I forwarded Bob Reser's"How to Fly Airplanes" to Mike Edgar in Alberta. Like my"Safe Maneuvering Flight Techniques," Bob sends his ebook to everyone free. That got me to thinking about Pattie Wagstaff's loss of control presentation. Bob's book starts out asking, "what causes an airplane to stall? " His answer is, "the pilot by pulling back on the stick."

That got me to thinking about the way I flew my whole career. Because I worked low and cruise trim was right for full flaps on landing anyway, I seldom changed the trim from cruise.

That got me to thinking about why and for how long I pulled back on the stick throughout my whole career. This was why:

1. To either hold the tailwheel on the ground or to get the nose wheel just off (or tail up and level) as soon as possible. Duration was just seconds.

2. To get the mains off and into level, low ground effect as soon as possible. Duration less than two seconds.

3. To zoom over any obstacles I could not maneuver around. Duration just seconds.

4. To zoom up wings level trading cruise airspeed for altitude and slow down beginning the energy management turn. Duration less than four seconds.

5. To pull up and zoom back up to near the original altitude ending the energy management turn. Duration seconds.

6. To practice slow flight and mush prior to stall, and stall. Duration many seconds in this strange but useful maneuver doing what generally is poor technique except on very short final coming into ground effect.

7. Controlling airspeed on final to prevent the apparent speed up of the rate of closure on very short final coming into ground effect. Duration seconds.

8. To maintain altitude in standard rate turns while IMC or under the hood.

So that's it. My orientation was to only climb when absolutely necessary and to do so for mere seconds. Greg Simlar, .my boss at Underwood Aerial Patrol, said, "Jim doesn't believe an airplane will climb." Exaggeration? Yes. But he was making a point. No. When startle arrives, I do not really believe an airplane will climb. I'm looking for vertical space available.

As Bob says, "The design of the airplane is to fly." Wolfgang asks, "What does the airplane want to do." Slow, nose goes down. Turn, nose goes down. Etc. We are all orientated that way for safety.

Excellent. Thanks!

I missed an elevator usage: to slow down and zoom up to stay in an updraft as long as possible. Also to pitch down to fly through a downdraft as quickly as possible.

Cruise orientation puts us in the best position to manage/save zoom reserve in the form of airspeed/altitude. While attempting to maintain altitude in turns can be dangerous, we can zoom up to replace the altitude lost allowing the nose to go down safely in the turn. While attempting to maintain altitude in downdrafts can be dangerous, we can pitch down to get through quickly and spend more time in the next updraft by pitching up.

When Wolfgang said airspeed is altitude and altitude is airspeed, he didn't mean it as trivial information. We were expected to act on that useful information. We were expected to manage energy.

I have some questions for our information technology guys about the 737 Max 8 I was going to have to ride next Wednesday:

Understanding that airline orientation has to be climb initially until well above terrain and obstacles, is the artificial intelligence control override intended to augment or subvert PIC responsibility for stall prevention?

At 737 climb speed is 2.6 inches a lot of trim jack movement?

Why are two toggle switches required to turn the MACS off?