Ray Sullivan Author: aeronautical engineering

Showing posts with label aeronautical engineering. Show all posts

Saturday, 5 May 2012

Splitting the Indifference

Have you ever listened to natural conversations recorded without the people talking knowing about it? It's the kind of jape kids used to do with their first cassette tape recorders, probably still do, but with an iPhone these days. Apart from the incessant rustling of clothes, people coughing, chairs dragging on the kitchen tiles, the recordings are often full of ems, ahs, and thingymajigs.

The reality of it all is that natural speech is actually quite unnatural. While a few of us (not, incidentally, including myself) are endowed with absolute clarity of thought transferred to pitch perfect delivery, most of us find ourselves wandering from one rambling thought to another from time to time. While some of us say pacific when we mean specific, others mix up their iPod with someone else's iPad. And then there are the sentences that just fade away, as if the speaker forgot what he was sayi..... Where was I?

The reality is, though, that we are really quite good at filling in the gaps in natural speech. Sure, we don't always get it right - British soap operas would lose fifty percent of their plot-lines if their characters didn't second guess words incorrectly! But miss a flaming comma out of written speech, and you can expect to be hauled over the coals. Pop one in where it isn't welcome and you can expect to be cast out into the cold. Don't ask about the punishment for misplaced apostrophes - note, not apostrophe's!

OK, I may be a little touchy, I've just spent a lot of my free time lately proofing my five novels for the Createspace printing run and although the number of typos and grammatical errors have been relatively small in number, it was also a little disappointing. To be fair, I've found that my writing style has changed over the last ten years and consequently, as I read through Parallel Lives, both the first book I wrote and the fifth I've proofed, I've realised that I punctuate differently these days.

However, there is one writing trick I don't have to resort to these days, and that's the artificially split infinitive trick I developed while in the RAF. My last role before I left the airforce was to write specifications to obtain project funding for sexy engineering equipment for use in aircraft engineering training, then to act as project liaison through to introduction to Service. OK, sexy might be a tad subjective, but I did help secure funding for gear that has helped hundreds, possibly thousands, of technicians understand aircraft hydraulics (if you look carefully you will see a much younger me hiding behind a student in one photo) and flying control technology. Some of the bids were in the million pound plus range and went through a robust vetting process, however at the other end of the scale there were pots of cash looking for an application to be spent on (remember, this was definitely pre credit crunch). The trick was to have arguments written up and costed, waiting for the inevitable question - 'have you anything you need that will cost x pounds?'

For the strongest project bids, it was generally a painless process, however there was often a raft of project ideas that were harder to make a robust argument for. The problem was, and probably still is, that the people holding the budgets often didn't have as strong a grasp on the technological merits, and could pass over a bid that didn't strike them as deserving. Obviously, good writing coupled with strong arguments are key, but I had a secret weapon based on a weakness of the Officer training machine.

In the RAF, Officers are taught a lot of new skills, including how to read and write. Sorry, I meant to include 'reports correctly' at the end of that last sentence. They are especially trained to check the written reports and project bids coming from the non-commissioned airmen. They are also taught to check any report and keep on checking until they find a fault with it - it's a supremacy thing, I guess. One part of their reading and writing training revolves around the split infinitive. US readers can stop reading here as you dismissed the split infinitive to the garbage pile decades ago, correctly, I must say, however British military Officers and some academics still believe that it is more correct that Captain Kirk goes boldly rather than to boldly go.

So, when compiling some of my more dubious bids I would deliberately split an infinitive early on in my report. Sure enough, I'd be summoned, have the offending split infinitive pointed out - circled in red usually - and once I'd resubmitted the amended report with the infinitive restored the bid would be signed off.

If you're currently attempting to get a report past a British Officer, you might want to look at this article.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

To find out more about my ancestors visit my sister’s website http://sullivanfamilyhistory.angelfire.com/

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Tuesday, 10 April 2012

Keep Fiction Truthful - Maybe

I've got one of those memories that allows me to recall the most trivial point from a long time ago - perhaps in another life I was a woman! Of course, in this life I'm a man, so I struggle to remember anything I did a day ago.

One such lasting memory is from my first or second year in secondary school aged 11 or 12, during maths. The maths teacher was teaching us Pythagoras' Theorem, you know, the one about right angled triangles with a hypotenuse. The teacher spun a story about how, according to him, Pythagoras was stood in a typical Greek garden one day, which was paved with square slabs. We'd call that a patio today, but back then we had grass or concrete, so he had to describe the setup to us. Anyway, the teacher reckoned that Pythagoras was pacing up and down the slabs and realised the relationship between the square of the sides and the square of the sloping part and Voila (did I mention Pythagoras was good at languages?) he worked out the now famous theorem.

Now, if you've studied the history of mathematics, as I subsequently did many years later as part of my mathematics degree, you'd be sceptical about this story (and probably a little chuffed with the irony as the Skeptics were a separate Greek philosophical group to Pythagoras's). For those of you who didn't study the history of maths, the theorem attributed to the great man was known in Greece for several hundred years before his time. It's OK, I don't think he ever got any royalties.

The point is, the teacher used a very effective method to put his point across, he drew a mental image that was so believable I ended up believing it well into my adult life. In one of my many career roles, as a technical trainer, I've used mental imagery extensively and I sometimes wonder if there are former students, now senior members of the Royal Air Force who are merrily regurgitating 'facts' that I created to help them understand aircraft hydraulics.

The story about Pythagoras and the nonsense I saw fit to illustrate my teaching points with pale into insignificance when compared to Hollywood, though. I think every film I've seen that has featured aircraft has had at least one piece of nonsense in it, usually several pieces. I accept that it is often necessary to bend the truth to keep the story moving, but in reality I suspect that most of the silly mistakes are done in full knowledge, at least after the technical consultants have advised on the script, and are left in there because it creates a convenient storyline.

To be fair, I find that in almost any subject I know something about, films get wrong. So I suspect that they're not picking on me, that would be as believable as my maths teacher's story, so I guess all you gas fitters, newspaper editors, Members of Parliament, housewives, truck drivers etc. spot similar nonsense around your areas of expertise too. I think that one of the most outrageous myths used in Hollywood as a convenient storyline is the one about sprinkler systems.

In the films, sprinklers are often used as a distraction. Generally someone, sometimes the hero, sometimes the bad guy, needs to get people moving so that they can disappear from whoever is following them. An illegal and unwise method would be to set off the building fire alarm, but I guess the film makers know that's way too mundane for a film - so much sound, almost as much apathy in the general population. So they have the hero (or villain) set of the sprinklers by hitting the fire alarm call point - cue slo-mo camera, all sprinklers in the building go off, scantilly clad ladies in tee shirts and no underwear running towards the camera. Very entertaining, has probably worn out their fair share of video playback heads (remember them - videos, this is turning inot a real retro blog) and absolutely nonsense.

For those who don't know how sprinklers work, and from my experience (another career change) most of you will be in this group, they don't normally operate when somebody sets off the alarm. Generally they have glass bulbs that break when the temperature around it increases, releasing water over a predetermined area. In a fire situation, the fire should set off one, two at the most, sprinklers, leaving the scantilly clad ladies free to stand and watch the firefighters stamp out the residual smouldering fire with their boots, their strapless vests rippling in the breeze. And when I say strapless vests, I'm talking about the ladies, of course, the firefighters tend to keep their shirts on when responding to a callout, apparently. Just don't tell Holllywood.

In books, such licence with reality is much less tolerated. I'm not suggesting that books are bullshit free, they're not, but I think that authors stick to reality more closely. Where authors stray, in my certain knowledge, is around those old favourites such as aircraft. Helicopters get a lot of rubbish written, probably because they are familiar devices that everyone knows are complex mechanical devices. So authors, who may have sat in a helicopter and have an appreciation of the controls involved, may feel a need to fill in the gaps. Often hilariously to those of us who have a basic understanding of the subject. I would suggest resist! Those of you who followed 'Da Dan Brown Code' or have read 'The Last Simple' will recall I made a helicopter do stupid gyrations as a homage to the rubbish that is put in print. For example, if you've ever read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code you'll probably realise that Mr Brown has never got too close to the blast from a jet engine that is being pushed at its minimum setting - there's no way anyone would taxi a business jet around inside a hangar. Other authors I have read have fudged the controls the pilots operate in fixed wing and rotary wing (helicopters) aircraft due to not understanding what they do. At least we have Wikipedia at our disposal, now.

So are my, predominantly Sci Fi, books bullshit free? Of course not. Sci Fi, by definition, is exploring concepts that may be true, but are certainly not proven. It also includes stuff that isn't known to be true, but possibly may be. It also, as a genre, includes pure bullshit that the author hopes you, the reader, will swallow because it's convenient. I hope I don't stray into that area too often - it's a matter of judgement in many cases. In DLF, or Digital Life Form as I've reluctantly retitled it, I do play a little fast and loose with technology but that book was written with my tongue pushing against my cheek. Quite hard at times.

Keeping fiction truthful is an unlikely aim - fiction is about exploring events that haven't happened, maybe cannot happen - but let's try to avoid going down the Hollywood route, let's keep the BS out of fiction.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

To find out more about my ancestors visit my sister’s website http://sullivanfamilyhistory.angelfire.com/

The Last Simple is also available on Amazon.com in paperback for $6.

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books.

To View My books In....

Saturday, 31 March 2012

Sky High iPad

It's fair to say that the penetration of the iPad into all consumer and many business markets is nothing short of phenomenal. From home use to market research to sales presentations to stock control - there doesn't appear to be an industry or application that is immune to its lure.

One industry I would have expected to be resistant, though, is the aeronautical industry. Although it is some years since I worked in aviation I wouldn't have expected much to have changed in terms of technological conservatism - that's one of the paradoxes of the aeronautical engineering world; it's often viewed by those outside the industry as space age and cutting edge but in reality it often lags behind the drag curve in technology adoption. The impression of being cutting edge is probably because many innovations were originally developed to solve an aviation need and then rolled out to other uses, giving the impression that aeronautical engineering is racing ahead when in reality the development will have taken many years to come to fruition.

I have to say the reluctance to rush in with new technology is correct in principle; having worked in aircraft technology procurement I have seen the almost overwhelming amount of checks and balances that have to be met before any change can be made to a design. As an engineer I have worked on a significant variety of military aircraft that have one thing in common - robust systems with multiple redundancy. The consequences of a piece of equipment failing or a chunk of computer code locking up are too serious to contemplate on an aircraft at 50000 feet, so the designs and build standards are such that if a component fails, it shouldn't be remotely catastrophic.

So, I was a little surprised to find out that iPads have not only made it on-board commercial aircraft to assist with passenger manifests but havealso made it into the cockpit.

At the moment they are required to be powered down on take off and landing and are subject to certain restrictions such as being mounted securely. The advantages are obvious - the devices can carry all the manuals and navigation charts an aircraft can ever need, saving significant weight which reduces operating costs or, perhaps more relevantly, increasing potential for revenue. It isn't the first attempt at digitising the essential documentation for a flight, but previous attempts retail at tens of thousands of dollars, took years to develop and had to undergo rigorous testing to satisfy the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), the US equivelant to the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). It must be galling, and not a little perplexing, to the manufacturers who have jumped through multiple hoops to qualify their equipment to see a consumer device used with what looks like unstructured testing.

To be fair, the iPads have been put through some significant tests by various airlines, including an impressive test to demonstrate their abilty to withstand an explosive decompression, but interestingly Apple don't appear to have been involved in these tests, nor do they have the stamp of a structured regime where the parameters are defined, the pass/fail points identified before testing starts and a complete analysis of failure impacts completed.

And it's gaining pace: Delta Airlines have obtained permission to use the devices at all phases of the flight, from pre-flight through to chocks-in. At least one airline is looking at integrating the devices into the existing flight equipment: the details are a little vague so far but I guess we're looking at feeding the iPad navigational information direct from the aircraft sensors. Will it go the other way - will the iPad be allowed to provide inputs to the aircraft? Unless it's properly designed and tested, I hope not.

I'm not against the idea of using consumer products in aircraft - the potential to reduce the cost of mundane equipment that has virtually no safety impact on a flight sounds attractive as it should keep costs down and improve implemention times. However I'm cautious about rushing to use what has become the must-have executive toy in the cockpit purely because it's the sexiest device on the market. Sure, the iPad is one heck of a versatile device, too versatile in the case of a flight deck, but it really should earn its place along with all the rigorously tested equipment up there.

It has already been flagged by opponents to the concept that using an iPad (or Kindle, Kobo, Nook) to replace the navigational charts and aircraft manuals creates a couple of issues - first, if the device fails, you lose all of your essential literature, a situation reasonably resolved by doubling up on iPads and applying a little statistical calculations, one would think. Except anyone who is involved in aeronautical procurement will point out that pattern failures are the next concern, and that requires very careful and detailed testing over time to become comfortable with. The second objection raised is the point that currently, Delta excepted, the iPads have to be powered down on landing. Occassionally the odd chart or manual might be handy just then. Not insurmountable, but robust testing and qualification would be nice.

It's not a question of whether iPads will join the flight deck - they're up there now. It's a question about whether they should continue to be used and, perhaps, whether someone should start writing up a specification for them to be tested against. A difficult task; they exist and they do what they do. Importantly they don't do what they don't, no mattter how important that feature may appear in a specification. My guess is that the specification won't be written - the FAA seem to be rolling over on this one already.

My hope, for my future transatlantic flights, is that when the announcement comes over the intercom insisting that all portable electronic devices are turned off - that the pilots follow suit.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

To find out more about my ancestors visit my sister’s website http://sullivanfamilyhistory.angelfire.com/