceeded to the aircraft to finish helping Lt. Gray get the aircraft ready to fly.
As I came in sight of the aircraft I couldn’t believe what I saw. All of the tie downs were still on the aircraft and it was still locked up. When I walked to the other side of the aircraft I found Lt. Gray. He was trying to unlock the aircraft.
The canopy doors on that model of Cobra helicopter had door locks similar to car doors. We kept the door key and the aircraft key in a three-ring notebook that had the paperwork for the aircraft. The two keys were on a ring snapped in one of the rings of the notebook.
Lt. Gray was holding the notebook open against the canopy trying to unlock the lock with the keys still in the notebook. He was twisting and turning the entire notebook trying to get the key in the lock and unlock the lock. In utter amazement I asked, “What are you doing?” He replied, “I’m trying to unlock the canopy but I don’t understand how you guys seem to do it so easily.” My answer was an action one as I took the notebook out of his hands, snapped open the rings of the notebook, removed the key and unlocked the door.
Lt. Gray had just spent fifteen minutes trying to unlock the doors with a key in a three-ring notebook. It had never occurred to him to open the rings of the notebook and take the key out of it. And he knew, or should have known, that we have to have the other key on the ring to turn on the aircraft. That key had to be removed from the notebook in order to use it to start the aircraft. At that moment I really began to wonder if there would ever be any hope of getting him trained up to pass a checkride. I knew then and there that making a cobra pilot out of Lt. Gray would be about like making a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. Only a magician would be able to do a job like that.
All of us do some things that we look back on and wonder what we were thinking at the time or what we weren’t thinking. For most of us we learn from our experiences and do better the next time at bat. By the time we reach adulthood we should have most of the basic things in life figured out. I agree with putting warnings on products to help us think before we do something stupid but that can only go so far. I worry about our society when someone spills hot coffee on themselves and wants to sue someone because they got injured. Hot coffee is called hot coffee because it’s coffee and it’s hot. Thus the description hot coffee. By adulthood most of us have figured out that spilling something hot on us could hurt and so it is best not to do it. I just hope the next generation does not totally lose its ability to think and reason. If they do we’ll have an entire society of Lt. Grays!
posted by Bruce | 4:29 PM
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